The Next America's Cup in Multihulls

Live Online

I just saw this posting by one of the moderators (Kevin) that you will be able to view it online
http://www.yachtforums.com/forums/general-sailing-discussion/12889-33rd-americas-cup-live-online.html

one Alinghi Design Team Member's view

33rd America's Cup : Meet Alinghi Design Team, Kurt Jordan (USA)

Kurt Jordan has had a great time sailing on board Alinghi 5, monitoring the loads via more than 70 load sensors each time the boat goes sailing. Jordan’s role is the same as last time, using computer simulations to model the structural loads on every part of the boat, but it’s a much more important role than in the previous Cup. “I’ve been working on Version 5 monohulls for 18 years and we didn’t have much stuff break during that time. We had minimum weights to build to and strict rule requirements; here we have nothing. You build as light as you dare, so yes, I would say my role has become a lot more important than in previous Cups.”

Having studied mechanical engineering and naval architecture, his first job was in the transport industry. “My speciality had to do with composite materials,” says Jordan. “So when the rule changed in the 1992 America's Cup to allow the use of composite materials it was a good opportunity for me to get in at that stage because I had good knowledge of that field.”

His passion for sailing was already there from a childhood growing up racing with his family on small boats. Having joined the America's Cup in 1992 as an engineer designing masts and spars, by 1995 he was working with the Young America team, in 2000 with America True and in 2003 with OneWorld.

While he is one of the most experienced people in the Cup, Jordan admits: “The more you know, the more you realise you don't actually know.” Never would this be truer than of the 33rd America’s Cup. “This is only my second multihull project in 25 years in the business, and from an engineering point of view it’s exciting as hell.”

His first foray into multihull design was with PlayStation, the big round-the-world catamaran owned by Steve Fossett, the American entrepreneur and adventurer. “Working on PlayStation was really exciting, and I’m so happy to be back,” says Jordan. “When we won that court appeal in August 2008 to get back to a keelboat America’s Cup, there were quite a few of us who felt a huge wave of despair, because we were turning our attention back to a monohull. Now I think the sailors have picked up that same kind of excitement from sailing on this boat, and looking forward to many years of campaigning a monohull might seem dull after this project. Then again, when you open up the rules to allow amazing boats like this, the budget has to follow. There is no getting away from the fact that these machines are much more complicated, much more expensive than what we were doing last time.”

Asked whether Alinghi 5 represents the pinnacle of his career in engineering, Jordan is not sure. “I think a friend told me when I started working on my first America’s Cup boat in the early 90s that this was going to be the experience of a lifetime, then I thought the same with PlayStation, and it’s happened a few times since then. It seems like every three or four years, I experience something which feels like the pinnacle of my career, so I’m not sure if this is it. But it is certainly a very high point.”

...courtesy of BYM Sailing/Sports News

To Watch The 33rd America's Cup

Getting on the water to really watch the America's Cup is a challenge. Other than absorbing the excitement from the crowd, spectators are typically herded too far from the action. Either you get on a fast RIB to skirt the Marshalls, or on a monster power boat with good food and satellite television to watch the races. Neither is quite the 50 yard ine at the Super Bowl.

While the race schedule is wholly dependent on the weather, the basic scoop is that the Match will be won by the yacht to first win two races. Race warning signal is at10:00 am, with race to start at 10:06 am. Races will be attempted every other day beginning Monday February 8th. If a race is not started on a given day, or is abandoned for whatever reason, racing will continue on the next scheduled race date, (Wednesday the 10th, Friday the 12th, Sunday the 14th, etc.).

The time, of course, is local time (CET) in Valencia, Spain (UTC/GMT +1 hour). Here is a website to confirm the time:
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/city.html?n=325


ONLINE VIEWING OPTIONS
For the North American audience, viewing the 33rd America's Cup is limited to several online options. These are being compiled here:
http://tinyurl.com/ya6g5el

Here are some of the online options:

The event website for the 33rd America's Cup will provide live online coverage with Peter Montgomery, Andy Green, and Cam Lewis commentating for the official Host Broadcaster. - http://www.americascup.com

ESPN360.com (USA only) will carry the live coverage from the Host Broadcaster with Gary Jobson and Randy Smyth commentating. All races will also be available for replay. - http://www.ESPN360.com

Boatson.tv has secured the Host Broadcaster live pictures from the course in Valencia and other general Americas Cup programme which can be watched live on their special Americas Cup TV video players. - http://www.boatson.tv

BMW Oracle Racing has gotten involved in a big way, and will be hosting the official live feed of the racing from the Host Broadcaster in addition to producing additional online coverage. Here is their plan:

The first live streaming event on the website is scheduled for Friday, February 5 at 19:30 CET (13:30 EST, 10:30 PST) when team founder Larry Ellison (USA), CEO Russell Coutts (NZL) and skipper James Spithill (AUS), meet the media at the BMW ORACLE Racing team base in Valencia, Spain.

