They threw the ball out far ahead and then worked like crazies to catch up to it; every one of them – sailors, engineers, designers, boatbuilders and anyone else wearing the black shirt – to work each day. In Bermuda in 2017 Team New Zealand had appeared to take more risks than any of their rivals. They arrived at the venue late, they only had one boat with which to learn the AC50 class, they went for cyclors from day 1, they had the thinnest, most fragile foils, and complex but superior control systems. In truth they had trialled everything to within an inch of its life, had continued to finesse what is still – clearly – the best design-sailing simulator and spent hundreds of hours learning to master their unforgiving foil arrangement. Add in the best sailors of their generation and the payback against Oracle proved terminal for the USA team. And then they were cocky enough to switch to a new class to defend in
days because the science has essentially moved on to more sophisticated RANS codes, but RANS in this simulator applica- tion would be far too slow to respond to that real-time requirement. So, far from being just a designer’s tool
,the software operates directly with the sailors, able to ‘sail’ the simulator with their VR headsets and competing against each other or separately evaluating aspects such as foil geometries and settings. Which means the loop between designer, appendage effi- ciency, handling characteristics and the helmsman and trimmer driving the ‘boat’ is continuous. The fastest foil in a particular condition
may turn out to have undesirable handling quirks that the sailor can pick out, from steady state sailing to tight manoeuvring and acceleration thereafter. So it’s entirely normal, he says, for the port and starboard combinations of helmsman/trimmer to race each other in successions of pre-starts, when in reality as Defender they may only experience 10 pre-starts in a real-world AC campaign over a three-year period! One imagines that what we used to call
the afterguard have run through innumer- able playbooks of starting permutations in different conditions, so when it comes to the real thing they’ve been there before, many times. Dan and I talk about the start of the second race yesterday, where Emi- rates TNZ pursued Ineos Britannia into their customary circle and almost got them pinned, only for Ineos to be able to just roll over the Kiwis at a critical moment
42 SEAHORSE
described as a Kiwi error, with Emirates unable to respond in a way Dan implied they had done innumerable times before in their simulations. Of course, what Dan describes as
‘simple’ lifting line code has, he says, been taken a long way further with much other analysis around that potential flow theory such as viscous effect, structural deforma- tion and various sources of drag like spray drag. But still with simplicity at its heart the efficiency of the package means that they ‘can run in real time and make design changes instantly; we can change the shape of a foil, change the chord, twist and immediately do another lap. ‘We can have sailors sitting there in the
room giving us instant feedback; if we change the shape of a foil is it faster, is it slower, is it easier to tack and gybe?’ So let’s get back to the timeline. Emi-
rates Team New Zealand have won in Bermuda and they can fly home with their heads held high. But, as Dan implied, they are in dire straits financially, and with a Cup to defend. A notable omission from Bermuda was
Luna Rossa. Team principal Patrizio Bertelli had taken umbrage at a late change of boat for Bermuda from 62 to 50ft and decided to withdraw. Nevertheless, being historically on good terms with the New Zealanders, Luna Rossa becomes the Challenger of Record for the next cycle, a role that repre- sents the wider group of challengers but which in effect can also lend support to the Defender when that relationship is strong.
Part of such meeting of minds was the Luna Rossa team’s strong desire – almost insis- tence – that AC36 should be held in mono- hulls, otherwise this collaboration would not happen. In general the enduring nature of the America’s Cup is arguably due to its constant ability to reinvent itself, with the Defender able to call the shots or, if it chooses, to pursue a more pragmatic option on directional change. So Grant Dalton directs Dan Bernasconi,
as head of design, to come up with a mono- hull class concept. Going back to the design team, Dan says none of the designers and engineers, not even – or maybe especially not – the sailors, wanted to go back to displacement monohulls. So Dan asks Grant whether Mr Bertelli would be pre- pared to go with a foiling monohull, to which the latter requests the team prepare two approaches, two options. With complete faith in their simulation
tool the designers were able to scope out what they felt was a viable foiling approach, feeling pretty comfortable about its poten- tial, but at the same time knocking up a more conventional alternative – something that might have been along the lines of a Maxi 72. In due course a spearhead went to Milan to present the options and, as I am told, Mr Bertelli pondered over the submissions and said, ‘Mr Bernasconi, the AC75 is a sexy boat.’ Done deal, and work begins in earnest.
There was no time in Barcelona to discuss the scope and magnitude of this develop- ment but in general it was all on a theoretical
INGRID ABERY
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