A traditional Cup?

There’s still plenty of sailboat racing in boats big and small where the sailors don’t wear helmets and body armour, and we can see them scampering across the deck during tacks and gybes, hoists and drops, trimming and changing sails. But those sights are gone from the America’s Cup.

In motor racing, we haven’t seen drivers sprint across the track to start the 24 Hours of Le Mans since 1969. In F1, we used to be able to recognise Stirling Moss, Graham Hill, Jackie Stewart or Ayrton Senna as their car flashed by. F1 drivers’ HANS safety system and helmets now hide their identity, and the halo keeps them safe but hides them from view. Cockpit cameras and augmented reality graphics provide compelling TV images.

America’s Cup racing was never as dangerous as grand prix, but the quest for speed and technical advances have changed the spectator experience for both. The appeal of sailing comes from the many disciplines and classes.

Sailing and sailboat racing are, of course, more than the America’s Cup, but it is revered by many as the pinnacle of our sport. Likewise, motorsport has a seemingly infinite variety of cars, trucks, motorcycles, formats and events, but F1 is revered by many as the pinnacle of motorsport.

Technology has always been at the heart of the America’s Cup. Five members of the New York Yacht Club sent the yacht America to England during the Great Exposition of 1851. Britain, at the time the world’s leader in manufacturing, invited all nations to bring their wares to the exposition in London to show off their technology. The Royal Yacht Squadron (RYS) extended a similar invitation to yacht clubs of all nations to head to Cowes for a race around the Isle of Wight.

Compared to the British yachts, America had a different hull shape, sharply raked masts and tightly woven sailcloth.

The Marquess of Anglesey, hero of the Battle of Waterloo, founding member of the Royal Yacht Squadron and keen yachtsman, donated to the RYS the silver ewer that became the America’s Cup.

After comparing America’s hull shape to the British yachts, he declared he must have been sailing his yacht Pearl stern foremost.

The America’s Cup is governed by the 1887 Deed of Gift, which specifies that yachts must be constructed in the country of the yacht club they represent. It says nothing about the nationality of the sailors. The competition for the America’s Cup was established to compare the naval architecture of competing countries. How did this evolve over the 173 years since that fateful race during the Great Exposition?

In the first two defences of the America’s Cup, in 1870 and 1871, Franklin Osgood’s yachts Magic and Mischief were both centreboard schooners. In other words, these yachts had moveable ballast. From 1893 to 1920, Nathanael Green Herreshoff designed the winning defenders in six America’s Cup matches, all with the most advanced technology of their day. Herreshoff invented sail tracks to attach the mainsail to the mast, replacing hoops. He experimented with materials, testing them to destruction, in order to increase strength and decrease the weight of components.

The crew of his 1903 masterpiece Reliance could pump water into and out of the rudder to change how the yacht handled, according to conditions. The mainsheet was over 300 metres long, tapered at both ends and 10 centimetres thick in the middle. It was wound in around a drum below decks.

In the 1930s, Sir T.O.M. Sopwith applied aircraft technologies to his J Class challengers Endeavour and Endeavour II. Lightweight aluminium masts reduced weight aloft and their aerofoil shape improved air flow over the sails. Rod rigging was stronger, lighter and had less stretch than wire rope. Endeavour’s Park Avenue boom was wide enough for two sailors to walk abreast on it – hence the name. The foot of the mainsail was attached to the boom on a series of tracks that could be adjusted individually to change the shape of the foot of the mainsail.

Endeavour was almost certainly faster than Harold Vanderbilt’s successful defender Rainbow, but an unfortunate misunderstanding with his professional crew led Sopwith to replace his professionals with less experienced amateurs who were no match for the crew of Rainbow.

In 1937, designer Olin Stephens played a central role in the creation of the super-J Ranger, dominant defender against Endeavour II. Two decades later, Stephens designed Intrepid, the 12 Metre Class yacht that dominated the 1967 match, in part thanks to the end-plate effect of her low boom, getting the mainsail close to the deck.

Then, in 1983, Australian designer Ben Lexcen’s winged keel on Australia II provided the technical advantage and speed that allowed the Australians to pry the coveted silver trophy away from the New York Yacht Club. The five editions of the America’s Cup from 1992 through 2007 were raced in the International America’s Cup Class (IACC) yachts, the last yachts with lead keels to compete for the trophy.

Computing power had advanced enough to allow designers to fine-tune their creations using computational fluid dynamics and finite element analysis. Composite materials of carbon fibre, Nomex and aluminium honeycomb bonded with epoxy resin allowed stiff yachts whose hulls weighed less than 2 tonnes and could withstand the forces from 20 tonnes of lead in the keel and 50 tonnes of pressure from the rigging. The IACC yachts were the last to use spinnakers and have sail changes during racing for the America’s Cup.

In 2010, Golden Gate Yacht Club’s 90-foot trimaran used a wingsail – the largest wing of any kind ever built – to overpower the Swiss defender’s giant catamaran. The 2013 competition in San Francisco was raced in 72-foot hydrofoiling catamarans with wingsails taller than a 12-storey building. At speeds over 40 knots, designers needed to deal with aerodynamic drag above the water and cavitation around the foils below the surface. After nearly capturing the Cup in 2013, Team New Zealand won it in Bermuda in 2017 in 50-foot versions of the catamarans used four years earlier in San Francisco.

The Kiwi sailors mastered the fast but relatively unstable foils their designers created, and they surprised everyone by introducing bicycle-style pedalling stations instead of arm-powered grinding pedestals. They could generate more power than other teams to run the hydraulic systems for trimming the wingsail and adjusting the hydrofoils. They also had their hands free, allowing their flight controller to control the foils with a joystick and an electronic display.

As the new defender, the New Zealanders introduced an audacious concept for the 2021 America’s Cup – a foiling monohull called the AC75, with a double-skinned soft mainsail.

The 2024 version of the AC75 is lighter, with a smaller crew and bigger foil wings. The distribution of forces and loads is actually similar to those of a trimaran, but instead of riding on an outrigger-like float, the yacht rides on a hydrofoil.

The AC75 yachts are so fast that their apparent wind is always forward and there’s no such thing as a downwind sail like a spinnaker or a Code 0. The crew of eight are barely visible, staying low in their cockpits to reduce aero drag.

Since 1851, the yachts racing for the America’s Cup have continuously applied the best technology of their day to become faster – the sailors always want a yacht that’s faster than their competition. You could make a strong argument, therefore, that technology and the quest for more speed are the real traditions of the America’s Cup.

But, for those fans who appreciate the majesty of big boats with big crews and big spinnakers, take heart! The J Class is thriving. Resurrected by the heroic restoration of Endeavour by Elizabeth Meyers in the 1980s, a fleet of J Class yachts will hold their World Championship in Barcelona in October, during the America’s Cup. Embrace the amazing technology of the AC75s and enjoy the spectacle of the J Class racing!

americascup.com