Opposite: Terry Hutchinson can stand down at last after Quantum Racing locked down the 2022 TP52 Super Series in a very light airs regatta in Barcelona… which took place in the same calendar period as will the 2024 America’s Cup. This is the fifth time Doug DeVos’s team have won the title, the result of being a very tight and always positive group who treat every inch of every race as if it were the last. And a current state-of-the-art Class40 (above) – at the time of writing 48-year-old Corentin Douget’s bulldozer of a Class40 Queguiner-Innoveo is lying in second spot in the Route du Rhum, 100nm behind race favourite and 2018 Rhum Class40 winner Yoann Richomme. Douget’s boat is a previous-generation Lombard V1D2 design that was launched as long ago as… 2021
with flap settings will be especially helpful to optimise take-off in marginal windspeed foiling conditions. The Ineos boat appears to have identical wings on both sides, possibly meaning they are more focused on optimising their simulator rather than doing A-B testing of different foil designs. Alinghi are the only team testing in the same waters where the
racing will occur. They will gain experience and data about foiling in the often choppy sea state around Barcelona, something that will be hard or impossible to do with a simulator. So the good news is Alinghi are sailing in Barcelona conditions.
That is also the bad news, since those conditions have caused them to miss several sailing days or forced them to head further south along the coast to find better conditions. The Swiss crew are all new to the AC75, and will be dedicating
more time to mastering manoeuvres rather than generating perfor- mance data. The rules prevent them from changing the two foil wings on their AC75. They are sailing with a foil wing from ETNZ to starboard in a flat T-foil configuration, with a wing acquired from American Magic with anhedral to port. So they can do A-B testing. We don’t know how much data or software came with those hardware purchases. Like Alinghi, American Magic are sailing an AC75 and are likewise
restricted to using the foil wings and flaps they launched in October. They cannot test different foils, but the data they gather will help them refine their simulators. They reconfigured Patriot with cyclor stations and have probably upgraded their control systems. Pensacola Bay is well-sheltered and the crew know how to sail
the boat. They have been getting in many hours of sailing and will be gathering power data from their cyclors on a full-sized yacht. Luna Rossa have the advantage of sailing their LEQ12 from their
well-established base in Cagliari. They did not launch until late October and then managed to drop and damage their mast while stepping it. Not much news has been forthcoming, but Luna Rossa acquitted themselves well in 2021, taking three races off the Kiwis in the match. They clearly know how to design, develop and race a fast AC75. Team New Zealand are testing with their modified AC40, now
technically an LEQ12. The sailing conditions around Auckland are clearly different from Barcelona, but the same was true in 2017 and Bermuda. The Kiwis have had the best-performing foils in the last two America’s Cups. Their design team has been together for years. They wrote the AC75 Class Rule. We don’t need to worry about them. All of the teams will be using test data collected on the water to
validate and refine their simulators. In 1974 Britton Chance’s simulations led him to believe that he had a breakthrough design with the truncated stern of his new 12 Metre yacht Mariner. He claimed the water would be confused into behaving as if the waterline were longer. But the water was not confused. Marinerwas painfully slow and skipper Ted Turner famously remarked to Chance that ‘even a turd is tapered at both ends’. A major focus for all the teams will be developing simulators that
produce the virtual results that match those of the water and air flowing around the physical yacht.
CupExperience.com
SEAHORSE 13
JEAN-MARIE LIOT/DPPI
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