Rod Davis
ʻA lot of swimmingʼ is Ben Ainslieʼs stock response when asked what he has been getting out of all the considerable sailing the Ineos Americaʼs Cup team have been doing with their first AC75 test boat based on a Hugh Welbourn-designed Quant 28. Welbourn has been a regular visitor to the teamʼs Portsmouth base, which makes good sense given the experience of ʻreliableʼ monohull foiling acquired through the series of Quant designs he developed with Swiss sailor Michael Aeppli. The return of Luna Rossa with their own unique way of doing things (right) for 2021 is welcome, both for their competitiveness on the water and their style ashore. When Italy was close to winning the Cup with Il Moro the country went nuts; how good would it be for the same nation to finally host the Match itself?
Fact from fiction
Let’s see if we can separate fact from speculation when it comes to the next America’s Cup. First, I will declare my interest – none! I am not associated with any team or organisation for the next Cup. That in itself is a weird feeling, as I have participated in every Cup (less one) since 1977; in about every position – bowman, trimmer, skipper, starting helmsman and coach. You name it and I have probably done it. Including the boats going from 12 Metres and IACC to foiling catamarans. Even a giant monohull versus a winged catamaran. Been there, done that!
So let’s take an objective look at this next Cup, and the boats, and see if we can make heads or tails of it all. Begin with the relationship between the Defender (Emirates Team New Zealand) and the Challenger of Record (Luna Rossa, or what was formally known as Prada). For clarity, when the team’s person- ality is at the forefront, I will use terms you can quickly identify with. That is, Emirates Team New Zealand and the America’s Cup Defender is Dalts, and Luna Rossa and the Challenger of Record is Bertelli. Oracle is Coutts.
When Bertelli walked away from the 2017 AC in Bermuda, after Coutts and the other challengers engineered a rule change to make the boat much smaller than had been agreed upon a year before, he figured if Coutts & Co could change the rules in this manner, then there was no reason they would not continue to change the rules right up to the Cup.
Bertelli did not throw his toys out of the cot. He threw them into Dalts’ basket. The might and money of Team Luna Rossa went into backing ETNZ to win the Cup. It was critical help on both fronts, and in return, if Team NZ won the Cup, Bertelli would become the Chal- lenger of Record for the next one. Not surprising really – if ETNZ had won in San Francisco, Bertelli would have been the Kiwis’ Challenger of Record there too. This time, they did, and he is. Part of the Bertelli/Dalts package was that the 2021 America’s Cup would be in monohulls, rather than catamarans. All good so far?
28 SEAHORSE
This Defender and Challenger of Record deal is different from the way Coutts (Oracle) did it, as he used a ‘puppet’ Challenger of Record; made all the rules, and then the puppet exited stage left, leaving the other teams with rules dictated by Oracle. The inside word right after the Dalts Bermuda win is that mono- hulls meant monohulls as we know them. The next Cup would be in something like a big TP52 or Mini Maxi.
So, you ask, how did they end up with a foiling monohull? Well, a funny thing happened on the way to the party. The Defender con- vinced the Challenger it would be boring to design and race ‘normal’ boats. And these new, never done before, foiling monohulls were what the 2021 America’s Cup needed.
It has been a long debate about boats to be used for the America’s Cup, about as big as the shitfight over boats to be used at the Olympic Games. There is a train of thought that the AC boats should be cutting edge, not just state of the art, but redefining art. Boats of the future. For the people who subscribe to that, the 2010 Cup was a perfect example, when the massive Alinghi cat raced the equally massive Oracle trimaran, complete with a wing for a mainsail. They also point out that is what the radical ‘never done before’ designers of Americadid in 1851 when they went to England and won the 100 Guinea Cup, and started this whole thing. I do wonder what would happen if you just said the boat had to be no longer than 90ft and powered by the wind? What would the best creative minds come up with? Can you imagine? I will inject a personal opinion here. If you want to foil, the cata- maran is the right vehicle to foil because it has lots of stability and is much lighter, so the systems can be much lighter (a fraction of the weight) and less complicated. Also a cat is a tripod as it has both rudders in the water and the leeward board. Whereas the new foiling monohull is like a Moth – only two points of attachment to the water. Like walking on stilts. But foiling cats were the Coutts idea and are not part of the Dalts or Bertelli agreement. Does not matter what side you are on, we have these new boats that are unlike any boat ever built before.
MAX RANCHI
HARRY KH
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