Don't Sleep On The Next Cup

Published: Wednesday, February 19, 2020
By: Ken Quant, Broad Reach Marketing

It’s not hard to blame any sailor for completely forgetting about the America’s Cup. After all, it’s already been two and a half years since the snooze in Bermuda, and the next event is still over a year away. Any general market momentum gained during the exciting 2013 foiling cat event in San Francisco has also long since faded. Was that an opportunity lost? Perhaps. But don’t sleep on the upcoming 2021 regatta in Auckland. Competitors in this next race are truly pushing monohull sailboat design to unimaginable heights with the advent of the new AC75 boats.

The wild offspring of the cat fight in the Bay, these new AC75s have shed a hull, yet kept the wings that allow them to fly above the water like their parents. Yes, for all you America’s Cup purists out there, this means that the next event will be sailed in monohulls. But these aren’t your father’s 10 meters. These are carbon fueled rocket ships with large and spectacularly shaped foils that defy all tradition and promise top speeds over 50 knots. More at home in a sci-fi movie than a boat yard, these new boats promise F1 style and technological intrigue with design rules that hold the promise of close racing action.

In an effort to keep costs down and the competition close, each of the five scheduled participants will have to design their boats to fit into a carefully developed “box” rule. These constraints strictly control the parameters of each boat, but still allow for significant experimentation in their 20-meter hull shape. The mast tubes, rigging, and foils arms will be standard for each boat, but how each team incorporates them will largely be left to the designers. They will also be developing a new “soft wing” sail design that promises to trickle down into regular sailing in the future. The articulating foils will be battery powered, but all other operations will be limited to hand power. This eliminates the controversial Tour de France bike athletes used in the event in Bermuda. Besides the basic hull shape, the trick with these boats promises to be how the crews work together to deploy the two main foils. Early sailing tests show them staying up on foil even through tacks.

According to Glenn Ashby, skipper of the recently launched defender boat, Emirates Team New Zealand, “It won’t be without nerves the first time we go sailing. The AC75s are big, powerful, and fast boats so they will be a handful, but from our understanding through our simulations, they are inherently a safer boat to sail than what we have sailed in the past two America’s Cups. As with any new boat, it is all about slowly getting it up to speed, learning how to sail it most efficiently, pushing the development of the designs.”

Scheduled to start in March of 2021, the next America’s Cup still seems to be a bit over the horizon in this age of instantaneous media satisfaction. However, the event the New Zealanders have concocted seems to hold promise for techies and racing purists alike. With top end monohull speeds that seemed impossible just a few years ago, significant one-design rule constraints, and a high visibility venue like Auckland, the next America’s Cup may just be set to return to its throne as the world’s premiere sailing event.