The America's Cup is the oldest continuously defended trophy in sport. It dates back to 1851, before the Civil War. The thirty-fourth defense of the trophy is happening in September of this year (2013). I got seriously interested in the defense of the Cup in 1982. 1982 was also the first year it was broadcast live on TV. Initially the races were broadcast on a local TV station in Newport, Rhode Island. But by the time of the seventh race in the series interest was so great that the race that decided who won the cup was broadcast on national TV. All of the Cup defenses, more or less, have been broadcast since. Defense of the Cup involves the clash of big money and even bigger egos. The result is a lot of drama and some very interesting stories. The first of these stories involves the very first race for the Cup.
By the 1850's Americans, at least some of them, were full of beans and figured they were second to none. The premier world naval power of the time was the British. At the time nearly all boats were powered by sails as steam power was just starting to come into its own. Sailboats of any size at the time were nearly always used for fishing, cargo hauling, or military purposes. There were a large number of sailboats in use for recreational purposes but almost all of them were small (under 30' in length). The rich of the period did sometimes own pleasure boats, which they typically used for entertainment or for transportation. In the latter situation it would be akin to a movie star or big executive owning a private Jet today.
One of the groups of men (it was exclusively men at the time) who owned large private yachts were organized as the Royal Yacht Squadron. All of them were wealthy and well connected to the British monarchy. The Royal Yacht Squadron periodically organized races. In most cases this was more of a social event than anything else but some of the members took the competition seriously. And of course, being British, it was taken as a foregone conclusion that whoever had the fastest boat in the Royal Yacht Squadron fleet had the fastest boat in the world. In 1851 a group of Americans, organized as the New York Yacht Club had enough beans to beg to differ.
So the Commodore (in modern terms - CEO) of the Yacht Club, one John Cox Stevens, commissioned the construction of a fast schooner of roughly a hundred foot length that was eventually christened "America" with the intention of challenging the British. The boat was sailed across the Atlantic to France where it was reconfigured for racing and then sailed across the English Channel with the intention of taking on the best of the Royal Yacht Squadron. The British knew the boat was coming and a couple of their fastest boats under the guise of escorting the America into harbor did some informal speed testing. The results were shocking. The British then spent the summer dodging a contest. Finally they relented and invited the America to participate in a race around the Isle of Wight. At stake was a trophy referred to in the early days as the "100 Guinea Cup", a typical trophy of the time for a RYS event. Of course, as the British feared, the America won the race.
Fearing additional humiliation the British dithered rather than holding additional races and eventually the Americans took the Cup back to New York. They then offered to host "friendly challenges" for the Cup in local waters and the Cup (and the race for ownership of the cup) eventually took on its modern name, "The America's Cup". In the early years challenges were erratic. And at some point the Americans started worrying that the British would find a way to win the cup back so they started to resort to dirty tricks (my characterization) to keep the Cup. And, while early races were sailed in Long Island Sound, the closest appropriate body of water to New York City, the race was eventually moved to Newport, Rhode Island. This was because the races were held in the Summer and everyone who was anyone went to Newport "for the season".
Among the most interesting of the early challengers was Sir Thomas Lipton. He challenged four times and came close. And, although he lost in the end every time, he succeeded in selling a lot of Tea and establishing the Lipton brand in the U.S. market. So in the end his challenges were seen as a terrific success in terms of marketing. He also comported himself as a perfect gentleman at all times (one reason for the success of the tea). He sprinkled "Lipton Cup" trophies all over the U.S. The Seattle Yacht Club in my neck of the woods has one of them on display to this day.
The initial race was organized as a Yacht Club to Yacht Club challenge and the contest continues that tradition to this day, at least nominally. So the contest was open to boats owned by members of each yacht club and the rule was "first boat over the finish line wins". Gradually it evolved into a race with lots of rules including a "class rule" defining the characteristics of an eligible boat. A lot of sailboat races involve the use of a "handicapping" role that adjusts the times of the boats based on an estimate of their theoretical speed. For many years the America's Cup has been a "boat for boat" race on the theory that the detailed class rule makes the theoretical speed of all boats identical.
