Getting it down on paper
A spectacular result – François Chevalier A movement of discontent was growing over the years, the America’s Cup was not what it used to be! In 2010, when two gigantic multihulls competed against each other, it’s anything but match racing, just a race of speed. The next edition in San Francisco is worthy of a racing car event: they are 22m flying catamarans with rigid wings that battle it out in an arena. Then, in 2017, it’s the turn of the small AC50s in
60 SEAHORSE
Bermuda, barely 15m: never have we seen such small sailing boats in the Cup; besides, they are practically one-design – with the main exception of the foils and the all-important control systems where, along with their cyclors, Emirates Team New Zealand demonstrated the free think- ing and flashes of technical brilliance that would enable them to humble the might and near-limitless resources of the American Defender Oracle Team USA. But where is the tradition, the beautiful
manoeuvres of flying spinnakers down- wind, the gybes, the tacking battles! ‘We can’t wait for the monohull to return!’ said Italian Patrizio Bertelli, the owner of Prada. The Kiwis, who had just won the silver pitcher, agreed, but on condition that they go absolutely as fast as possible. And when we have just spent a few years two or three metres above the water it is difficult to go down again. In fact, one of the members of the Team
New Zealand design team, the Frenchman Guillaume Verdier, already has a nice project for a local client for a hydrofoil monohull. He and his friend Benjamin Muyl would be happy to take it to a higher level, a monohull on the scale of the Cup. The idea is to remove the ballast of a
maxi, and instead place a ton of lead in each of two foils placed at the end of two
arms extending out either side of the hull, which can be raised and lowered by pivot- ing around an axis. For the hull it will prove necessary to provide a small inter- mediate ‘second’ hull beneath the first to ease take-offs and soften the landings. The idea is launched, the AC75 is born.
But what strange shapes, never seen before, unless you look in the archives of the 19th century or at the eccentric hulls of some of the IOR Quarter Tonners of the 1970s… exceptions to the mainstream and notable for not having won any prizes. Four AC75s were initially built, and the
2019 vintage had its share of surprises. The four hydrofoil yachts built in anticipa- tion of the Cagliari and Portsmouth World Series meetings are destined for the scrap heap because the regattas for which they were intended have been cancelled. The teams’ designers responded to the
new AC75 rule with very different archi- tectural solutions, the Defender putting a virtual canoe beneath the main hull of their first boat. For the second boat every- one agreed that it was essential to create something like this thin lower hull, adding a sort of long keel, to cushion the landing and facilitate take-off and reduce the gap between the hull and water to improve the aerodynamics of the flying monohulls. It’s never easy to reproduce the shape of
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