After being postponed for two days by high winds, the 35th America’s Cup is scheduled to start this morning. Many consider the races to be the greatest show on the water — a thrilling, high-stakes extravaganza featuring cutting-edge technology and the best sailors in the sport. Others view the races as an ego-fueled billionaire’s extravagance featuring obscenely costly beach-cats, wholly unrelated the rest of the world of sailing. There may be elements of truth in both viewpoints.
The races have certainly changed from the more stately America’s Cups of old, before the competing sailors started wearing crash helmets as part of their uniforms. The 35th competition is a continuation and refinement of the “foiling revolution” introduced in the last running of the races. The 50′ catamarans in this year’s race are among the most advanced sailing vessels ever seen and can sail at 45 knots in a 15-knot breeze, and up to 30 knots upwind.
In addition to the fourteen or so sailors on each of the AC50s, there are many times more support staff — managers, boat-builders, engineers, hydrodynamicists, logisticians, riggers, and sailmakers. The effort looks more like mission control at a moon launch than a traditional sailboat race. The technology is still evolving. Recently Jimmy Spithill, the captain of Oracle Team USA, was quoted as saying, “We’re still on the steep side of the development slope.” The jargon has shifted from nautical to Silicone Valley.
But, are all these changes necessarily good? Pat Reynolds writing in the American Sailing Association blog raises the question, “Is the America’s Cup Good for the Sport of Sailing?” Commenting on the dizzying rate of change, Reynolds writes:
So where does that leave us – the sailing fan? Perhaps not in a place we once called home. We no longer look at the America’s Cup boats as gorgeous designs with cutting edge innovations that will one day trickle down to the very boat we sail. We can no longer look at the racing to watch and take notes, applying what we see to our own local habits. Case and point: One of this year’s AC boats actually has a crewman assigned to a power-generating stationary bicycle. The contemporary America’s Cup is a different beast.
The changes are also clearly apparent to those sailing the foiling cats. Christian Kamp, trimmer from the Swedish sailing team Artemis Racing commented recently:
“When it comes to the sailing itself, I must say that this America’s Cup is very different from the previous ones I’ve been involved in. The foiling revolution has changed so much, and not all of it for the better. Most of what we do now is deliver power to the hydraulic systems that run the foils and the wing. We’ve been reduced to grinders, and there is not a lot of trimming any more, in the traditional sense.
“Computers are running everything. Software is actually one of the prime parameters and will be a very decisive factor when racing starts in May. I feel like it’s a lot of waste to have all these great sailors here, more or less reduced to hamsters on a spinning wheel. But that’s the direction things are going.
For fans of the latest and greatest, click here for the US broadcast television schedule for the America’s Cup.
And, if you are not a fan, here is the “The official hater’s guide to the America’s Cup.”
Fair comment Rick but the future will always beckon and the forward looking will take up the challenge. Its a pity that depends on deep pockets.
There is a niche that needs to have such boats as the present AC is showing. That being said it would be nice to see a more conventional boats with ‘normal’ rigging so we sailors in the majority could see, learn and dream a bit…
It is only my opinion and everyone is welcome to their own. Yet I feel it may be time to change the status quo. It is time to set the race by class. The more traditional mono hull class. A catamaran class. Heck I would even want to see two masted clippers going at it. Now that would be a race. Limit the boats by the amount of sail, tonnage and so on. Much like what race cars must endure. Have limits and stick to them. You want to have a unlimited class? That is fine. Yet the clippers is what I would like to see. Who knows, enough of a interest and people might actually start wanting clippers again. Well it is a thought.
A return to the more traditional boats.
Push the limits, let it all hang out, these brilliant developements will have spin-offs that will trickle down to us in the ‘slow-lane’.
Foiling specially is a quantum leap, now spreading to more humble craft, like pedal powered canoes, enabling swift travel.
Let the ‘deep pockets’ show us the way, as always.
Enjoy the show, I’m impressed!