America's Cup Prototype Boats Appearing

"functionoverfashion" (functionoverfashion)
11/20/2018 at 16:10 • Filed to: you scratched my anchor

America’s Cup test boats are starting to appear (ok they’ve been appearing for several months, but whatever). The boats are incredible.

US team - !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! .

INEOS Team UK - !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! .

Meanwhile New Zealand, the winner of the 2017 America’s Cup and thus defender of the 2021 Cup, is NOT building a scaled-down model (as of yesterday, anyway) , but running simulations and just going all-in with a full-sized boat. Ballsy, but then, those Kiwis know how to sail, so I who am I to criticize?

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I was initially disappointed to hear they were getting away from the foiling catamarans that were so exciting to watch in the last two Cups, but man, these things look amazing.

I think when most people hear “sailing” they think of this:

or this:

But I think of this:

Or THIS

And I can’t wait to see the next America’s Cup.

DISCUSSION (18)

For Sweden > functionoverfashion
11/20/2018 at 16:13

Formula 1: How can we make our cars more relevant to road car development?

America’s Cup:

CaptDale - is secretly British > functionoverfashion
11/20/2018 at 16:14

I dislike the foils, but I am so fucking happy they are back to mono hulls. I fucking hated watching multihull racing. It was boring and not match racing at all. Should just stick with legit single hull racing and all this foil fucking crap can go out the window. I want to see the sailors outperform each other not the boats.

HammerheadFistpunch > functionoverfashion
11/20/2018 at 16:19

America’s cup has been crazy fun to watch the last few years. Hopefully these new boats keep delivering the fun.

HammerheadFistpunch > functionoverfashion
11/20/2018 at 16:21

as for not building scale vs building scale. its a gamble. I feel like training on the scale boat isn’t going to be to oracles advantage in terms of learning the big boat...might as well invest on the big boat only. BUT Oracle will have a huge leg up on sussing out manufacturing issues now and frankly weight and strength are going to play big parts of this race.

3point8isgreat > functionoverfashion
11/20/2018 at 16:28

As someone who has never watched this, these new ones look awesome! It’s like a regular sailboat on steroids.

Bman76 (hates WS6 hoods, is on his phone and has 4 burners now) > functionoverfashion
11/20/2018 at 16:41

The fact that the winning team sets the rules is kinda neat. The cats were cool, but so is a new and different design. Really excited about this.

That Bastard Kurtis - An Attempt to Standardize My Username Across Platforms > functionoverfashion
11/20/2018 at 17:03

I actually just delivered some lumber to the American Magic team today and yesterday. No idea what they’re using laminate veneer lumber for, but they use a lot of it. I assume they do stuff other than build the race boat there, but still.

Poor_Sh > functionoverfashion
11/20/2018 at 17:34

I’ve been watching the US team practice recently. It, is, WICKED!

Kinja'd!!!

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Not my IG, it's a friend's who happened to be next to me at the time.

wafflesnfalafel > For Sweden
11/20/2018 at 21:59

You are absolutely right, it’s gonna be awesome. I think the teams that hesitated and didn’t jump on the new twin swing foil set up are going to regret it. The party will happen and they won’t be there.

“Arms spread wide off the starboard bow...”

functionoverfashion > Poor_Sh
11/21/2018 at 09:14

that is awesome, I’d love to see that in person. The cats were really amazing up close. I can only imagine what these things are going to be like at 75' - wild, to say the least.

functionoverfashion > HammerheadFistpunch
11/21/2018 at 09:17

I think with how new these things are, the teams building scale boats really want to test out their designs in the real world before going full scale. I guess NZ thinks they can just make changes to the foils, etc. but they already know enough and also trust their simulations explicitly, to just go all-in.

functionoverfashion > CaptDale - is secretly British
11/21/2018 at 09:26

I’m just going to have to disagree. I think the ‘13 cup was awesome to watch in part because of how they did the “TV” coverage - allowing it to be free on youtube, and having the crazy graphics all over the place with wind lines, lay lines, all that crap allowed people who don’t know much about sailing to really enjoy watching it. This can only be good for the sport, if you get people interested in watching who don’t understand watching boats going on the same tack for 3 hours out in the open ocean, or don’t get excited by that.

