America's Cup- Emirates Team NZ play catch-up

by Richard Gladwell, Sail-World.com NZL on 13 May 2015 Fresh on the back of the re-signing of naming rights sponsor, Emirates, three of Team New Zealand's sailing crew are headed off to Portsmouth, England, for test sailing in the one design foiling version of the AC45 wingsailed catamarans.

The one design AC45s will be used in the America’s Cup World Series Regattas, and have been retrofitted with foils constructed in France.

Each competing team is permitted to send three crew for the test session, and Glenn Ashby, Jeremy Lomas, and Richard Meacham will represent the team. The exercise is expected to be just a try out for the teams. So far, only Team France have sailed one of the AC45’s in a race last weekend.

That will come off their allocation of sailing days allowed on the AC45 one design.

Closer to the regatta in Portsmouth, Peter Burling, and Blair Tuke, along with the rest of the sailing team will work through the allocated time on the AC45’s.

“On the way back the three test crew will spend some time in Bermuda for a look,” explained CEO, Grant Dalton. It will be the team’s first look at the America’s Cup venue.

“Now we know what we are dealing with in Bermuda, and that it won’t change any more, we can focus and zone in,” Dalton told Sail-World.com.

The team will also be starting their Auckland test program, which is a multi-headed beast, similar to that being run by other teams.

“We’ve just bought a couple of Nacras and will start testing,” he said in reference to Nacra 20’s a two main foiling catamaran which some teams have acquired. Others use a Flying Phantom, also 20ft long.

“We have our test AC45 that we need to start working on.”

In this Cup cycle where the boats have been designed to foil from the get-go, teams are typically going to four types of boats – a two man foiler – usually a Nacra 20 or Flying Phantom.

The teams will race one or two one design AC45’s in the America’s Cup World Series regattas – these are the same wingsailed 45ft catamarans used in the last America’s Cup regatta for the preliminary regatta program from 2011-2013, but they have been retrofitted with foils. The beam of the boats and wingsails remain unchanged from the previous edition.

At the next level, Development AC45’s are used. These are covered by the Surrogate Boat rules of the Protocol and consist of a pair of one design AC45 hulls that have been cut from abeam of the wingsail location and a new cockpit fitted. The crew stand in the hulls, rather than sit on them as happened in the AC45 one design.

The Surrogate AC45’s have their beam and dimensions altered to mimic the larger AC48’s that will be used in the America’s Cup. Essentially they look like mini-versions of the AC72 used in the last America’s Cup and have similar performance.

Then the teams will build AC48’s which are one design in the hull shape and wingsail profile. The foils are open in design as are all the control systems for the foil and rig. As with any one-design, little is really saved in terms of design effort, as teams focus on getting every last drop out of measurement tolerances. It’s a situation not dissimilar to the monohull days when design teams would test for years to gain 1-2 tenths of a knot of extra boat speed, or a couple of degrees of height. Or would work and rework systems to reduce parasitic drag – on the basis that the sum of a lot of small savings adds up to a significant gain.

The Challengers are allowed to build just one AC48 - the Defender is, under the latest publish version of the Protocol, allowed two AC48's. Minimum stable for a team will be four sailing boats, the maximum could be seven or eight boats, plus other kit such as foiling A-class cats and foiling Moths for single-handed training and testing.

“It is business as usual, now,' says Dalton. “We would like to be further ahead than where we are, but it is what it is, and for a commercial team we are probably as good as we could be at the moment.”

Emirates Team New Zealand will be one of the last to get their sailing program underway – an unusual starting grid position for the team, now embarking on their ninth America’s Cup campaign.

“The other teams are sailing surrogate AC45’s so they are learning something from that for sure. We have done a lot of work in design, and hopefully we are not behind.

“Even though the design rule is now reasonably tight there will be fast boats and slow boats because there is enough scope in the rule for that to happen.

“Peter and Blair have been doing really well, so there can be no question about our pedigree in the sailing team.

“We need to get on the water in an AC45, and we have to get on with that. But as a commercial team it has not been easy – no-one in Emirates Team NZ will say it has been easy in recent months, particularly me.

“We just have to hope that with the experience the design bring in from last time, and therefore progressing in the right places, that we are not slipping behind,” he adds.

First hit-out for the teams will the America’s Cup World Series regatta in Portsmouth, in just over two months time starting on July 23.