Americas Cup - and Alinghi drops out

[Chris 249]

I think that invoking the word "can" here is dangerously optimistic! As it involves people who are currently doing very well thank you driving the cup this way to accept that they need to do a little bit less well to drive the cup that way. And the nature of the cup is such that those people are setting the rules....

The entire history of racing is chock full of examples of a decent fleet of fun boats springing up, almost organically, and everyone having a lot of fun until the "wrong" people get involved and outspend everyone and spoil the fun.
Just in my time racing in the solent I can think of so many examples of that. A look at the number of boats entered this season compared to last, and the number for sale, suggests that the Cape 31s might be the latest example.

Good points about the particular classes, but I was unclear. I meant that the way of thinking in its wider application - ie that promoting extreme performance will lead to more people taking up sailing - has been adopted by people like World Sailing and the sailing media and that’s harmed the sport. We’ve had decades of evidence that promoting extreme performance types does not promote the sport, but those runnng the sport still manage to ignore it.

Classic examples can be seen to be the collapse of windsurfing when it shifted to promoting high performance, and the failure of the high-performance skiff types and hydrofoiling boats to become “the future of the sport” as their promoters said they would be. The basis of the competitive sport is still racer/cruiser monos and hiking medium-speed dinghies and yet the “leaders” of the sport seem to keep on ignoring that and promoting types that most people just don’t want.

 

[bedouin]

1- There seems to be zero evidence that the AC is a inherently “a private race” - it was specifically open for a challenge from 'any recognised club', and it’s been challenged for by a dinghy club which didn’t even have a clubhouse. Nor did RHYC when it challenged. The second challenger, Cuthbert, represented the Bay of Quinte YC - a club where the champion at the time was a 27ft LOA cruiser/racer and not a hangout for the “very rich”. Bond’s second challenge was from the Sun City YC, a volunteer club mainly for dinghies. In the 1800s the Cup was defended for the NYYC by three boats from Boston because the NYYC specifically allowed boats from their rival city - hardly evidence of a “private race”.

It is now very much a "private race". It is entirely controlled by the defender and the challenger of record - no one else gets a say. That seems to be why Alinghi have dropped out.

TNZ and Athena/RYS can keep this up as long as they want to and there is nothing anyone can do about it - unless they are allowed to enter a Challenger series and actually win the Cup.

 

[Chris 249]

It is now very much a "private race". It is entirely controlled by the defender and the challenger of record - no one else gets a say. That seems to be why Alinghi have dropped out.

TNZ and Athena/RYS can keep this up as long as they want to and there is nothing anyone can do about it - unless they are allowed to enter a Challenger series and actually win the Cup.

Is that enough to make it a private race? I’d have thought a “private race” was one which was open only to certain clubs or people - the Cup is open to an entry from any organised club (etc) that can afford the fee.

It’s just having a different set of organisers, with the same sort of control as many other organisers. The challenger and DoR organise an event like a class association, club or manufacturer does and then people decide whether to enter. The entry fee is high but so are the fees for many big-boat events - surely the Maxi and TP52 charge a lot. The organisers have bias but so do others, like manufacturers who organise events for their brand and may tilt it towards making their current boats look better than the old ones.

 

[dunedin]

Is that enough to make it a private race? I’d have thought a “private race” was one which was open only to certain clubs or people - the Cup is open to an entry from any organised club (etc) that can afford the fee.

....

There probably is no formal definition of a "private race".
But an event where the rules are set by the holder of the cup, who then decides whether to accept challenges, was my reason for using the term.
As opposed to an event like a regular world championship or Olympics organised under rules and NoR approved by ISAF.

But if you don't like the boats used by AC, go win it and you can then choose whatever class you want - even 12m for the oldies.

 

[bedouin]

Is that enough to make it a private race? I’d have thought a “private race” was one which was open only to certain clubs or people - the Cup is open to an entry from any organised club (etc) that can afford the fee.

It’s just having a different set of organisers, with the same sort of control as many other organisers. The challenger and DoR organise an event like a class association, club or manufacturer does and then people decide whether to enter. The entry fee is high but so are the fees for many big-boat events - surely the Maxi and TP52 charge a lot. The organisers have bias but so do others, like manufacturers who organise events for their brand and may tilt it towards making their current boats look better than the old ones.

But only if the holder and CoR agree. It would be entirely possible for ETNZ and Athena to keep the competition between themselves for the next 100 years - there is no obligation to hold any form of challengers' competition.