I will say, I think Bermuda wasn’t the best choice in terms of a venue. In theory, it’s great having a protected bay with lots of places to view the races, but not the waves of the open ocean. In practice, the wind was a little too light most of the time and then too much when it was really cranking. SF had better wind, in my opinion.

Watching these boats in person was pretty amazing, too, but again, in SF you’ll get a LOT more people there just because it’s already in a populated area, instead of on a tiny expensive island in the middle of the Atlantic.

As far as foiling, that’s definitely a polarizing thing in sailing right now. I think it’s amazing, and really taking the sport to a new extreme. I think the cats in 2017 where you had guys just literally cycling or cranking only to produce hy draulic power and not sailing at all, that was a step too far. The AC45's were much more traditionally mechanical (correct me if I’m wrong) and maybe just should have been the boats to use in the Cup itself, too.

I think about this a lot, can you tell?

functionoverfashion > That Bastard Kurtis - An Attempt to Standardize My Username Across Platforms
11/21/2018 at 09:28

Interesting... maybe prototypes, or even smaller scale models? Or, molds to make parts? That’s cool though, you should ask for a tour.

functionoverfashion > Bman76 (hates WS6 hoods, is on his phone and has 4 burners now)
11/21/2018 at 09:33

The only thing that bothered me was that before the 2017 Cup, all the participating teams at the time got together and decided, “hey instead of building a completely different set of boats every 4 years, let’s use the same ones and have an event every 2 years! Then in between we can do the World Series events to keep the interest of the public, and bring these amazing boats around to more venues!” Except NZ didn’t agree to that, and so (sad trombone) all the excitement around the cats was squelched.

Now, these boats DO look amazing, and maybe the every-2-year thing can be resurrected with this format; I suspect that whole debacle is why you don’t see more teams getting involved yet. Obviously these teams all have big money, but they put so much into the foiling cats and thought “hey this is great let’s keep doing it” but got the rug pulled out from under them.

functionoverfashion > 3point8isgreat
11/21/2018 at 09:37

You can still watch a lot of the 2017 highlights on Youtube. It’s pretty incredible to watch. They now sell kits to retrofit common, popular small sailboats (Lasers) with a foiling kit. My father in law has a Laser, I’m dying to get a foil kit for it.

Have you ever read the book Flight of the Zephyr? It was one of my favorite books as a kid and I have it now for my kids. It’s about a kid who learns to sail above the waves... I can’t help but think of that, it’s like realizing a childhood dream.

3point8isgreat > functionoverfashion
11/21/2018 at 12:46

I’ll have to take a look at the highlights! I feel like I’m going on a deep dive suddenly on how the heck fast sailboats work. Like finding out that they can definitely go faster than the wind, and that you do so by not going in the direction of the wind. I knew wings (sails) are weird and do weird things, but holy crap this gets crazy.

I didn’t realize you could get good sailboats that cheap (Lasers). I was expecting their price to be at least 10X that. How are they on maintenance compared to a motor boat? My dad’s boat growing up always had most of its problems with the engine itself, so surely a sailboat is better?

Unfortunately I haven’t read that. But it does sound like foiling would come pretty dang close!

Poor_Sh > functionoverfashion
11/21/2018 at 20:35

Oh I can't wait till the full size boats are testing. I'll get some pics up here now that i know there's interest

Funi > CaptDale - is secretly British
11/22/2018 at 11:37

Americas cup has never been about sailors out performing each other on the same equipment, but who has the best boat and can use it to it’s potential . It has always in it’s long history been about who can make the better boat, and has consistently been a proving ground for advanced boat technologies.

Sounds like you should be watching one design racing.