USA17-1 foiling on SF Bay Day4, 1Oct’12
USA 17-1 foiling in Oct’12. Note the L shaped daggerboard and T shaped rudder on the windward hull.
The design battle rages. Oracle Racing has been foiling on their first AC72 catamaran, USA 17-1. Notice the “pod” below the wing. In theory, it acts as a wing extension and gives more power. In theory, because it needs to be closer to the water to be fully effective and the boat is heeling quite a bit here.
This AC72 catamaran has over 2,000 sensors, each being sampled 10 times per second. That generates about 1 GB of data for the performance team to analyze each day. In addition, they generate about 100 GB per day of video to analyze.
According to Ian “Fresh” Burns, foiling gives about 10% higher speed. But foiling makes the boat harder to sail, and on the tight race course in San Francisco, it might be more important to make boat handling and maneuvers simpler.
I’ll be curious to see how Artemis is set up when they launch their AC72 catamaran in San Francisco later this month! Will they be foiling or floating?