"Race Day" programming kicks off on Monday, February 8, the first scheduled race day of the Match.

"Race Day" consists of several blocks of live programming, bringing an unprecedented, live, behind-the-scenes look at the team to sailing fans worldwide:

The Dock-Out Show - watch the team prepare for battle as they leave for the race course.

The Morning Show - an insider's look at the history of the America's Cup, the 33rd edition of the oldest trophy in sports, and BMW ORACLE Racing, live from the Oracle Cinema at the Team Base.

The Pre-Race Show - news and analysis ahead of the racing.

The 33rd America's Cup Match - we will then carry the official live feed from the Host Broadcaster, bringing you all of the action from the race course. Racing is scheduled to start with a 10:00 warning signal ahead of the 10:06 start gun.

The Post-Race Show - analysis of what happened on the race course, featuring expert commentary.

The Dock-In Show - cheer on the American challenger as the team returns to shore following the race.

View here:
http://www.livestream.com/bmworacleracing
http://bmworacleracing.com/en/news/livestream

....courtesy of Scuttlebutt

America's Cup News from SailWorld
http://www.sail-world.com/USA/ac33

Predicting a Winner

We Predict the Winner
By Ian Campbell Posted February 5, 2010​

Will Alinghi’s catamaran, A5, or BMW/Oracle’s trimaran, BOR 90, be the faster boat in the 33rd America’s Cup Deed of Gift match? There are strong opinions on both sides.

http://sailmagazine.com/cupdate/we_predict_the_winner/

Sweet Spot Was Under 8 Knots

As an engineer for the Alinghi design team, Kirst Fedderson provides a detailed report on how they developed their catamaran in their failed attempt to defend the 33rd America’s Cup, confirming that their boat was only intended to excel in very light winds. Here is an excerpt:
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As a group we assembled at our team base in Valencia late in 2007 and began to develop an outline of areas to focus our design efforts. Any design effort usually begins with a review of previous designs, and a study of strengths and weaknesses of your competitor.

We began to develop a rough picture of the yacht that our competitor would race. Oracle had hired the French design firm VPLP, who had designed the most advanced ocean racing trimarans including Groupama 3 and the recently-launched Banque Populaire V. The 90' beam and 90' LWL dimensions that BMWO specified in their challenge documents match the length to beam ratios of a lot of their recently launched designs. Groupama 3 was a pretty new boat at the time and, although designed for ocean racing, had similar dimensions to what BMWO specified. It seemed logical that Oracle would develop a lighter grand prix version more optimized for inshore America's Cup racing. The thing that Oracle did not know at the time was what sort of wind they would be sailing in.

The challenger has the right to set the date of the match with their challenge, but the defender has the right to choose the venue and, in that sense, the wind conditions. Strategically, you try and evaluate the
strengths and weaknesses of your opponent and then try to leverage your position to take advantage of their weakness. The Alinghi sailing team has a long history of racing super lightweight, massively overpowered multihulls on the nearly windless Lake Geneva. Since the BMWO design team had a history of experience with off shore around the world Trimarans, it was surely of no surprise then that we began thinking in terms of maximizing light wind performance. Since a light wind boat needs to be feather light, it was decided early on that we would be building a catamaran rather than a trimaran, since a catamaran is naturally lighter.

Remember earlier in the story, about deciding to design for light wind conditions? That only works if you can end up sailing in light wind conditions. BMWO did a better job in their legal strategy than Alinghi, and managed to disqualify our venue choice of Ras Al Kamiah in the United Arab Emirates, which would have produced a light but stable building sea breeze. While the breeze during racing in Valencia appeared to be very light, at the top of the nearly 200 ft-tall mast, the breeze was slightly higher than AL5's sweet spot of under 8 knots.

Oracle did a great job on their part and produced an amazing wing sail, just months before the regatta. It was a pretty big gamble on their part because such a revolutionary new design can often have lots of unforeseen problems and jeopardize an entire campaign. All credit to their design team for producing such a weapon.
AllAtSea.net, full story:
http://tinyurl.com/29qcxvg

HINTING TOWARD MULTI-HULLS FOR NEXT AMERICA'S CUP (again)

...courtesy of Scuttlebutt

The next America's cup is gradually taking shape and Sir Russell Coutts is hinting towards multi-hull racing in San Francisco. It's six months since BMW Oracle CEO and Skipper Coutts hoisted the old mug for the fourth time at the 33rd America's Cup after beating Alinghi 2-0 in a Deed of Gift match.