I don't know any other sailing event where the rules and the boats are totally changed for every competition. Even F1 they keep the rules constant for many races before changing them. For it to be meaningful you need to keep the rules unchanged for long enough that people can develop and evolve their boats.

Whatever rule they choose now should be fixed for the next 3 or 4 cups and then changed based on that experience

 

[Muddy32]

Having looked at the last lot videos, of 12m's racing , all sailors from Opis to Maxis, can understand and relate to the racing. Hence they are interested, and will watch.
Preparation, speed, crew skills, wind, tide, Sails used [nice to see spinnaker hoists], all something we can appreciate.

Fast flyers- a spectacle only.= I certainly haven't bothered, watching or following.

 

[flaming]

Is that enough to make it a private race? I’d have thought a “private race” was one which was open only to certain clubs or people - the Cup is open to an entry from any organised club (etc) that can afford the fee.

It’s just having a different set of organisers, with the same sort of control as many other organisers. The challenger and DoR organise an event like a class association, club or manufacturer does and then people decide whether to enter. The entry fee is high but so are the fees for many big-boat events - surely the Maxi and TP52 charge a lot. The organisers have bias but so do others, like manufacturers who organise events for their brand and may tilt it towards making their current boats look better than the old ones.

I think that when the yacht club about to win the cup hide their Commodore away from the world on a superyacht and invite the Commodore of the club that they want to challenge for the next one under rules that they will agree with to be on the same boat ready to challenge before anyone else has a chance to....

Arguing it's not a private event is an uphill task.

 

[flaming]

Having looked at the last lot videos, of 12m's racing , all sailors from Opis to Maxis, can understand and relate to the racing. Hence they are interested, and will watch.
Preparation, speed, crew skills, wind, tide, Sails used [nice to see spinnaker hoists], all something we can appreciate.

Fast flyers- a spectacle only.= I certainly haven't bothered, watching or following.

My view was that it was not sailing.

It was a different, new, sport loosely related to sailing that I was "trying out" as a spectator. Maybe akin to watching motocross if you're an F1 fan... Or Rugby league if you're a union fan.

I actually quite liked it as a spectator sport, but I don't think it had much to do with my hobby....

 

[Chris 249]

Okay, happy to agree that my definition of “private race” may be incorrect.

I can’t see how SGP isn’t sailing unless one wants to say that a wing isn’t a sail. That’s an arguable position but there have been rigid wings in many classes over the past century and no one seemed to say that the classic Moths, International Canoes, Bembridge Redwings and the like that used rigid wings weren’t “sailing” when they were racing boats of the same class. Foiling is just another form of sailing - otherwise one would be switching sports mid-race when the craft dropped off the foils and became a “normal” craft again. When we can just chuck foils under a Laser and get it foiling it seems pretty obvious it’s the same sport.

But yes, the SGP and Cup are so different to what the vast majority of sailors do that they are largely irrelevant - and the foiling AC boats have been around for long enough that if they were ever going to inspire craft with widespread popular appeal we would have seen it by now. Other branches of the sport have grown dramatically in much shorter time frames so no one can say there hasn't been enough time. The mainstream of the sport has lost its connection with something that used to be a major driver of useful mainstream development, and there hasn't been a corresponding gain elsewhere. That seems to be a sum loss to the sport but will those who are fixated on promotion through extreme performance ever open their minds up to the reality?

 

[flaming]

Okay, happy to agree that my definition of “private race” may be incorrect.

I can’t see how SGP isn’t sailing unless one wants to say that a wing isn’t a sail. That’s an arguable position but there have been rigid wings in many classes over the past century and no one seemed to say that the classic Moths, International Canoes, Bembridge Redwings and the like that used rigid wings weren’t “sailing” when they were racing boats of the same class. Foiling is just another form of sailing - otherwise one would be switching sports mid-race when the craft dropped off the foils and became a “normal” craft again. When we can just chuck foils under a Laser and get it foiling it seems pretty obvious it’s the same sport.

But yes, the SGP and Cup are so different to what the vast majority of sailors do that they are largely irrelevant - and the foiling AC boats have been around for long enough that if they were ever going to inspire craft with widespread popular appeal we would have seen it by now. Other branches of the sport have grown dramatically in much shorter time frames so no one can say there hasn't been enough time. The mainstream of the sport has lost its connection with something that used to be a major driver of useful mainstream development, and there hasn't been a corresponding gain elsewhere. That seems to be a sum loss to the sport but will those who are fixated on promotion through extreme performance ever open their minds up to the reality?

