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Spithill Avoids Amputation

Last August, Oracle helmsman Jimmy Spithill had surgery on a tendon he tore in his left elbow during the Portsmouth America’s Cup World Series. Trying to be ready for the September World Series in Toulon, he got the wound wet and picked up a severe infection. Facing a possible amputation, he underwent a series of surgeries and 10 weeks on an intravenous antibiotics drip treatment.

“I had a race, Portsmouth in the Louis Vuitton World Series, on the Saturday I tore [the tendon] off the bone but then raced Sunday,” Spithill said.

“The surgery was a success but I rushed back and got it wet and picked up a real bad infection and then it was multiple surgeries, pretty much living with the surgeon.

“IV for 10 weeks, antibiotics morning and night so it was a battle.

“I’m glad we finally won and we beat it. If it wasn’t for the surgeon, a guy by the name of Rob Bray, who knows. He saved me, I almost lost my arm.

“Typical, hard lesson to learn but you’ve got to balance it out. You can’t just go full throttle all the time.”

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Why No Team Launched Their Race Boat Yet

Teams were allowed to launch their AC Class race boats almost two weeks ago, but no one did. Why not? It’s not only the holiday schedule. The rules changed. Again. All teams must pick 28 consecutive days when they do not sail their AC Class yachts. If they take their blackout days after launching, they may not work on their boat during the blackout period. So the only logical thing to do is to take your blackout period before launching. A quick look at a calendar lets us figure that the four teams already in Bermuda – Oracle, Japan, Artemis and BAR – should launch on Monday 6 February. This will leave them 109 days to develop and learn to sail their race boat before the first day of racing on Friday 26 May.
Why the rule change? It is probably part of making amends to Team New Zealand for ACEA pulling the round robin AC Qualifiers out of Auckland back in March 2015. Read about that dispute here. Confidentiality rules prevent the teams from confirming that the Arbitration Panel awarded damages to ETNZ. ETNZ will use the blackout period to ship their boat to Bermuda. Groupama Team France will do the same. Rules geeks who want all the details can download the most recent Protocol here and read Article 35.5.

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2017 Racing in Bermuda – Three Phases

The America’s Cup Match is the final and most important phase, between defender Oracle Team USA and the winner of the “Challenger Playoffs” (formerly known as the Louis Vuitton Cup). Racing begins on 26 May 2017 with the double round robin “America’s Cup Qualifiers.” All six teams, including defender Oracle, race in the round robin. One challenger is then eliminated. The four remaining challengers go into the “Challenger Playoffs” for first-to-five-points semi-finals and and finals. The America’s Cup Match is first-to-seven-points. If either team in the America’s Cup Match won the Qualifiers, their opponent starts with a score of minus one (-1). This is for the TV schedule, to increase the likelihood of the AC Match being completed on the second Sunday, 25 June.

The America’s Cup World Series finished last month. Winner Land Rover BAR earned two points in the AC Qualifiers; runner-up Oracle earned one. Leaderboard for the round robin AC Qualifiers that begin 26 May 2017 in Bermuda:

Land Rover BAR and Oracle earned the bonus points from the AC World Series. At the end of the Qualifiers, ties will be broken according to the final results of the AC World Series.

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What the Designers Have Been Doing

You probably know that the AC Class yachts that will race in 2017 are largely one design – the shape of the wing, the hulls, the pod under the wing and the crossbeams are all fixed by the class rule. The same is true for cockpits and grinding pedestal positions. This leaves aerodynamic fairings, daggerboard shapes, rudder shapes, wing internal structures and control systems as the area for the designers to work their magic. The teams have been testing design ideas on their “AC45X” experimental boats – sometimes called “turbo” or “sport” boats.

Daggerboard design

In light air the boats will need longer wings on the daggerboards to provide enough lift for foiling. In stronger winds teams will use shorter wings with lower drag. Crossover conditions will be challenging to decide whether to use the high lift or the low drag boards. There has been a lot of talk about upwind foiling and foiling tacks, but those techniques require sailing longer distance over a less direct course.

You can see the long wing and the reverse curve of the daggerboard on the port side of Emirates Team New Zealand’s AC45X test boat. On the starboard side you can see how the reverse curve gets the board out to the maximum beam to increase righting moment. (The sea otter seems to want a close look.)

In a New York Times article, Oracle designer Scott Ferguson talks about longer daggerboard wings for light air and shorter daggerboard wings for medium to heavy air. Like the Kiwis, Oracle has been testing longer foil wings as this photo shows:

Rudders and boat building strategy

Groupama Team France mounted their rudders in the hulls so they can save money by using the rudders from the test boat in their race boat.

Land Rover BAR and Emirates Team New Zealand wanted to test the geometry of the slightly longer AC Class race boat, so they built special rudders that could be hung on gantries off the stern.

Team France and ETNZ will use most of the components of their test boat to build their race boat, saving money. Essentially, they will just change the hulls. Like Oracle, Artemis and Team Japan, BAR will have a test boat and a race boat in Bermuda so they can do two boat testing.

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Results from Fukuoka

All six races were run in light, shifty conditions. Land Rover BAR and Artemis Racing tied on points, with BAR winning the regatta by finishing ahead of Artemis in the final race. Oracle finished third. Team New Zealand finished off the podium again and out of the points for the overall series. They were hurt by a poor sail choice in the last race, when they kept their jib in its bag and sailed upwind with their big Code 0 while all the others were using jibs.

In the first race on Sunday, BAR picked up a penalty in the pre-start but were able to push both Oracle and Team New Zealand past the end of the starting line, preventing both of those teams from threatening the Brits’ overall series lead.

There were several interesting penalty situations that I’ll explain in next week’s newsletter.

Remember: the blue light means a boat has a penalty; the green light means they are near a course boundary or a rounding mark.

Here we see how Team France picked up a penalty for not keeping clear and making contact with BAR near the leeward gate in Race 5.

Team New Zealand had a double penalty in Race 5. I’m getting a clarification and will explain it next week. If you want to get a head start on understanding what happened, read Rule 44.4(c) in the Racing Rules of Sailing – AC Edition, which you can download here.

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