News Around the World
Serious man at work. Glenn Ashby – the winning skipper of the 2017 America’s Cup in Bermuda – pays close attention as he watches his current AC75 performing from the chase boat during the team’s long break from racing before the start of the Cup Match. In the pre-Christmas AC World Series the second New Zealand boat looked stronger in a breeze than she did in lighter airs but all the boats have come on a huge amount since then. In late-February the Kiwis still looked the furthest ahead of any team with the AC75’s very complex rig and sail management systems; and should they yet find themselves in a light air Match with Prada they may need to be
Dan Bernasconi and the guys here have done a great job providing something that is so cutting edge, yet is also robust enough for us sailors to throw it around, making the mistakes and tipping it over pretty hard. Then have the boat able to bounce back after a capsize or a high-speed nosedive, where you stop, gather yourself up and carry on sailing. SH: What sort of ballpark loads did you think you would see… GA: Obviously the biggest one, and back then unknown, was the foil-cant system and the bearings and hydraulics that drive that whole arm with the whole weight of the boat and crew suspended on it. So that was all modelled, and to be honest the loads when sailing have all been very much as predicted. Now don’t get me wrong, these are massive loads, but it has
all been calculated and, although there were issues early on with the one-design foil arms, the tests the arms were put through were loaded to way more than we are seeing sailing here. So they were pushed to unlikely scenarios to ensure they are strong enough… which they are. Everyone has them, that part is working well. It is the foil horizontals that the teams have been able to design and develop, and it’s these in the water that are making the difference. SH: You have been in the Cup cycle for a while. How would these loads compare with the AC72s and BMW Oracle’s Godzillatrimaran? GA: The trimaran loads were incredible, 215-220 tonnes of righting moment versus 30-40 on these current AC75s. Looking back at the BMW Oracle tri, those loads were pretty crazy… these boats we are dealing with now would be pretty similar to the AC72s for not only righting moment but also loads, and of course the AC50s in Bermuda were very much a lightly loaded boat. But what we are seeing is the performance of these AC75s is very much greater than any of those previous three classes, going 10kt faster upwind in the same conditions than the AC50 or AC72. I have to say it is pretty surreal going close to 40kt upwind… SH: Ken Read and Nathan Outteridge in the commentary box are saying that team was ‘only’ doing 35kt on that leg… GA: It is incredible. As you sail the boat you get used to the speed, but sometimes I look out of the window and shake my head at what we are doing! And we are racing around a course, up and down,
30 SEAHORSE
tacking and gybing plus pre-starts against each other. This is all about pushing things to the next level and I’m very pleased we went down that path. SH: And what are these beasts like to sail? GA: Without your noise-cancelling headphones and helmet on it’s tricky. If you took your helmet off sailing upwind it would be like popping your head out of the sunroof of the car flying down the motor- way at 125kph… It’s pretty noisy, and so without the helmets and comms on you can’t talk to the guy next to you. And you can’t see the guys on the other side of the boat either, so we entirely rely on voice communication to sail the boat accurately with the 11 crew all commed up; and they need to be working 100 per cent together to execute tacks and gybes accurately. When you are running from one side to the other the force of the
air and G-forces on your body and on the boat are huge; if you have ever leaned into a gale of 40 or 50kt of breeze, it feels like that… and there is nothing like it in the world. SH: That near-miss at the top mark in the bearaway racing Ineos when you said ‘No lower, no lower… No lower!!!’ It was quite scary for us, mate. GA: It was a lot more scary for me, Blue. I thought I was going to have a Prada turning mark as an earring for a while, I can tell you. There is so much new stuff happening in our first real hit out with the new boat on the course, with information and course bound- aries… so it was easy to get distracted! SH: Because so few people have seen these boats up close, how complex is the single spreader rig? GA: It is really not complex at all. A very simple D-section mast, similar to the wing spar on the AC72 and AC50, but obviously with the twin skin mainsails going up at the back of the section which turns it into a soft wing. But the rig is nothing overly complicated. I think people are quite surprised how clean and tidy the spars are. SH: And the twin-skinned mainsail… GA: I guess efficiency versus weight was the key reason here. With the self-righting rule allowing the boats to right themselves after a capsize, basically the twin-skinned main is between 20 and 25 per cent more efficient at generating power than a single membrane
GILLES MARTIN-RAGET
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