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Thanks to Oracle sailor Ky Hurst for this video of four AC45x experimental catamarans testing on the Great Sound. There will be plenty of action on the Great Sound in 2016 and it will heat up even more in early 2017 when all six teams are training with their AC Class race boats.
In this short clip you can see Artemis Racing with the clear wing sailing right to left. The two Oracle Team USA boats move left to right, followed by SoftBank Team Japan.
When boatspeed approaches 40 knots, very low pressure areas form on the daggerboards and rudders, causing the water literally to boil and form cavitation bubbles. This causes severe vibration and increased drag. Almost halfway through the America’s Cup Match in 2013, Oracle’s Paul Bieker devised fillets and torpedo shapes for the rudder wings.
We can see similar shapes on the rudders of the one design AC45F cats racing in the America’s Cup World Series, and on the experimental boats that the teams use for testing
Artemis skipper Nathan Outteridge with an AC45F rudder. Notice the bulb where the vertical section and the wing meet.
Oracle’s capsize on March 2 gave us a good look at the rudder wing and anticavitation shapes.
All four AC72’s that raced in San Francisco in 2013 used a mechanical linkage from the grinding pedestals to the wing winch. The grinding pedestals can be switched between pumping hydraulic oil and mechanically driving a winch. The mechanical linkage is more efficient than hydraulics for driving a winch. On upwind legs, three of the four pedestals on Oracle’s boat were dedicated to powering the wing winch, allowing trimmer Kyle Langford to trim the wing constantly, enabling stable upwind foiling. But this was a lot of work for the grinders, who called it “Beast Mode.” Here’s a video that shows how it was done.
Recently, a poorly informed journalist wondered in print if this constant trimming was legal. It was. The umpires in San Francisco were well aware of it. Oracle’s opponent, Emirates Team New Zealand did not protest. And, the umpires for the 2017 America’s Cup have issued a ruling to clarify that Beast Mode is legal. You can download that ruling here. Did you watch SoftBank Team Japan’s video in last week’s Cup Experience Monday News? You could see them training in Beast Mode on their experimental boat in Bermuda. As I mentioned in my article, you could see all four grinders turning the handles while wing trimmer Chris Draper constantly trimmed the wing.
An amusing but apocryphal story claims that in 1895 there were only two cars in the US state of Ohio, and that they collided. Well, on Bermuda’s Great Sound Artemis Racing and Oracle Team USA played out their own version of that story last week, nearly crashing their experimental boats. Watch:
Splashdown – Quick reflexes required
Here’s how Oracle described the incident:
“Artemis Racing, closing in at speed from the left, is on starboard and has rights, so the original call was for ORACLE TEAM USA to heat up – to turn to port (left) – and pass behind Artemis Racing. But then, the Swedish boat came off the foils, nearly stopping. Andrew Campbell, (offside helmsman during the gybe), had to make the call to turn to starboard (right) instead, bringing his boat off the foils in a spectacular splashdown.
Tom Slingsby, the regular helmsman, had just run across the boat and had his hands on the wheel as well. By the time both boats had come to a near stop in the water, just a yard or two apart, Slingsby was on the wheel, and Campbell was on his feet, heading the wing to push it to leeward by hand to help get the boat moving again.”
The infill work continues in the South Basin at Dockyard. Our Bermuda friend who took this photo reports that work is scheduled to be complete by end of June.
Meanwhile, there is plenty of action on the Great Sound. Loïck Peyron of Artemis Racing posted this photo of four AC45x experimental boats – two from Oracle and one each from Artemis and Team Japan.
Artemis has also been two boat testing on the Great Sound. If you look closely, you can see that their newer boat, Turbo 2, is further from the camera. Turbo 1 has only one grinding pedestal per hull; Turbo 2 has two. Photo courtesy Artemis Racing.
The M32 catamarans were back in Bermuda in March, as we see below, with the two Oracle experimental boats. Photo courtesy of M32 World.
