“If it doesn't break, it’s too heavy,” was Ben Lexcen’s favourite saying. Seeing as he designed Australia II, the wing-keeled wonder that stole the Cup from the New York Yacht Club almost 30 years ago, it’s an extreme philosophy that served him surprising well.
Legendary small-boat designer Uffa Fox’s version of the Lexcen mantra was to claim that: “Weight is only of use to the designer of a steamroller.” Fox and Lexcen would have loved the modern era of the America’s Cup, with not a lead bulb in sight, and a focus on wing technology that is making aerospace engineers the new hot property in Cup world.
As Artemis Racing boss Paul Cayard mentioned in last month’s interview, designing and building a wing for the AC72 catamaran has been an immense project, the challenge of which he couldn’t have predicted. Where other teams have been testing wing rig concepts at smaller scale, the Swedish team threw itself in at the deep end. “We chose the full scale strategy,” says Cayard. “Our decision was more time consuming, but it allows us to learn how to handle this powerful wing. Before performance, there is the safety of our team. San Francisco Bay in July and August is an unforgiving place.”
Head of the design team at Artemis, the freethinking and outspoken Argentinean, Juan Kouyoumdjian, is not given to conservatism, but “If it doesn't break it’s too heavy” is not a phrase that you’ll hear Juan K or any other designer daring to utter this side of the 34th America’s Cup. The timescale for getting an AC72 designed, built and battle-ready is frighteningly short. No time for tinkering at the margins.
Artemis made an early statement of intent by becoming the first to unveil its new wing rig in March, mounting this 40m structure on the team’s testing platform, a modified ORMA 60 trimaran. The culmination of more than 35,000 man hours, it has a sail area of 260 square metres, with the predominantly carbon fibre structure weighing in at just over a ton. Of course, this is just the wing. We’ve yet to see a complete AC72 in action and that is still some months away.
Meanwhile the America’s Cup World Series is about to kick off again after a long winter’s gap since San Diego last November. Naples in April, followed by Venice in May, sees the teams get back into action, including two boats being fielded by Luna Rossa, the late-to-the-party Italians who have been working closely with Emirates Team New Zealand during the Auckland summer.
Both boats will be skippered by British sailors, Chris Draper who departed Team Korea at the end of last year for a more secure future at Luna Rossa, and Paul Campbell-James who won last year’s Extreme Sailing Series steering the Italian team’s Extreme 40 catamaran. When Ben Ainslie takes the tiller of his own AC45 campaign, Ben Ainslie Racing, later on this summer, the Brits will have overtaken the Kiwis as the best-represented nation in the America’s Cup. That, despite there being no British challenge.
With a home crowd to please, Luna Rossa burst on to the America’s Cup World Series with a performance that delighted their passionate fans and struck fear into the hearts of their competitors. The wild reception in Naples was a reminder that no one can top the Italians in their enthusiasm for sport - even sailing!
Adversity in the America’s Cup can come from the strangest of places, as Energy Team is finding out to its cost. The French team is facing the strangest of legal battles off the water, but as to the battles on the water.... well Ben Ainslie was the biggest winner at the recent event - even if he didn’t actually win.
This summer we will see an America’s Cup where four giant 72-foot catamarans will barely touch the waters of San Francisco Bay. Instead they’ll be flying around above it, as Swedish team Artemis has recently conceded that ‘foiling’ - rather than floating - is the new way of sailing super fast.
So all us ‘experts’ observing the America’s Cup have been saying that no one’s ever going to take it away from Oracle next September. But after the defender’s shock pitchpole and subsequent destruction of its multimillion dollar AC72, the odds on a Kiwi victory have shortened considerably.
Any British sailing fan has known just how good Ben Ainslie is for a long time. Even so, watching him win his fourth gold at London 2012 still took my breath away. Question is, will any of that superhuman success ever give Ben a chance to take a leading man’s role in the America’s Cup?
After some ho-hum performances in Europe, I’d begun to wonder if the sailors at Oracle were really that bothered about results on the AC45 circuit. But after a barnstorming performance in Newport, I’ve revised my view. Whichever way you look at it - financial, technological or in pure sailing terms - the Defender is going to be very hard to beat.
Visiting the Amels yard in Vlissingen, it was staggering to see how far the build of the Amels 199 has progressed since I last wrote about the radical Tim Heywood design a year or so ago. Heywood hopes the audacious curves of the 199 will forge a new direction in superyacht design, and having seen her in the flesh, I hope so too.
“A joke.” That was how Dean Barker summed up his view of the AC45 racing in Venice in May. From a spectator’s point of view, I thought it was fantastic. But the light airs drifting off St Mark’s Square has reopened the debate about which should take precedence in the America’s Cup - the sport, or the show.
I’d been looking forward to a trip downunder for the next event in the America’s Cup World Series. Auckland and Brisbane were mooted, but the high cost of running these high-tech events is proving to difficult to sell in such straitened times. Next stop for me and the America’s Cup roadshow will be Naples in April.
After a summer of some of the most high-speed but dull racing the world never wanted to see, the America’s Cup Final delivered some of the most spectacular, unpredictable match racing in the event’s 162-year history. I thought the 2007 final between New Zealand and Alinghi was great. San Francisco 2013 was better.
The two races I witnessed of the Louis Vuitton Cup finals in San Francisco, I was fortunate to see two boats cross the finish line, both intact and still sailing. Until that point, the challenger finals had been a war of attrition, with a nosedive bringing the Kiwis precariously close to capsizing their usually impeccably sailed AC72, Aotearoa.
Terry Hutchinson has always been one of the most personable and straight-talking characters on the America’s Cup scene. So it’s sad to see the 44-year-old lose his job as skipper of Artemis Racing. But such are the hard decisions that must be made as we reach the business end of this Cup cycle.