Ok, maybe "not sailing" is a bit strong, but both sail GP and the cup bear so little resemblance to what I do, that it really is like a different sport.

I think if you gave our crew a 12, or even an IACC boat, a few pointers and a few hours of practice we could probably get it around the course. Doubt we'd win anything, but we could probably sail the thing. Give us an F50, or an AC75, and I doubt we'd get it moving. Let alone around the track. That doesn't make it better or worse, it just means that it's different.

The irony is that the foiling has actually driven developments in other areas, not yachting... For example Artemis Technologies were around this weekend in Cowes, showing off their electric foiling workboat, and they've got an order for the redjet passenger ferry. A quick look at their "who's who" page shows the link to the cup....
Artemis Technologies | Our People

 

[dunedin]

……

But yes, the SGP and Cup are so different to what the vast majority of sailors do that they are largely irrelevant - and the foiling AC boats have been around for long enough that if they were ever going to inspire craft with widespread popular appeal we would have seen it by now. Other branches of the sport have grown dramatically in much shorter time frames so no one can say there hasn't been enough time. The mainstream of the sport has lost its connection with something that used to be a major driver of useful mainstream development, and there hasn't been a corresponding gain elsewhere. That seems to be a sum loss to the sport but will those who are fixated on promotion through extreme performance ever open their minds up to the reality?

Interesting, which “other branches of the sport have grown dramatically”? Very few aspects of sailing have grown at all, as opposed to dramatically. Traditional club racing seems to be struggling to get attendances.

One of the few growth areas seems to have been foiling devices - Moths have been a fore-runner, with the foiling class masssively bigger and more competitive than when was low rider days, and Waspz class getting big turnouts. Plus various other foiling or semi foiling classes springing up.
Plus in ocean races, the Vendee Globe records have been torn apart by the nee generation of almost fully foiling Open 60s. And all the other round the world records now being set by huge foiling trimarans - even sailed solo.

Foiling boards and kite boards another growth areas. And foiling electric powerboats will be another big thing when costs come down.
So the only growth areas seem to be foiling these days?

 

[Chris 249]

Interesting, which “other branches of the sport have grown dramatically”? Very few aspects of sailing have grown at all, as opposed to dramatically. Traditional club racing seems to be struggling to get attendances.

One of the few growth areas seems to have been foiling devices - Moths have been a fore-runner, with the foiling class masssively bigger and more competitive than when was low rider days, and Waspz class getting big turnouts. Plus various other foiling or semi foiling classes springing up.
Plus in ocean races, the Vendee Globe records have been torn apart by the nee generation of almost fully foiling Open 60s. And all the other round the world records now being set by huge foiling trimarans - even sailed solo.

Foiling boards and kite boards another growth areas. And foiling electric powerboats will be another big thing when costs come down.
So the only growth areas seem to be foiling these days?

Many “other branches of the sport” have grown dramatically in the past in much shorter time frames than the period since the foilers came into the America’s Cup. That was about 12 years ago. So if we look at the past (not to be obsessed with it but to give us a guide on how quickly a branch of a sport can grow) we see over a period of about a dozen years;

* Ocean racing as we know it (ie small boats sailed with amateurs) started in the UK with the 1925 Fastnet which was raced among cruisers. Thirteen years later, there was a very strong international offshore scene in Europe; the RORC had about 175 active boats, and there were dozens of boats being launched for ocean racing including specialised racing machines like Maid of Malham.

* Windsurfing as we know it launched in 1968 and thirteen years later about 300,000 boards were being sold each year and there was a huge racing circuit;

* Kiting as we know it because in about 1984, started a bit slowly, but 20 years later there was a claimed 200,000 kiters.

* The “skiffs are the future” hype started in the late ‘90s with the 49er, Laser 5000, Buzz etc and within a few years there were about 400+ skiff types doing nationals in the UK.

* One can say that sportsboats as we know them (ie Melges 24) started around 1990, quickly grew with classes like the SB20 etc and these days there are thousands of them around the world.

One can give many more examples - the rise in shorthanded sailing both in its early OSTAR days and now in its modern form under IRC etc; the amazing dinghy boom, the arrival of the Laser, etc etc etc. The thing is that sailing will often actually pick up a new trend quickly.

So how much influence have the foiling AC classes had? The whole AC72 thing collapsed after one Cup. The 50s morphed into the SGP series and inspired the EFT26 (which only seems to have nine boats) and the TF 35 which has seven boats. The other class it inspired, the GC 32, collapsed completely. There was a foiling Gunboat 40 which fell over and seems to be dead. The AC75s have created one boat outside the Cup, in the form of Flying Nikka. So basically, three foiling Cup classes have led to about 30 active boats of similar design, over 13 years. That’s far from being widely influential.

