The Class Rule for the next America’s Cup yachts is due out this month – March 2014
While we are waiting for the rule to be announced, we have heard some ideas that have been floated for the Class Rule:
From Russell Coutts, CEO Oracle Team USA
- An overriding theme is an effort to reduce costs and increase media exposure, so that teams can provide a better return to their sponsors for significantly less money than was required last time.
From Pete Melvin, of Morelli & Melvin, leading the rule-writing process
- Confirmed the concept of foiling, wingsail catamaran
- Include safety considerations
- Reduce the cost of the entire campaign, meaning…
- Fewer sailors
- Fewer personnel involved in design and logistics
- Reduced construction cost
- Write the rule so it is easier to measure the boats and to administer
- Parts of the wing could be one design
- Make things one design if they absorb lots of design resource for little performance gain
From Nathan Outteridge, helmsman, Artemis Racing
- Make the wing small enough so that the gennaker is needed for downwind foiling – show the sailors hoisting, gybing and dropping sails. The sailors should be seen doing more than grinding.
- Have a real job for the bowman.
- Allow adjustable elevators on rudders for safety and to enable upwind foiling.
From Paul Bieker of Oracle Team USA
- We want to foil upwind in 12 knots of breeze and downwind in 8 knots.
From Tom Slingsby, Oracle Team USA strategist
- It has to be sailed in the most high performance, most spectacular boats, and foiling is the only way to do that properly.
- You don’t want any computer automated devices. You don’t want to make foiling easy.
- The load on the mainsheet for a soft sail would be so much higher than with a wing – the wingsail is definitely the way to go.