This comment below was made about the Volvo Ocean Race but it applies to the America’s Cup as well. AC72 designs need to trade off strength and weight against lightness and speed. China Team fractured their AC45 hull in a tumbling capsize in Plymouth. The AC45s have all been reinforced since then.China Team cracked their hull in a tumbling capsize in Plymouth
From: Scuttlebutt Europe #2565 – 6 April 2012
* From Butch Dalrymple-Smith: Whenever there is carnage in a racing fleet there is pressure to create scantling rules to ensure the boats get built stronger. This knee-jerk reaction is inappropriate, particularly in the case of the Volvo Race.
Every designer knows the old adage: “To finish first, first you have to finish”, and the next generation of Volvo 70’s will undoubtedly be better engineered than this one. Engineers learn much more from failures than from successes. Remember all those keels that gave trouble last time? This time the keels seem to be working okay. Next time at least the hulls will be strong enough, maybe the rigs too.
There are bound to be occasional failures in grand prix racing boats. There are bound to be failures in any sport where the competitors sometimes have to slow down to avoid breakage and they occasionally get it wrong. But structural failure in racing boats seldom causes injury except to performance.
The worst outcome would be a set of scantling rules which encourage designers to design to the rule instead of designing to the loads. Innovation would be killed. Scantling standards developed by a committee would probably make the boats so bulletproof that they would never have to slow down, but then they would not be going that fast anyway.
Scantling rules for raceboats are only appropriate where there’s a second use for the boats after racing or where the races are short and a fragile boat can gamble on getting calm conditions. When sailing round the world you KNOW you’ll get horrendous weather somewhere along the track. Every year we hear the usual hyperboles “mountainous waves”, “boat breaking conditions”, as if they are exceptional. But they are not, and they concentrate the designer’s minds much more effectively than any set of construction rules.