7 things to watch
With racing set to begin in the 35th America’s Cup Mark Orams, the Herald on Sunday’s resident ‘racing professor’ and a former member of Team New Zealand, details seven things to look out for over the next month.
1 Key decisions before the race Every day, each team will be closely examining the wind forecast for the racing period as they will need to configure their yacht with the best set-up to match the expected conditions. There are a range of options available to teams, the most critical of which is the choice of the main foils they place on their yacht for the day. Each team is permitted two sets (pairs) of main foils and the general consensus is that they will have optimised one set for light winds and one for stronger winds.
2 Pre-start manoeuvres
The pre-start is the time when the yachts enter the “box” (the area below the start-line) and can work against one another to gain advantage either via the rules or a positional advantage off the start line. In this Cup, the yachts enter the box only three minutes before the start. Given the speed these AC50s travel at, there is limited time to try and gain an advantage. Typically the team that feels they are faster than their opponent will seek to minimise risk of a rules transgression and subsequent penalty from the Jury.
3 Foil down stability risk
In practice racing, it became clear that a key time of instability for these new full-foiling yachts is when they drop their windward foil (which is retracted for speed purposes when sailing in a straight line) in preparation for a manoeuvre. When this retracted foil is deployed and hits the water, if the angle of attack (the angle the foil is presented to the water flow) is slightly out, the yacht can crash down or rear up suddenly. This can result in a big-nose dive or “bunnyhop” of the yacht which is both dangerous and slow. 4 Splits at bottom and top mark gates The race course configuration has turning marks at the top and bottom which has a “gate” – two marks set at 90 degrees to the wind direction. The yachts can choose which mark to turn around. This provides an overtaking opportunity for the trailing yacht, who will most frequently choose the opposite mark to the leading yacht. This immediately creates a split in the area of the course the yachts are sailing in, creating the chance that the trailing yacht finds some extra wind or different conditions allowing them to pass. 5 Touch-downs, falling off the foils When watching the practice racing, an area I observed where many of the yachts seem to struggle is turning around the bottom mark to head upwind. The boats are travelling fast at this point of the race, likely more than 45 knots. As they turn upwind, they slow down and, as a consequence, many drop their bow (nose of the yacht) into the water and some fall off their foils completely. This results in a big loss of speed and the yacht loses ground to their opponent quickly.
6 Breakages
It’s an old adage in sailing: “To finish first, first you must finish.” Breakages and breakdowns will happen and if a yacht is unable to finish, they score zero. In addition, if the breakage is serious enough that they are unable to compete for the rest of that day, they lose all subsequent races and their opponent (if they are able to complete the race) takes the point. So potentially if a yacht has a major breakage in the first race of the day and they are scheduled for two races that day, it is two points lost.
7 Improvements
If we learned nothing else from the result in San Francisco four years ago, we learned it’s never over until it’s over. This America’s Cup will be a month in duration and the team that wins will be the one that improves the most. None of the six teams are sailing at their full potential with these new AC50s yet. Developing performance across all aspects – including speed, manoeuvrability, 5am reliability, decisionmaking, continuing to develop and performing under pressure – will be crucial.
Listen to PJ Montgomery’s
live coverage of tomorrow’s racing from