The Cup did help inspire foiling A Class cats, I think. There’s about 630 active A Class in the world and about half of them are foilers, with the percentage of foilers dropping in many countries. The Nacra class is tiny. So there’s about 300-350 small cats in the world that may have been inspired by the Cup over the past 13 years. That’s a tiny influence compared to other big shifts within the sport - and I think the Moths and C Class inspired foiling As before the Cup did.

The Moth wasn’t inspired by the AC foilers - the foiling Moth was very well established as dominant in the class by 2005, years before the Cup went foiling. The Moth class isn’t actually very big these days - the recently class reports speak of 71 boats (many non-foilers) in Australia, 28 in the USA, 100-ish in the UK and Germany, about 20 boats in France, NZ, etc. So the Cup didn’t bring long-term big fleets to the Moths and dinghy foiling is still a niche that is only growing slowly if at all despite the Waszp.

The semi-foiling offshore boats were around literally decades before the Cup went foiling. Among the first successful offshore semi-foilers were Tabarly’s tri "Paul Ricard" of 1979 vintage; Ker Cadelac in ’83; 1984’s 25.8m Charles Hiedsick, which was designe for a twin-skin main hanging off a wingmast (a la AC72!), full foiling AND ground effect lift. In terms of big boats that actually fully foiled, the Cup was late - L’Hydroptere was launched in 1994. So given that offshore boats were foiling, both semi and completely, long before the Cup went foiling it seems pretty clear that the Cup was not the motivator for the offshore foilers.

I don’t think wingfoiling and windfoiling take any inspiration or anything at all from the Cup.

So in total, in terms of boats afloat one can say that the foiling era in the Cup has put maybe 300-350 small cats and 30 bigger multis afloat. Over the same sort of time frame, other innovations have launched hundreds of big boats, thousands of sportsboats, and hundreds of thousands of boards. In terms of actually getting craft and people on the water, rather than inspiring journos who don’t foil to tell others that they should be foiling, the foiling Cups seems to have done extraordinarily little to inspire sailors to follow a similar course.

 

[Chris 249]

I think if you gave our crew a 12, or even an IACC boat, a few pointers and a few hours of practice we could probably get it around the course. Doubt we'd win anything, but we could probably sail the thing. Give us an F50, or an AC75, and I doubt we'd get it moving. Let alone around the track. That doesn't make it better or worse, it just means that it's different.

The irony is that the foiling has actually driven developments in other areas, not yachting... For example Artemis Technologies were around this weekend in Cowes, showing off their electric foiling workboat, and they've got an order for the redjet passenger ferry. A quick look at their "who's who" page shows the link to the cup....
Artemis Technologies | Our People

I got dropped onto the bow of a 12 in a class race at the New York Yacht Club, and it was just like sailing a typical 50+ footer back home and essentially the same as running the bow on a First 40.7 which was one of the world’s best selling boats at the time. The guys who sail the 12s regularly off Newport are often just normal amateurs. The IRC maxis of the middle of the IACC era were very, very similar in rig to the Cup boats (but with lighter hulls) and they were just normal big-boats to sail the couple of times I tried.

So yep, a good “mainstream” yacht crew could have got a 12 around a course, as many of them did and still do, and the IACC boats were also fairly mainstream in many ways if high-powered and fragile from reputation. In contrast the only guy I know who has talked about sailing a foiling AC boat says it’s a completely different thing to anything else he’s ever done. The Cup is no longer something that many mainstream sailors can relate to.

 

[dunedin]

Many “other branches of the sport” have grown dramatically in the past in much shorter time frames than the period since the foilers came into the America’s Cup. .....

But let's look at current day not last century - you implied other branches of the sport (non foiling) had recently grown dramatically.
So name one area of the sport that has "grown dramatically" in the past 10 years (ie 2015 on)

PS And 12m AC hardly drove the boom in dinghy racing or offshore racing which preceded them in the AC, but let's stick with current era

 

[flaming]

But let's look at current day notl last century - you implied other branches of the sport (non foiling) had recently grown dramatically.
So name one area of the sport that has "grown dramatically" in the past 10 years (ie 2015 on)

offshore doublehanded.

But generally I agree, this is a sport in gentle decline.

