Swan song for the Extreme 40s—Sailing news from the U.S. and beyond

by David Schmidt, Sail-World USA Editor on 12 Dec 2015 This week in Sydney, Australia, marks a historic turning point for the Extreme Sailing Series (ESS), as well as an exciting year-end finale to this high-octane multi-hull series. The Sydney event (December 10-13) not only closes out the successful 2015 season that saw racing take place off of eight global cities on three continents and the Middle East, but it is also the last time that the venerable Extreme 40 catamaran will be used for ESS racing.

Launched in 2005 and designed by Yves Loday (FRA), the boat snapped heads when it first started charging around racecourses and demonstrating the raw power and speed of a modern multihull design. The boat was an ideal match for the ESS until August of 2008, when BMW Oracle Racing launched their massive trimaran (BOR90), which they eventually used to win the 33rd America’s Cup.

While the Extreme 40 struggled to look extreme when stacked up against BOR90, this could be shrugged off as a case of a heavyweight boxer stepping into the ring against a welterweight opponent. Sure, the bigger boat had greater high-end straight-line speed and raw power, but when it came to lightning-quick racecourse maneuvers, the Extreme 40 was still a high-performance machine, even if its soft sails looked a bit limp compared to BOR 90’s massive wingsail.

Leap ahead a few years, and the AC45 catamarans were launched in 2011 as a multi-hull training platform for crews that would be racing the bigger and considerably faster AC72 catamarans come the start of the 34th America’s Cup. The new 45-footers featured wingsails and the sort of raw speed that quickly grabbed global headlines and international attention.

Any notions that the Extreme 40s were still extreme started to fade when the first of the America’s Cup World Series events took place using the new AC45s. Then, in September of 2012, Emirates Team New Zealand stunned the sailing word when they revealed that they had discovered a Protocol loophole that allowed them to add foils to their 72-footer. Suddenly, even the AC45s were looking sluggish, and little attention was being paid to the Extreme 40s.

While the ESS remained a competitive and hotly contested trophy, the event became to sailing what NASCAR is to auto racing, while the America’s Cup enjoyed its rightful and lofty place as sailing’s Formula 1. Not only did the Cup have the history and pedigree, but it also had the coolest-looking hardware on the planet.

More recently, the AC45s became foilers, demonstrating the sort of speed and low-headache overhead that could be achieved using smaller, wingsail-powered cats that were freed from displacement-mode sailing. Likewise, foils started sprouting on other classes, including the GC32 catamarans, which offered serious speed and modern aesthetics, sans the hassle of having to crane-rig wingsails…not to mention the possible dangers of capsizing a delicate wing.

OC Sport Executive Chairman Mark Turner and his brain trust at the ESS carefully watched this progression and made the decision to change horses for the 2016 ESS season, with the GC32 replacing the venerable Extreme 40.

So while the Champagne has not yet started to flow in Sydney, Turner and the ESS pulled a wise move that will likely have Cup masterminds, including Sir Russell Coutts, paying a lot of attention come 2016, as the GC32s are almost as quick as the now turbo’ed AC45s and the soon-to-be-launched AC48s that will contest AC35, yet they cost a fraction as much to build, race and repair as their bigger brothers.

And while it’s true that the new GC32s will be harder to use as platforms for entertaining corporate guests, the same headache will be plaguing the Cup boats, and-at the end of the day-it will likely be a lot easier for many prospective corporate sponsors to muster the wherewithal needed to fund an ESS team, rather than coming up with a Cup-sized budget.

While that line of thinking can quickly devolve into a NASCAR vs. Formula 1 debate, the fact remains that this weekend is the final chance to watch the Extreme 40s go head-to-head at a major event. And while there’s no question that the Sydney event marks the passing of an important torch, Sydney Harbor is certainly a stunning sailing stadium for a class to enjoy its final sunset.

Get the full ESS report from Down Unda inside this issue, and be sure to also check out the latest downloads from the Clipper Round the World Yacht Race, the two ongoing Jules Verne Trophy attempts, the ISAF Sailing World Cup Melbourne, and the 2015 Yacht Racing Forum. Enjoy!

May the four winds blow you safely home,