I guess they need to push it to the limits at this stage so they can start to learn what the limits are - having done a little bit of hobbie sailing you learn pretty quickly when to ease back especially on flat water!

 

However, I do think these boats look slightly dangerous and there is potential for some very serious injuries - the height the crew will fall from if they hit something on the way down or if the mast gives way & the hull falls on top of someone in the water.

 

I love the 45's but these boats do seem a little to big? 

 

Somehow I get the feeling there is a huge gulf in difficulty between these boats and a Hobie, the fact that you start on foils means that the moment the hull hits the water the rig loads up hugely. Unless you have some clever way of "unstalling" the foils to get that bow back up, which in turn would probably create more drag for a small time, you arent going to save it.

 

The other side of this coin is that you do learn, but by doing so wreck $10m dollars worth of wings in the process, neither seems like a particularly viable solution if this sort of sailing is every going to filter its way down to Joe Public in his "Channel Crossser 3000" which he wants to use to take his wife and kids to France occasionally. If the technology isn't going to filter down to his level then what's the point!?

 

Lets get this straight.

 

The Americas Cup has always been, from the word go, about massively rich guys (and to some extent these days, corporations) using sailing racing as a subsitute for whipping down their trousers and taking a measuting tape to what's in their pants.

 

The point is if it is a new boat they will quickly learn what the point of no return is is - I think the 45's have a dump button for the wing so this one will as well - they just need to learn to hit it more quickly I guess! The comparison with the Hobie merely relates to its propensity to pitch-pole especially when you are learning where the limits are.

The 45's weren't that much of a jump and the number of teams competing in the world series is testimony to how much interest they generated so perhaps the first cup in multi hulls should have been in development 45's. The teams could then have done a lot of there testing on the SMOD cup boats, which would have sped up the development process and brought down the costs... we may even have wound up then with more than just the 3 teams competing.

Ian

 

Well, quite a lot actually! Think load path sail technology, Millenium, 3DL, 3DI whatever it may be it was all developed through America's Cup teams. Then there are the huge advances in instrumentation technology, developed because these boats need raw data to improve, two boat tuning is out of the question, I don't think they are allowed to, but it would also burn valuable budget which could be spent on the actual boat they are taking to the cup. VPP analysis, where would that be without the input of these teams? You've been looking the wrong way if you you cant see how the America's Cup has traditionally benefitted Joe Public. But wing sail foiling cats, I just don't see where this will benefit me. Composite technology maybe, but most of that comes from the likes of F1 way before it reaches sailing at all!

 

I think you are missing my point in that without the interest for the above reasons, the world will stop watching. If nobody is watching then why would you pull your trousers down when there's nobody to read the tape measure? Simple, or at least I think so!

Even if you can't see how a foiling, wingsailed cat has any bearing on what you are sailing now it doesn't mean that it won't have had any infullance on what you will be sailing in 10 years time.

 

I really can't see myself nipping across the channel on a foiling cat somehow, you might, but I dont. Imagine explaining that one to the wife for the first time when her nice comfortable cat suddenly takes off!

I think you're forgetting how slowly the mainstay of club racing 'develops'... I'd imagine that in 10 years I'll still be sailing a singlehanded unarig of some description, and no, not one that foils.  I might also have another boat for sailing with the kids in the UK... but that's pipedream stuff at the moment.