News Around the World
sail, so we would have to have been between 6m and 6.5m taller with the rig if we were a single-membrane sail to generate the same power – and of course that extra 6m or so at the top of the rig increases ballast weight at the bottom of the foil wings, bringing less performance as the boat is globally heavier. So the twin skin really worked here. The other advantage is getting
boats in and out of the water, just dropping the sails and coming into the dock, and not having to worry about getting a huge wing in and out of the boat every day. SH: And of course it does allow you to use – and hide – bits and pieces of technology between the skins. GA: Sure it does. All the teams have worked on different systems and ideas up inside the sail and in a very short time have learnt a lot. And for sure that trickledown is going to be seen very soon in wider sailing, particularly the big keel boats. SH: It is all about rapid and accurate changes to mainsail shape, from take-off to foiling. Who’s running that now at ETNZ? GA: Steve Collie and Burns Fallow and myself. Steve worked with
GA: In the initial concept we really looked far and wide, and once the rule was written, creating the fences of the paddock, let’s say, you then have to work within that rule. We have certainly bounced off those fences, and sometimes found ourselves pushed into a corner. I think all the teams have tried different things, retaining or dis-
carding things, but it is pretty impressive to see the solutions they have come up with in terms of hull shape and foils, yet the perfor- mance so far has been similar. This has been extremely exciting from a design and engineering perspective, and as always it is the sum of all the small parts added together that gives the ultimate performance. No question you have to get the big stuff right, but absolutely you have to get the little stuff right too. SH: Big part of the big stuff would be hull shape… and your second boat looks especially hard on the builder! GA: I don’t think that any of the boatbuilders in any of the teams would ever have built a boat more complicated and more advanced than what we have on show in Auckland. All the hull shapes are cutting edge, nothing like this has ever been built before. There have been remarkable boats built in the past, but these are almost spaceships compared to that. The internal structures, the loading, the complexities in the way the boats work. From outside they look smooth and clean, but it is much like an
F1 car, when you pull the fairings off you see the thought that has gone into the systems and engineering there, that is the magic. And so witnessing the drawings and the build process has been truly unbelievable. SH: Having won the Christmas Cup you’ve been off on your own for a while now… GA: It is an interesting fact and, yes, we talk about it a lot here. Not having that race experience is something we are working hard on, racing against our chase boats, our designated opponent, but also spending quite a bit of time on the simulator and racing oppo- nents there. But fundamentally, if your boat handling is good and your starting software and your package is good, there is no reason why we shouldn’t be in good shape come the America’s Cup. Blue Robinson
The greatest ocean race can also be the cruellest – and not just in terms of injury and even loss of life. This was easily the most competitive line-up in the history of the race as the Figaro class appeared to graduate en masse to the ranks of Imoca. Himself a three-time Figaro Solitaire champion, Jérémie Beyou started this Vendée as favourite; the early launch of his new VPLP foiler and a two-year work-up had surely allowed every weakness to be ironed out? Sadly not, and Beyou returned to Les Sables with a linked sequence of technical problems before restarting over nine days late. A huge credit to have restarted and carried on but the toll on this brilliant French skipper was obvious for all to see
the aero side and I have been working with him for about 10 years through the AC72 and AC50 days, and so we really knew from early on that we had to generate enough power and grunt to actually get the boat moving forward – and then when you do pop up out of the water you have to very much reduce that power and drag, switching the aero into a clean, efficient, high-speed package. So the huge range of these sails was a priority for us, and as a team we have worked hard on this for the past three years, both having a big range in all our sails plus having big crossovers. SH: Did you always elect to do without a boom? GA: No, we had a boom on our boat #1. But, to be honest, boom or boom-less will not win or lose you the America’s Cup. There are pros and cons with both, as there is with other classes, the A-Class cat for instance, some people race with booms and others don’t. On these AC75s creating a huge amount of depth change in the mainsail, both the leeward and windward skin is obviously very important, but it’s just another cog in the big wheel of the overall boat development. SH: To win the Cup in Bermuda you thought well outside the box, pushing at ideas other teams had considered and rejected. How much of that thinking went into the AC75 rule?
32 SEAHORSE
USA Next time? In the wake of the American Magic early exit, the opinions stateside seemed as numerous and varied as the spectators’, but this was unsurprising given the unusual circumstances surrounding an unusual event in an unusual year. No doubt by the time this goes to press the team will be further along in their debriefs and maybe even thinking of the scenarios that may lead them towards consid- ering a return in the next cycle. Terry [Hutchinson] no doubt will speak on this elsewhere in this issue. For right now, however, there are some interesting observations
worth discussing among a couple of American AC veterans who have seen both victory and defeat before. And while it’s been over a decade since both were in the last cycle to sail monohulls, their insights are still well-tuned into the internal and external forces at work in a modern Cup programme. After winning the silver medal in the Finn class in Busan in 1988,
then being a major force on the World Match Racing Tour in the 1990s, Peter Holmberg’s first step towards the America’s Cup was as the head of the US Virgin Islands Challenge going into the 2000 Louis Vuitton Cup. But funding was scarce and Holmberg had soon joined Dennis Conner in that cycle in Auckland, was in Auckland again with Oracle in 2003, and eventually realised Cup-winning success as part of Alinghi in Valencia in 2007. He has since been racing a wide variety of boats, from TP52s to Maxis to Superyachts, and in the J Class, but in this pandemic year has been enjoying quiet island life at his home in St Thomas, viewing AC36 from afar. ‘First, I’ll say the design of the AC75s is incredible. There is
tremendous ingenuity here and I applaud the teams for having turned the concept into reality,’ he said. Holmberg reckons that this time design and build innovations account for about 80 per cent of the
CHRISTOPHE FAVREAU
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