and now for something completely different...

[H-E-ROSS]

It has always delighted me to see the passion for motorcycles and sail overlap!

[boatdetective]

John,

I would agree that there were WAY too many Kiwis involved in the last go round.  Shifty buggers who have the gift of making vast quantities of alcohol vaporize upon command.

I looked it up- a French firm VPLP is credited with the design of Oracle USA 17. I'm still pretty certain that Morelli and Melvin were in there somewhere- it was a large crew. The boat was built and launched in Anacortes. I don't have all the details but can get them.

As for the Oracle team changing things up during the race- this is a totally open development class. They didn't break any rules. The America's cup has never, ever had one design boats. The point of a development class is precisely to push the limits of technology. Yes- it's wildly expensive- but that's nothing new. Look at the monsters just before the turn of the century like Vigilant (124 LOA- 12,000square feet of sail) or the J boats (134' sloops). 

I understand and applaud having many competitors- but that really was never common with the exception of several 12 meter campaigns.  This race has always been about the very pinnacle of competition- no one ever said it was supposed to be an "everyone can play" event.

As for the sailing faster than the wind issue- I listed some links from much smarter people than me. It is a monumental barrier to break. Getting a displacement monohull to break it is not going to happen.  12 meters are cool boats- but they are lead sleds. I don't know if there's a problem here with definitions- the discussion is whether or not the boat's velocity made good- speed over the ground- can exceed the true wind speed.  Yes, the boat will generate "apparent" wind, but that's not an issue. Displacement hulls generate a bow wave and have a theoretical "hull speed" that they cannot exceed (the boat would have to climb up and over the bow wave it creates- much like a powerboat coming up onto plane). In this example, the hull speed of a 12 meter should be roughly 9.38kts.

If it's blowing a gale, and the boat is sailing off the wind and down significant swells, the hull can momentarily surf. At these moments, it will exceed the hull speed. However, it will drop back down into that hole as soon as the wave passes. Mind you- this is talking about breaking the restrictions of hull speed. The original discussion is whether or not the boat can sail faster than the wind itself.     

[johnr]

Boat detective,

I'll take your word for it regarding the building of Oracle. I was more than a bit hazy about how much of it was done here. (Though some of it was I'm sure)

I absolutely agree that a displacement hull is never going to exceed its theoretical hull speed.
As I recall  the formula for that speed (in knots)  is 1.3 x the square root of the water line length in feet.

For the non sailors taking an interest the reason for this is that the hull makes waves as it moves. The faster it goes the longer the length of the waves. It reaches a point where the wave length is the same as the waterline length of the boat. To go any faster the boat has to climb over its own bow wave and that takes 400 times the power it took to get to the 'one wave' state in the first place. It isn't going to happen.

This diagram shows how the wave lengths get longer with speed.


It's a whole other ball game with planing hull boats.

Having said that I have been in a meter boat (a Dragon Class yacht) that was sailing ON its bow wave and the entire counter stern was under water.

This is a Dragon. We were so far up on our bow wave that the water curling over the stern met just in front of the rudder post.  Every thing behind that was under water. I'm not going to tell you how that came to pass as it involves some bad seamanship.



They were beautiful and great fun to sail. (esp as they have no engine)

How ever, If the wind speed is LESS than a boats max hull speed, then it can in theory sail faster than the wind as per my last post.  It would need to be a pretty slippery boat though.

[Kiwi Dave]

The boat building company located in Warkworth New Zealand, and owned by Larry Ellison’s Americas Cup team Oracle Racing, was more than slightly involved.

An Auckland newspaper described the involvement quoted:  "The Warkworth company is a 100 per cent-owned subsidiary of Oracle that built three-quarters of the AC72 machine. It also produced all the wingsails, foils, the cross structure, appendages and most of the custom metalwork."

Read the article here.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/sport/news/article.cfm?c_id=4&objectid=11130149

[krglorioso]

John R; I sat for about a minute just staring at that Dragon boat, marveling in its classic beauty.  Incredibly gorgeous in a timeless manner.  Yes, the newest iterations of sailing boats are so technically superior, but something is missing....

Sort of like a 35 year old SP-1000 compared to a new Gold Wing.   

Ralph

[boatdetective]

OK,I gotta apologize- I got my high tech whiz bang foiling multihulls confused. The gigantic 90' Oracle trimaran was built by CBC in Anacortes, WA. The last series in San Francisco was in smaller catamarans, and this time, CBC in Auckland built it.