Design rules for the next edition come out next month and Coutts is suggesting multi-hulls are the best way forward."We are quite positive about multi hulls because there are quite a number of teams that would bring a number of new teams to the game and some of the existing teams are relaxed about it," Coutts said.

Extensive tests have been carried out in Valencia on multi and mono-hulls to see what works best on television with the audio now recognised as being as important as the pictures. "It will take a fair bit for the sailors to get used to all the audio being available for broadcast. That's going to sound a bit strange from me because I was one of the worst offenders at turning the microphone off but it's probably the way it's got to go," Coutts said.

He's also suggesting television could become the decider for umpire calls and all forms of technology used in other sports are under consideration to try and make the regatta more exciting. San Francisco remains Oracle's preferred venue for the race with the decision and the date of the next cup
o be made by the end of the year.

Here is the link to watch Martin Tasker's 21:05 minute nterview with Sir Russell Coutts: http://tinyurl.com/34xrohr


(they must have gotten hooked on speed )

I realize what you are saying, but if you listen to the video I think you will find they are NOT talking about the same style boats. They are talking of more evenly matched boats, smaller boats than the maxi monsters, that would get into sailing duels, just at faster speeds, with more spill potentials.

Maybe regretable but thats what much of the general public wants to see on TV....action and accidents. The promoters are being ask to consider such things if they want TV coverage of their events.

OUT ON A WING
The America's Cup rumor mill is back in full swing. The latest story making the rounds has the event being staged in Italy in 2013 using 60-foot wing-masted multihulls. Adding fuel to this rumor is the appearance of BMW Oracle's Glenn Ashby and James Spithill at this week's International C-Class Catamaran Championship, lovingly referred to as the "Little Americas Cup". The duo is sailing the yacht Alpha against five other nternational teams in the weeklong event, taking place off Newport, R.I.

Since wings are all the rage now, and notables such as Juan Kouyoumdjian, Tom Schnackenberg, Kevin Shoebridge, and Dirk DeRidder are in Newport to study the wings, let's explore how a wing rig works on a sailboat.

The C-class rule is quite simple. Build a symmetrical catamaran 25 feet long, 14 feet wide, and with a sail area of 300 square feet or less, and you're in. The devil, of course, is in the details. Modern C-class boats are at the cutting edge of design and technology, and the wings are works of art. It's no wonder why BMW Oracle secured the services of Fred Eaton and Magnus Clarke, the current Little America's Cup holders, when they decided to pursue a wing sail for the 33rd America's Cup. The wing, in fact, has been critical to the success of the C class for many years, since a wing can produce nearly twice the driving force of a soft sail of a given area.

Typical C-class wings consist of three elements: a twistable leading edge section that doubles as the main load carrying member (Element 1), an interim flap that can deflect to a small angle (Element 2), and a large, slotted, trailing-edge flap that can deflect up to 45 degrees (Element 3).
(Due to time constraints and build simplicity, BMW Oracle's wing only consisted of two elements, the eading edge and large, trailing-edge flap.)
The wings are built of a series of carbon frames and then covered with heat-shrink plastic-much the same way as a model-airplane wing is built. --

Sailing World, read on for full story and video:
http://www.sailingworld.com/blogs/racing/americas-cup/out-on-a-wing


...more about C-class
http://www.littleac.com/LITTLE_AMERICAS_CUP-WELCOME.html

Have a look thru a few of these videos:
http://www.extremesailingseries.com/

...and some photos from the series:
http://picasaweb.google.de/scrapheaper/ExtremeSailing2010Kiel#5510583856379685986

The International C-Class Catamaran Championship (IC^4) found itself in the convergence of secondary intrigue. While the class has long been a science lab of multihull design evolution, and been worthy of interest on the basis of its accomplishments, the event got a long look by those hedging their bet that the next America's Cup could be a scaled up version of this event.

The irony that the IC^4 is unofficially known as the 'Little America's Cup, and that the 2010 edition was occurring in the former home of the America's Cup - Newport, RI - was not to be overlooked either. The event finals pitted superior technology versus superior sailing skills, with the former winning.

Enjoy these images from Christophe Launay and George Bekris: http://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/photos/10/0829a/