Carbon knives slicing the water—Sailing news from the U.S. and beyond
by David Schmidt, Sail-World USA Editor on 3 Dec 2015
Fully powered up the GC32's fly downwind Sander van der Borch / Bullitt GC32 Racing Tour
Hands down, the most exciting development to hit the sport of sailing in recent years has been the introduction of hydrofoils, which allow a sailboat to transition from a standard displacement mode of sailing to full-on foiling, where the boat (or portions of the boat) physically lift from the water, allowing boatspeed to skyrocket. Foils first made their way into sailing aboard tiny, one-person Moths (an open-development class that’s long been a hotbed for innovation and technology) and then quickly jumped to multihulls, including the AC72s that were used to contest the 34th America’s Cup (AC32) on the waters of San Francisco Bay in 2013.
While there’s no question that this impressive new technology dramatically increases speed and sailing thrills, it also increases risk, as the sailing world has learned on several occasions.
In early May of 2013, Andrew “Bart” Simpson, a crewmember aboard Artemis Racing’s America’s Cup team, was tragically killed when the squad’s 72-foot catamaran flipped during a bear-away maneuver and broke apart, trapping Simpson under its sailplan. While the boat was sailing in displacement mode, and not on foils, the world got a sober-eyed look at the dangers of racing aboard such highly loaded craft.
The AC45 class was first used in the 2013 America’s Cup World Series (ACWS). While these boats did not use foils in the lead up to AC34, they did use powerful wingsails, which were built out of carbon-fiber frames and a thin, film-like material that made them capable of highly efficient laminar flow.
Trouble arose, however, as teams started to press the envelope, both in terms of speed and maneuvers. As anyone who has ever sailed a powerful multi-hull knows, vanishing stability can arrive with one unexpected shift, especially when sailing off-the-breeze angles. Factor-in big bear-away maneuvers, waves and chop, and puffy winds, and it is fairly easy to stuff a bow and find your way down the proverbial coal mine.
When calamity strikes, it’s not unusual to send sailors scattering. In June of 2011, Russell Coutts, then CEO or Oracle Team USA, was on board one of the team’s AC45s during an exhibition race when the team stuffed their bows and capsized, sending Coutts through the wingsail. Fortunately, Coutts flight trajectory sent him through the lower part of the wing’s front element, largely avoiding the structural carbon-fiber frames that support the rig, and he was not badly hurt. Still, this accident could have been fatal, had he fallen differently.
As with cars, danger levels in sailing increase with speed, so it’s no real surprise that foils ratchet up the risk factor, especially when the breeze is on. For example, when Nathan Outteridge (AUS), Gold medalist in the 49er class at the London 2012 Olympics and now an America’s Cup helmsman, was first getting involved with the Moth class, he set the Round Lake Macquarie record, a piece of sailing that involved 29 miles of distance and some 11 high-speed crashes.
Fortunately, Outteridge wasn’t injured (badly), but there’s an excellent reason that Moth sailors, AC sailors, and even non-foiling dinghy sailors are now commonly seen wearing safety helmets: As sailing gets faster and the speeds become greater, a boat’s foil package quickly becomes a set of carbon-fiber knives in the water.
Statistically, the chances are fairly low of these knives doing serious damage (at least to people, however rumors have long circulated about a certain AC team striking a dolphin during the build-up to AC34), given how many people have fallen off foilers and lived to tell their story, but the simple fact remains lots of sailors have gotten lucky when falling into the soup.
The thing about luck-much like assumptions-is that sometimes you end up on the wrong side of a dice, as Franck Cammas, 42 and skipper of Groupama Team France’s challenge for the 35th America’s Cup, found out this past week when he fell off of his foiling GC32 catamaran and suffered a bad laceration and a double fracture to his right leg after getting clipped by one of the boat’s rudders and its thin, knife-like carbon foil.
Fortunately, Cammas is expected to make a strong recovery, however this accident almost certainly cost him his shot at an Olympic berth in the Nacra 17 class. The accident is not expected to impact the team’s America’s Cup campaign, outside of a possible missed ACWS regatta in 2016, but Cammas is still looking at a lumpy road to recovery.
Sail-World wishes Cammas and his family a speedy and successful recovery.
Moving forward, the fact remains that today’s foils are getting thinner in profile, thanks to advances in carbon-fiber fabrication techniques. Moreover, as foiling boats become faster and more mainstream, the odds of future calamities increase.
So what’s the best path towards safety? Plenty of Grand Prix sailors wear helmets, padding and other protective equipment (including oxygen cylinders for America’s Cup teams in the wake of Simpson’s tragic death), but hopefully more advancements will be made with protective equipment.
As for the foils themselves, there’s no question that foiling represents a huge evolution for sailing, and there’s little chance of stuffing that particular genie back into her bottle.
Stability is an obvious key to safety, as the more stable the platform, the less likely it is that a team will suffer a capsize or that an individual sailor will be thrown off the boat. While the old AC72s were not originally designed to foil (and therefore relied on their daggerboards, not their rudders, to control stability), the now-modified AC45s and the new AC48s, which will be used to contest AC35, all use much more advanced stability systems, thus reducing the chances of accidents.
Hopefully technology will also help make other foiling platforms more stable, as this is an obvious path towards increasing safety margins. Stay tuned!
Also inside this issue, get the full report on Cammas’ injury, get the latest news from the RORC’s Transatlantic Race, get the latest downloads from the Sydney to Hobart Race, and don’t miss the reports from the two ongoing Jules Verne Trophy attempts.
May the four winds blow you safely home,
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