America's Cup.... the next generation

In reply to 914Driver :

not to completely hijack this.... but I have an irrantional fear of being on a frozen lake and falling through. plus the speeds they go is a little crazy. 

914Driver said:

Adam525, I didn't think the bow of a Scow was all that bulbous, but OK.

I think that depends on whether you want to cross an ocean with it or not :)

Worth a watch, some good behind the scene stuff along with a motivational pep talk at the end.

So Patriot is back in the water.  

With MASSIVE help from every other team, but IMHO, special note should go to the New Zealand fabrication industry, since they did have a huge input fabricating the new section that had to be replaced.  Pretty awesome for the whole group to come together to fix the boat.

I wonder if they had enough time to figure out why the boat's relative speed went backwards vs Italy and the UK.  

All over for the Americans.  Fixed the boat, and got swept by the Italians in the semis.  

So it's Italy vs the UK for the challenge.  

Although, I did see one hint that NZ's boat is using some tech advantage, so it's unlikely they will lose.

easy to go though the highlights- as they were not exactly filled with action- the biggest action was when Patriot was forced into the boundary- but a couple of tacks later, and it settled into a drag race.  All the relative pace Patriot had in December was long gone.

Holy cow, that was quick.  The Challenger Cup is over in two days- thanks to the rebranding of the sponsor, the Prada Cup was won by the Prada sponsored Italian boat.

And it was not really even close- 4-0, two wins each day, and this was over quick.   Prada-Pirelli found a lot more speed than the Ineos team did- who had looked dominant in the early rounds of the Prada Cup.  The opening leg was the only close ones that I saw- as it looked like the small upwind speed advantage was a big downwind one.

Couple of week break, as the cup final starts on March 6.  

It will be interesting to see if NZ's original advantage has been maintained, but noting how the yachts have changed so much since December, they are not really near their best of this design.

The Prada Cup is not over, it is a best of 13 series over 10 days for the final, they race again Wednesday (Tuesday evening our time) where Luna Rosa can put the Brits in a 6-0 hole. I believe they mentioned the weather might be windier which will be good news for the Brits.

Saturday's races in lighter air were easily won by the Italians but Sunday's in slightly more breeze were a bit more interesting with the Italians cornering the Brits and holding them at bay in some tacking battles. In both races Sunday if the Brits had managed a decent start (they almost had some American Magic in the second start ) it would've actually been decent racing.

They almost lost Sir Ben off the back as he tried to cross when they quickly eased the main to bring the boat down.

That picture is wild. It looks like someone screwing around on a windsurfer, not some giant sailboat. If I still lived somewhere where I could sail, I'd be seriously looking into how to get my hands on something that foils.

I was watching some of the racing yesterday and was amazed at how much flex there was in the foils. CF is some amazing stuff.

In reply to adam525i (Forum Supporter) :

Watching the highlights made it sound like it was all over...  hmm..   Good that it was not best of 7- two days of racing isn't enough.

While there was some strategy in race 2, once the Italians got a lead, it seemed to turn into a drag race- just working to keep with the best wind.

Looking at the AC website, there was scheduled racing for Tuesday, but it has been postponed.

In reply to alfadriver (Forum Supporter) :

Yep, you are right. I had heard that Auckland was going back into lock down and that is why they have postponed them. 

Challenger series is over- Italy wins 7-1.  

Have a wait until the Cup Final starts, and it will be interesting to see if Luna Rossa can find more speed.  

Managed to watch race 7 last night, and it was as exciting as I had thought- it was mildly interesting to see Luna Rossa get a lead, and cover it in the first leg, but after that, it was just a drag race.

One comment I heard last night was interesting- NZ races the course before and after each race so that they can get good data to see how their speed is relative to whoever is racing.  They get the same boat speed data as we do.  But the challenger teams don't get any of the NZ data to compare to.  That's a pretty massive advantage to NZ.

Having seen a lot of technical analysis (that I presume is good), and knowing that NZ gets that data advantage, I expect a 9-0 sweep for the home team.  If that happens, and noting that there are only 4 syndicates challenging, the fact that the racing isn't all that interesting- I really wonder how this progresses in 4 years.

While it's amazing to see the boat speed, you get over that pretty quickly.  Or at least I have.

We're decades into the paradigm where top-tier racing cars are more like aircraft than automobiles, and now that paradigm has even reached... sailboats.  What a world.

alfadriver (Forum Supporter) said:

Challenger series is over- Italy wins 7-1.  

Have a wait until the Cup Final starts, and it will be interesting to see if Luna Rossa can find more speed.  

Managed to watch race 7 last night, and it was as exciting as I had thought- it was mildly interesting to see Luna Rossa get a lead, and cover it in the first leg, but after that, it was just a drag race.

One comment I heard last night was interesting- NZ races the course before and after each race so that they can get good data to see how their speed is relative to whoever is racing.  They get the same boat speed data as we do.  But the challenger teams don't get any of the NZ data to compare to.  That's a pretty massive advantage to NZ.

