Cup Experience

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Modified Round Robin America’s Cup Qualifiers Schedule

Does Land Rover BAR have the easiest schedule?

On 18 October 2016 ACEA published a modified schedule for the double round robin America’s Cup Qualifiers. Instead of 10 days of racing with each team racing once per day, the AC Qualifiers have been reduced to eight days with at least one team having to race twice on every day. This is a big deal.

Here is the original schedule:

Original America's Cup 2017 Race Calendar
Original America’s Cup 2017 Race Calendar

Here is the new calendar. You can download it here.

America's Cup 2017 Race Calendar
America’s Cup 2017 Race Calendar

The big advantage of the new schedule is having a guaranteed layday between the Challenger Playoff semi-finals and finals.

Stamina and Limited Substitutions
Much has been made of the physical demands on the grinders. Only two crew substitutions can be made between races, so when a fresh team comes up against a team that has already raced once, the fresh team will have a big advantage.

And, what if something breaks during your first race? Even if you have time to make the repair, your preparation for the second race will be thrown off.

A Closer Look at the Schedule

Does Land Rover BAR have the easiest schedule?
Do Oracle Team USA and SoftBank Team Japan have schedules almost as good?
Do the Kiwis have a good schedule?
Do Artemis Racing and Groupama Team France have the worst schedules?

All of the teams have a day off on Thursday 1 June, after six days of racing. Five of the six teams get another layday, all except Emirates Team New Zealand. In return, the Kiwis only have two days when they race twice. Each of the other teams has two races on three days. Let’s look at the schedules, team by team.
Land Rover BAR seems to have the best schedule: they have to race twice on three days, but each time they will be racing against another team who has already raced earlier in the day. BAR also has two laydays in a row – Thursday 1 June, when all the teams are off and Friday 2 June. This will let them regain some strength for the last day of the round robin when they face Team Japan, and, in the very last race of the round robin, Oracle.
Oracle Team USA has it almost as good: each time they race twice in a day they too race against another team that has already raced earlier in the day. But… they have to race twice on two successive days, Day 2 against Land Rover BAR and Day 3 against SoftBank Team Japan.
SoftBank Team Japan only has to race a fresh team once. On Day 6 their second race is against Oracle Team USA, but Team Japan has a layday on Day 5 so they should be rested for Day 6.
Artemis Racing faces fresh teams on two of their three two-race days. Interestingly they will face BAR twice when BAR is fresh but Artemis has already raced earlier in the day. Like BAR, they get two days in a row off – May 31st and June 1st – before the last two days of the round robin.
Groupama Team France may have the toughest schedule. They race twice on three days, twice against teams that are fresh. The one time their second race of the day is against another team that has raced it’s against BAR.
Emirates Team New Zealand is the only team that races twice on only two days – both times against fresh teams: BAR on Day 3 and Team France on Day 7, the day after the layday for all teams. This seems like it should be a good schedule, but they are the only team that does not get a day off on one of the race days.

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What Do You Notice About the Way These Boats Sail?

Oracle Team USA in their AC45X test boat.

Oracle and Team Japan training in Bermuda.

Land Rover BAR training in their AC45X.

Have you noticed that the AC45X test boats often sail bow down when foiling? One of my best sources helped me understand this. Lift increases with speed and with angle of attack. The rudder elevators generate more lift at higher speed, pitching the boat into the bow down attitude. This reduces the angle of attack of the rudder elevators, providing pitch stability. The longer answer gets into the load per unit area on the rudder elevators compared to the daggerboard wings, and the way pitch – heave coupling can produce either stable (good) or unstable (bad) ride height and and pitch. I’m working on a detailed article about this. Watch for it in a future issue.

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Moving to Fukuoka

The final stop for the AC World Series is Fukuoka, Japan. Fifty containers are on their way from Toulon.

Image: ACEA Video

Racing is scheduled for 19-20 November. From the leaderboard below, you can see that Land Rover BAR’s 14 point lead will make them hard to catch. Winning the AC World Series would give them two bonus points in next year’s round robin America’s Cup Qualifiers. Oracle Team USA and Emirates Team New Zealand will be fighting for the bonus point that goes to the runner up. Oracle has yet to win a World Series regatta; this is their last chance. SoftBank Team Japan and Artemis Racing will be battling for fourth place. Since the AC World Series results will be used to break ties in the Qualifiers, every place counts, and these teams will be fighting hard. Groupama Team France looks unlikely to escape the cellar – they will have to count on a good performance in the Qualifiers to avoid elimination.

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Land Rover BAR Base in Bermuda

Land Rover BAR has begun building their base at Dockyard. They have said they plan to launch their race boat on the earliest allowed date, 27 December 2016, 150 days before the first race on 26 May 2017.

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Land Rover BAR Two Boat Testing

I reported back in August that BAR had launched their fourth test boat but until now we didn’t have any photos of both their boats together. Leigh McMillan helms one of the test boats. In this video you can see different shape daggerboards being tested. Aside from the daggerboards, the only other visible difference in these photos and videos is that the Anabel’s nightclub logo has been painted on the rudders of only one of the boats. Anabel’s is one of the team’s sponsors.

Notice the outward curve of the daggerboard and the pronounced dihedral (upwards slope) of the daggerboard wing.

The starboard daggerboard has an outward curve and clear anhedral (downward sloping) daggerboard wing.

The boat on the left has an outward curving daggerboard. The boat on the right has a straight board. Both appear to have dihedral daggerboard wings.