Britain's America's Cup challenge

jwilson said:
Foiling cats, and I believe they will be able to have real foils not weird shaped "daggerboards" that just happened (what a surprise) to be able to act as foils. Foils were AFAIK banned last time!

The bit that worried me for Ben etc was that I read that the challengers were only allowed to build one full AC boat each, whilst the defenders were allowed two. Everyone knows the way to go fast is to have two boats and incrementally tune/tweak/modify them against each other, so the odds are stacked heavily against all challengers if that is true.
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I presume the rationale being that the challengers will improve racing against each other whereas the defender will come into the series without having had that advantage so would be allowed 2 boats so they race against themselves.

Even so it seems a bit unfair
 
Two Boats. But both must come out of the same mould and they cannot launch the second one until the warm up events (that they get to sail in) are over and the challenger series is on. They're also not allowed to race the second one in the cup itself, strictly a tune up boat.

Could possibly be the most expensive race boat ever that never actually does any racing.

I'm starting to think that this is the best chance in a very long time for a successful British challenge.
 
I believe that each team will only be allowed 2 wings (so the yanks will have 2 boats and 2 wings, and everyone else will have 1 boat and 2 wings. The 2 USA boats have to be from the same moulds, and as they won't be doing the round robins, they will have to get their speed up by 2-boat tuning. However, if they break a wing mast, they will then only have 1 left for the cup boat.
 
Bobc said:
I believe that each team will only be allowed 2 wings (so the yanks will have 2 boats and 2 wings, and everyone else will have 1 boat and 2 wings. The 2 USA boats have to be from the same moulds, and as they won't be doing the round robins, they will have to get their speed up by 2-boat tuning. However, if they break a wing mast, they will then only have 1 left for the cup boat.
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Unless there's a limit on the number of foils, a team with a big budget will have a huge advantage.
Unless it's very light air, the hull is not that important any more.
 
lw395 said:
Unless there's a limit on the number of foils, a team with a big budget will have a huge advantage.
Unless it's very light air, the hull is not that important any more.
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Presumably this will mean that potentially there's a lot more mileage in the development of foils over wing development; does that mean you need a really good hydrodynamicist, as oppose to aero, or is it all much of a muchness with foiling cats?
 
The team so far are:-

Investor Group and Board Members

Sir Charles Dunstone - Founding Shareholder and Chairman
Sir Keith Mills GBE - Founding Shareholder and Board Member
Chris Bake - Founding Shareholder and Board Member
Peter Dubens - Founding Shareholder
Robert Elliott - Independent Board Member
Lord Michael Grade CBE - Independent Board Member
Lord Irvine Laidlaw - Founding Shareholder
Ian Taylor - Founding Shareholder
Jon Wood – Founding Shareholder and Board Member

Management Team

Sir Ben Ainslie (GBR) – Team Principal and Skipper
Jono Macbeth (NZL) – Sailing Team Manager and Sailor
Andy Claughton (GBR) – Technical Director
Andy Hindley (GBR) – Chief Operating Officer and Chief Finance Officer
James Stagg (GBR) – Shore Team Manager
Jo Grindley (GBR) – Head of Commercial, Marketing, Communications and Events

Design Team

Andy Claughton (GBR) – Design and Naval Architecture
Dirk Kramers (NED/USA) – Design and Engineering
Clay Oliver (USA) – Design and Performance Simulation
Rodrigo Azcueta (ARG) – Design and Computational Fluid Dynamics
Luc du Bois (SUI) – Instrumentation and Performance Analysis
Francisco Azevedo (POR) – 3D Modelling
Jason Ker (GBR) – Design and Naval Architecture
Matteo Ledri (ITA) – Computational Fluid Dynamics
Johannes Mausolf (GER) – Performance Prediction and Software Development
Benjamin Muyl (FRA) – Design and Naval Architecture
Simon Schofield (GBR) – 3D Design and Modelling
Benjamin Vernieres (FRA) – 3D Modelling

Sailing Team

Sir Ben Ainslie (GBR) – Skipper
Jono Macbeth (NZL) – Sailing Team Manager
Andy McLean (NZL)– Sailing and Design Team Liaison
David Carr (GBR) – Sailing Team
Matt Cornwell (GBR) – Sailing Team
Nick Hutton (GBR) – Sailing Team
 
Dirk Kramer the designer has been on the winning side of in the America's Cup six times so he could be chief designer. Other news : The budget is £80 million the team has raised 40% of that but hasn't yet got a headline sponsor. Keith Mills was the deputy chairman of the London 2012 Olympics so he should have good contacts to take the project forward. Fingers crossed.
 
KellysEye said:
Dirk Kramer the designer has been on the winning side of in the America's Cup six times so he could be chief designer. Other news : The budget is £80 million the team has raised 40% of that but hasn't yet got a headline sponsor. Keith Mills was the deputy chairman of the London 2012 Olympics so he should have good contacts to take the project forward. Fingers crossed.
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Quote from the press release "Technical Director and two-time America's Cup winner Andy Claughton (GBR) will lead the design team".
 
Given Ian Taylor's involvement, I'd suspect they'll be formal backing from either Vitol or some other oil industry related company.

It's good to also have the chap who heads the company that owns the North Marine Group these days.
 
jwilson said:
Everyone knows the way to go fast is to have two boats and incrementally tune/tweak/modify them against each other, so the odds are stacked heavily against all challengers if that is true.
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Or to get a fancy automatic stability package from Boeing. -Allegedly! :rolleyes:
 
I remember in the Fremantle AC - the only AC worth watching before last year - ' Stars and Stripes ' had a stick-on finish developed by McDonnel Aerospace consisting of tiny ' riblets ' in a sharkskin finish to try to eliminate boundary layer drag; seemed a good idea to me but apparently it hasn't been taken up further, does anyone know the gen' on this please ?
 
Seajet said:
I remember in the Fremantle AC - the only AC worth watching before last year - ' Stars and Stripes ' had a stick-on finish developed by McDonnel Aerospace consisting of tiny ' riblets ' in a sharkskin finish to try to eliminate boundary layer drag; seemed a good idea to me but apparently it hasn't been taken up further, does anyone know the gen' on this please ?
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I have developed a similar surface finish using under-thinned antifouling and a worn 4" brush. Works a treat!
 
Seajet said:
I remember in the Fremantle AC - the only AC worth watching before last year - ' Stars and Stripes ' had a stick-on finish developed by McDonnel Aerospace consisting of tiny ' riblets ' in a sharkskin finish to try to eliminate boundary layer drag; seemed a good idea to me but apparently it hasn't been taken up further, does anyone know the gen' on this please ?
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Ah yes, 'Dennis's Rubber Johnnie' as the Kiwis called it. The 12 Metre Association banned it immediately after the Cup. During the IACC era anything of this nature was very specifically banned.

In the run up to the DoG match between Oracle and Alinghi, Oracle were trialling a motor pump based system that released a specially developed fluid through outlets in the hull, to reduce drag in a similar way. The trials were inconclusive and the legality of the system was uncertain, as it could be argued that pushing fluid out of hull apertures under pressure (however low) could constitute a form of illegal propulsion. In the end the performance advantage was more or less outweighed by the weight of the pump etc.
 
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