Having seen a lot of technical analysis (that I presume is good), and knowing that NZ gets that data advantage, I expect a 9-0 sweep for the home team.  If that happens, and noting that there are only 4 syndicates challenging, the fact that the racing isn't all that interesting- I really wonder how this progresses in 4 years.

While it's amazing to see the boat speed, you get over that pretty quickly.  Or at least I have.

So they need something like DRS, like an extra sail that can only be deployed when you are within 10 boat lengths of the boat in front ;)

Hasn't home team advantage always been very strong in the Cup? I'm thinking historically, like how the NY club kept it for over 130 years.

In reply to Keith Tanner :

For most of those 130 years, it was a single syndicate challenging the NYYC.  Not sure when the change happened, but then it was a challenger and a defender series.  But there was not nearly the data available then as now- it was more about direct match racing since there was not telemetry constantly going out.

While the home team won a lot, I'm not sure I would suggest that they were getting so much more data than the other teams like that.  This isn't where NZ has been a lot more clever with the rules - which I think is brilliant.  I will point out that I have not checked the previous cups to see if the defender was allowed to race the course pre and post matches to see where they fall.  Could have been done in Bermuda, but the US team didn't exactly use it well.

"Data" back in the day meant knowing the local wind patterns :)

Keith Tanner said:

So they need something like DRS, like an extra sail that can only be deployed when you are within 10 boat lengths of the boat in front ;)

It was said that the Brits were suffering in the light winds that they had for most of the finals against the Italians and their boat just wasn't quite as quick in those conditions. The Brits were basically forced to run a Jib slightly larger than the Italians throughout to get their boat out of the water but then once up on the foils that extra sail area actually slowed them down as the apparent wind came up. So I think a DRS drogue on the leading boat would be more effective to tighten up the racing lol.

AFAIK, America Cup races are called off if windspeed gets over 21 knots. These things are doing more than 3x windspeed in lighter winds. 

Do you think anyone's going to go out and do a top speed run someday in high wind to see just how fast these devils really are?

In reply to Keith Tanner :

They were originally going to up the wind limits for the Prada Cup finals along with the America's cup to 23 knots but decided to stick to 21 like you mention. I'd imagine you would start to run into the design limits of the rig, sails, foils etc. as the wind speed goes higher and just start breaking the boats or blowing them over. I'm sure the teams all have some interesting data from testing out on the water and some pretty impressive top speeds recorded that we'll never hear about.

The Vestas Sailrocket 2 currently holds the 500 meter and nautical mile speed records at 65 knots (68 peak) and 55 knots respectively in around 25 knots of wind. I bet that 55 knots isn't far off what these AC75's could do in ideal conditions. The AC boats look a lot less sketchy at high speed than this thing! 

I love how much time and money was put into making this thing super slippery and then they strap a bunch of GoPro's to it lol

Cup final started earlier today- one win each.

Basically, the leader at the start won the race.  The highlights for each race is about 2min, not much happened.  The Italians were late to the start in race one, and were covered the entire race (after one attempt to get a penalty), and the New Zealanders were late to the second, and were covered the entire race- and the only odd event didn't even make the highlights (Italy took an extra tack which let the NZ boat be closer at the end).

The boats are certainly closer than I thought they would be- which puts the big emphasis on the start.  In theory, that should give a tiny advantage to Italy, since they've raced so many more times than the Kiwis.  Given the skills of the Kiwis, that's a really small advantage, if any.

Two more races in, and it's still a tie 4-4.  

In race one, the Italians showed that they have a pretty nice boat speed advantage in certain conditions, and even showed in race 2 that they are better at tacking.  But the second race got over to NZ early on, and it stayed that way.

In both races, once the lead was established, it was just opened up until the end.  And that was curious, as at some point, the separation was large enough that the trailing boat could find the wind just like the leading one, but they didn't.  It will be interesting to see if anyone covers that aspect of the racing- lead after leg one and it's over.  And for the most part, that lead is just extended by the end of the race.  It seems to point toward hardware choice being that important, just showing that this is just a 6 leg drag race.

Although, I can see in one way, the Italians can win this- they appear to have such an advantage in tacking that if they get ahead somewhere in the first leg in a position to just cover whatever the Kiwis do- I think they can win with a slower boat.  At least for now- that can change by race 5- as NZ clearly sees the same data.

Still tied after 6 races which is good, the races are still being won or lost before they cross the start line though. 

I'm really hopeful to see some racing in 20 knot winds just to see the boats flying on the edge of what they are designed for even though it probably won't make the racing any better.

In reply to adam525i (Forum Supporter) :

It's kind of interesting that the commentators are mentioning the same problems that F1 has- it's really hard to pass due to the aero wash.  So far, there has not been a single pass in the six races- whoever lead off the line won.  The boats are cool and all, and impressive that they can go that fast under pretty light winds.  But the racing is, well, not terribly interesting.

Wind shadow?