America's Cup- Behind the Artemis door - Sweden unveiled + Video

by John Navas and Richard Gladwell on 7 Jul 2013
On July 7, a media group was given a tour and update of the Artemis Racing base in Alameda.

Here is an update on the team, their progress and prospects:

Artemis Racing have a third wingsail in the assembly phase. 25% of the surface is uncovered, and they expect to be finished by the end of the next week. The boat is expected to be sailing in two weeks.

Their second wingsail was destroyed in the capsize in May.

The team’s second AC72 is partially assembled, with the sprit not yet braced.

The team has little in the way of spares – there is one set of current class rule rudders, and one set of rudders developed to comply with the new safety rules. They claim that if an a outcome of the Jury Hearing is that they need a third set of rudders, which they don’t have – they will not be able to race.



After the tour of the base and AC72, team CEO, Paul Cayard and helmsman, Nathan Outteridge spoke with the media. Following is some of the key comments from that session:

Nathan Outteridge: The other teams know that we are going to be off the pace initially, But we can get the boat in the water in a couple of weeks and go sailing, and test our structures, get the boat foiling and start to do our maneuvers , then we will be in a position to head up to the City Front and do the racing. Until we get confident in the boat and our ability in the boat we don’t want to risk anyone’s safety.

We’re going out early in the morning in he boat. Get the boat foiling and see how we go. It is too hard to say when we will definitely be racing. Of course anything can happen.

We have to be realistic about our chances. The pecking order has to be Emirates Team New Zealand, Luna Rossa and then us, as the underdog. But until we get our boat in the water it is impossible to say how we are going to go..

The boat is going to go through structural testing next week. We are going to flip the boat upside down and have to tick all the boxes, and we are half way through that process. Then we have to get her on the water, get the wingsail on, do the load testing. Then it is the sailing team’s turn to take over.

The thing for us that is positive is that we have been able to turn the AC45 into a foiling boat, and we went foiling on the first day, and we did almost 30knots with very good control and stability. We have refined that thinking on the 45 ad moved it to the 72, so when we have passed all our tests, when we get out there we will be in good shape.

We are going to need five, six or seven days to get through the basic stuff, but the way I see it, it is not how many days, but how productive you can be in those days. It is tough to say how many days it is going to take. But obviously the lighter the wind is , the sooner we are going to be able to race. In 8-10 kts the boat should be manageable. If we have 20kts on day 5, I am sure we will have a bit on Hopefully by the time we get to August we will be able to handle 15-18kts quite comfortably.

All we want to do is compete in this America’s Cup. I joined this America’s Cup thinking what a great concept, they are trying to achieve. It is obvious that they have overstepped the mark with the equipment. It is a little outrageous for the venue, But I think the concept is great. What they are trying to do is awesome. Our whole team just wants to go racing, but we have got an issue and can’t get there.

Cayard: We find it hard to believe that someone wouldn’t want to sail, because we so much want to sail, and we are working so hard to do so. So we find it hard to understand.

The big issue that will go to the Jury next week is about two teams wanting to cherry pick two rules from a package that is designed to improve the safety of the whole fleet.

The committee was a broad committee, including Jim Farmer of Emirates Team New Zealand, who was the only team representative on the committee who we allowed on because of his great expertise and experience, they came up wit a package of 37 safety recommendations in which we believe and trust.

We have built a set of elevators that comply and we still have a set of elevators that compiled with the class rule prior to May 22.

So we can do one or the other. But removing some rules and keeping other rules creates a third permutation which we can’t comply with. We are sure that reason will prevail.

Emirates Team NZ is not really concerned about us, but about Oracle Team USA, because it could be useful to Oracle – but I have run the performance delta and it is in the .001 of a knot range. I haven’t sailed a foiling AC72 for one day of my life, but that is not going to make one piece of difference in this America’s Cup. You are talking about 150mm of rudder position difference fore and aft. The delta is just minuscule.

(Delta is a long standing America’s Cup design and performance term meaning the change between two measurements).