Update
6 September 2017, a date nobody on St Maarten will easily forget. Hurricane Irma wreaked havoc, leaving the island devastated. But not for long. St Maarten showed its resilience and started rebuilding. Some places were completely destroyed but opportunities presented themselves as well and new businesses opened up. SXM Strong became the motto people lived by, followed by Building Back Better. On 20 September the organisers of the St Maarten Heineken Regatta announced that the event was still set to take place in March 2018, a statement few believed; but the international sailing community stepped up and steadily the entries started coming in. Understanding the impact on the local economy, organisers also made the 2018 event a fundraiser, giving back to the island through local foundations and raising over $75,000. As for 2019… it’s going to be even bigger and even better. See you there!
PDG AND OTHER TLAs – Jack Griffin As required by the Protocol, Emirates Team New Zealand released the AC75 Class Rule by the end of March. Sort of. The all-important Foil Cant System (FCS) is supplied equipment, but its specs were not supplied with the rule. Nor were the drawings for the one-design mast or the specs for the supplied rigging. Truth be told, ETNZ performed a minor miracle to conceive the AC75 and get much of the rule written by the end of March. No surprise that a few ‘details’ were left for dates ‘TBA’. The Protocol gave ETNZ and Challenger of Record Luna Rossa – together ‘COR/D’ – until the end of June to make changes to the class rule. So they did. Version 1.1 of the rule was released with some important changes to the FCS and other important changes still TBD and TBA. In my July column (issue 461) I puzzled over how the FCS would
enforce the rule’s ban on the windward foil generating downforce, and thus righting moment. Part of the puzzle was the difficulty for the crew of having the FCS change the cant angle on its own, as then specified by the rule. The puzzle is now solved. Sort of. The rule no longer explicitly forbids downforce, and no longer explicitly states that the FCS will change the cant angle. Rule geeks and lawyers will note that the rule now contains a
simple declarative sentence containing neither ‘shall’ (mandatory) nor ‘may’ (permissive): ‘The AC75 Class Yacht is not designed to resist righting moment created by hydrodynamic downforce on the windward foil.’ Hmmm. Some structural engineers might beg to differ and design their AC75 strong enough to resist large forces. But they dare not get too clever and rely on the seemingly
10 SEAHORSE
rigid-but-with-loopholes requirement, in effect since 1 July 2018, that changes to the class rule now require unanimous agreement by the competitors. Version 1.1 gives the nowhere-clearly-defined Rules Committee the right to amend the class rule to restrict how the FCS is used, including restricting how much ‘negative cant moment’, ie downforce, may be sustained by the FCS. A team’s structural boffins may design the yacht to resist a large load, but the Rules Committee can negate their hoped-for advantage. Version 1.1 of the class rule (not the Protocol) gives the Rules
Committee until the end of November 2019 to freeze restrictions on how the FCS is used. By this time the teams will have had about eight months’ experience sailing their first AC75 and will have raced in two AC World Series regattas. But even then teams are still exposed to changes in how the FCS works. COR/D may issue mandatory updates to the FCS until five months before the start of the Challenger Selection Series – end of August 2020. Alert readers may be wondering who this Rules Committee is
and how they got the power to change the class rule without the unanimous agreement of the competitors. These broad new powers for the Rules Committee slipped into Version 1.1 of the class rule. The Protocol does not mention the Rules Committee. The AC75
Class Rule definitions say that this committee will interpret the class rule, but the definition does not mention the committee’s new-in-Version-1.1 power to amend the class rule. Neither the Protocol nor the AC75 Class Rule say who appoints the Rules Committee, but it’s safe to assume that COR/D have this authority. Conspiracy theorists may see this as COR/D finding a way to impose class rule changes that would otherwise require the assent
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