The next race in 2017 will be in Bermuda and at this point everyone is building 45' (relatively small) cats that are somewhat one design (at least, there are a bunch more control points to keep the boats closer in terms of power and weight).  That is for the lead up races. The finals may be in slightly bigger boats. However- the word is that they are working on the money thing to encourage competition.  I just spoke with a friend working for one of the syndicates. He shared some very interesting information. Of course, I can't talk about it!!

[oldbike54]

It has always delighted me to see the passion for motorcycles and sail overlap!

 Yeah , we get a sailing thread about once a year , wish we had more . I only understand about half , still fascinating 

  Dusty

[johnr]

John,

I would agree that there were WAY too many Kiwis involved in the last go round.  Shifty buggers who have the gift of making vast quantities of alcohol vaporize upon command.
 

 

[johnr]

It has always delighted me to see the passion for motorcycles and sail overlap!

I've wondered about that before.

I was at a 'do' at the Banks Peninsular Cruising club (Christchurch) once and some how it came to my attention that a disproportionately high number of those there were ex motorcyclists.  When discussing this with one of the other guests he said "Yachts do the same thing for a person as a bike does, except you can take your family"

Interesting, and I would agree.

[johnr]

Yeah they do. Here's one of the cats from the last series up ending. It doesn't take much.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KNql99zT6s

Here is a longer vid about incidents in the last cup
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhZpCK8kwds

For pure boat sailing speed here is a guy doing an average speed of 65.45 kts (75.32 mph) and reaching a maximum of 68.01kts (79.4mph)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cUht1rxnh4

This guy (from 6 years ago) is pretty impressive to watch as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2boayPZ3GbE

[johnr]

John R; I sat for about a minute just staring at that Dragon boat, marveling in its classic beauty.  Incredibly gorgeous in a timeless manner.  Yes, the newest iterations of sailing boats are so technically superior, but something is missing....

Sort of like a 35 year old SP-1000 compared to a new Gold Wing.   

Ralph

Ralph, the Dragon was designed in 1929 as a fast day sailor with minimal accommodations for 2. Its speed led quite quickly led to it becoming a one design racing class and ultimately the off shore class for the Olympics.

The one I used to sail was built in Auckland in 1965 for the Keil Olympics. By this time of course the design had become a pure racing machine. All vestiges of the accommodation had gone, and the cabin top had shrunk to a sort of shelter. There wasn't even a seat in it, but you could rig and set the spinnaker from the cockpit. 

[rob-mg]

For you land lubbers- check out what technology is doing with sailing and hydrofoil design. These things can go over 40 knots- (close to 50mph!). Also note that with the hulls completely clear of the water, there is no motion/slamming.   Yowzaa!

Yes, except that they need ideal conditions. It's one thing to do the Newport to Cabo race, it's another to bring the boats back up to Newport against the prevailing wind the whole way, and especially if one runs into rough weather.

Still, impressive technology.

Personally, I'd rather be in Cowes sailing an Etchells, a Dragon or one of the local classes during Race Week. Besides, it's kind of cool to see Uffa Fox's Avenger in the Cowes library.

[johnr]

Uffa Fox! Now there was an interesting fellow. Wasn't the Flying 15 one of his?
Etchells I had to look up. Hadn't heard of them before. They look like fun.

[boatdetective]

Uffa Fox! Now there was an interesting fellow. Wasn't the Flying 15 one of his?
Etchells I had to look up. Hadn't heard of them before. They look like fun.

The Etchells class was very, very big here in Marblehead. Not quite sure these days. It's a very slippery design that manages to point very, very high - yet it has better bearing aft in comparison to a Soling (for you civilians- this essentially means that when the sails are strapped in tight and the boat is cranked up to max speed in moderate winds, it will have more of a tendency to stay upright rather than flop over).  It just always seemed to me that going bloody fast in an Etchells was a lot less work than in a Soling.

The design dates back quite a ways- late 60's I believe. However, it still looks like a hot rod (for a keel boat)


Competition in this class is absolutely fierce


One neat benefit of this competition is that boats that are no longer considered race track quality can be had for a song. Surprisingly enough, they are very, very pleasant daysailers.

[johnr]

As usual when sailing comes to the fore I find myself all over the web being distracted by this and that and end up with a desktop full of open pages. Anyway, I stumbled across this converted Etchell.



It was done by a bloke in Auckland so he could send his grandson and grandsons mates off out into the Hauraki Gulf. Lucky them!

I imagine that what accommodations there are would be pretty minimal as there would not be much space and you would have to be a bit careful about adding weight to such a boat.