 

[Chris 249]

But let's look at current day notl last century - you implied other branches of the sport (non foiling) had recently grown dramatically.
So name one area of the sport that has "grown dramatically" in the past 10 years (ie 2015 on)

No I did NOT “imply other branches of the sport (non foiling) had recently grown dramatically.

What I said was that “other branches of the sport have grown dramatically in much shorter time frames so no one can say there hasn't been enough time”. There was NO reference to such growth being recent at all. There was NO reference to chronology at all. I did NOT say or imply what you claim I did.

Using past data to measure the current state or progress of a an activity is so common that it seems weird that it gets opposition. No one ignores the past measurements of human lifespan, GDP, temperatures or other data so why this apparent reaction to using the same sort of information to give us information about where sailing is and could be going? What else do you suggest we use to measure trends and possibilities?

It’s arguably not surprising that other areas of sailing have in general not grown because so much of the promotion, in various ways, is going to foiling boats which has not shown major growth despite that promotion. This goes to the crux of the matter, arguably - sailing is heavily promoting a rather inaccessible, expensive part of the sport and that’s not what most people want. Not even most current sailors want it. That means that the parts of the sport that could possibly experience growth are being ignored.

However, there are some bright spots. Look at shorthanding under ORC/IRC rules. In RORC racing and the Sydney-Hobart it now attracts 25% of the fleet. A discipline that gets 98 offshore racers entered into one club, with similar success around the world, is arguably a hell of a lot more successful than AC foiling which has seen so little take-up of similar craft. It’s an example where grass-roots lower-hassle sailing has grown dramatically faster than hyper-performance.

There’s also some other successful smaller areas. The re-design of the original Windsurfer, which updated the board but retained the old emphasis on simplicity, got 340 entrants to its second world titles and is the top selling windsurfer in the world, ahead of the foiling IQ Foil. The Melges 15 seems to be going very well with an alleged 850 boats in four years showing that a boat designed to fit the mainstream will sell well. The J/70 as an individual class has gone very well with about 1900 boats sold in 11 years.


Wingfoiling, the slowest form of foiling under sail, is obviously doing really well and windfoiling is going quite well - but that’s nothing to do with the Cup. Board foiling uses very different concepts and one of wingfoiling’s big attractions is its low hassle - it’s attracting people from faster but more complex foilers.

The theme of success seems pretty simple - make it go moderately quick, make it simple and market it well and it will sell. Hype up extreme performance and it won’t sell. And when discussion about the future of the America’s Cup and its influence on the sport are under discussion it seems hard to see why anyone would want to ignore looking at some of the evidence on the issue.

 

[flaming]

Using past data to measure the current state or progress of a an activity is so common that it seems weird that it gets opposition. No one ignores the past measurements of human lifespan, GDP, temperatures or other data so why this apparent reaction to using the same sort of information to give us information about where sailing is and could be going? What else do you suggest we use to measure trends and possibilities?

Because the data from the cup is really rather old, and to make that insight valid it assumes that the same basic conditions in the world exist, and without getting all political, I'm not so sure that's valid.

 

[flaming]

The theme of success seems pretty simple - make it go moderately quick, make it simple and market it well and it will sell. Hype up extreme performance and it won’t sell.

This I absolutely agree with. And why I fear for the future of the doublehanded class, with the latest launches going very much in the other direction. My own boat was part of the heavy growth part of that story, but the current model in the JPK lineup doing the same job is over £300k to put on the water, and rates about 70 points higher. That's barely in the same race....

 

[Ingwe]

This I absolutely agree with. And why I fear for the future of the doublehanded class, with the latest launches going very much in the other direction. My own boat was part of the heavy growth part of that story, but the current model in the JPK lineup doing the same job is over £300k to put on the water, and rates about 70 points higher. That's barely in the same race....

I think the one hope for the double handed class is if the First 30 turns out to be fairly competitive as it is a much more reachable price point and they already have orders for up to hull 98, although I suspect most will be going to europe.

 

[Chris 249]

Because the data from the cup is really rather old, and to make that insight valid it assumes that the same basic conditions in the world exist, and without getting all political, I'm not so sure that's valid.

On the front page of my paper’s site today, for example, lots of journos are using much older data to back up claims about economics, politics and , and they are also dealing with a world that has changed. Websites for my other sports contain plenty of references to the past. So it’s hard to see why evidence that can be useful should be discarded.

To look just at the present, the maxi scene seems to be doing well while the Cup entries are not looking good, which indicates that plenty of people are happy to spend lots of money on racing yachts - just not Cup boats.