Up to about the turn of the twentieth century boats of wildly differing design were raced. Starting in about 1900 "class" rules were introduced and subsequently tightened in stages to the point where the boats looked roughly the same to the untrained eye. By the 1930's the "J Class" rule was in use. This resulted in the use of spectacularly gorgeous boats of about 130 foot length. But the boats were also spectacularly expensive to build and maintain. As the Great Depression continued, challenges tailed off, eventually to nothing by the late '30s. After World War II it was felt that a cheaper boat would be needed if anyone was going to be able to afford to participate. The "12 meter" rule was adopted resulted in very pretty boats of about 60' length coming into use. The change was a success. Challenges appeared and the race was held about every three years. And the Americans kept winning.
There was some grumbling among challengers that the rules were tilted in favor of the defenders, all of whom had to be members of the New York Yacht Club. But the rules were seen as fair enough that challengers appeared regularly. And under the pressure of their fear of losing we did see some loosening up of things on the American side. Ted Turner won the cup one year. He was from Atlanta. His nickname was "the mouth from the South". Among his many achievements was the founding of CNN, the cable news channel. Another member of the NYYC was Dennis Connor, a San Diego sailor. He was admitted to the hallowed halls of the NYYC because he was generally considered the most fierce and successful competitor of his time. All this set things up for the 1982 contest.
As I indicated, there was some resentment of the NYYC in international sailing circles over how the America's Cup events were staged. The Australian (at some point the challenge, which started as strictly a British versus the Americans competition, was opened up to all comers) showed up with a boat that featured a "winged keel". This was widely seen as a violation of the "12 meter" class rule. But after all the activities of the NYYC over the years the international sailing committee that had jurisdiction of these matters decided that the winged keel was legal. A boat that was otherwise considered on a par with the American boat ended up with a slight speed advantage. And, to make a long and very interesting story short, the Australians won the competition four races to three.
The result of this shocking development was a dramatic increase in interest in the contest. The Australians put on a truly excellent event in 1987. By this time all the boats had winged keels and, true to his reputation, Dennis Connor won the event. But now the stranglehold of the NYYC was broken so he took the race back to San Diego. (He was at some point thinking of holding the event in Hawaii, which I thought would have spectacular. But the San Diego people, who had put the money up to keep him competitive, demanded that the race be held in San Diego.)
Then, as has happened repeatedly in the America's Cup, weirdness set in. Dennis had been very successful campaigning in 12 meter designs. So it was his intention to continue to do so. But remember how the NYYC ran things for decades. Well, as a result of this there is a document called "the dead of gift" that is the America's Cup equivalent of the U.S. Constitution. And the official interpreters of the dead of gift is the New York State Supreme Court. Don't be fooled by the title. It is equivalent to a "Superior Court" in most states. A New Zealander named Sir Michael Fey read the deed carefully and found a loophole. The New York Supreme Court agreed with him. As a result Fey showed up in San Diego with a 135 foot monster and said "wanna race"? After being blind sided with this piece of legal legerdemain, Dennis read the dead and said "sure but I am going to defend in a catamaran". He too was successful in the New York Supreme Court so in 1989 we were treated to a race between a 135 foot sailboat of fairly traditional design and a 60' catamaran.
You know those south seas boats with outriggers. They are catamarans. A catamaran has two hulls. The boat Dennis sailed has two similar hulls rather than a hull and an outrigger but that is a technical detail. Dennis did something else very dramatic. He built two boats. One had traditional cloth sails. (By now the "cloth" was actually some kind of space age fabric out of a chemistry lab but to the uninitiated it looked pretty much like standard fabric.) But on the other boat he replaced the mast, the tall pole the sails hang from, and the mainsail, the big triangular sail attached to the back of the mast, with what amounted to an airplane wing that stuck straight up in the air. Sailors had speculated that a wing design would work better than sails but no one had had the guts and money to try it out. Well, Dennis had the money and desperation necessary to try it out. And it turned out that an airplane wing works a lot better than a traditional mast and sail. It is likely that Dennis's cloth sail boat would have beat the Kiwis. But the "wing" boat was so fast that Dennis's team had to sail the boat badly in order to keep the victory margin down to only 20 or 30 minutes.
So the Cup stayed in San Diego. But everyone wanted to avoid the possibility of another "Frankenstein" event. This doomed the 12 meter rule. The rule was just too constraining. It resulted in a very safe, relatively pretty, but also relatively slow boat. The result was the IACC rule. It produced pretty boats that were relatively safe, although one boat did manage to break in half and sink in the middle of one race. But the rule loosened things up enough for people to try a lot of things and the boats were significantly faster then the 12 meter boats. The IACC boats were about 70' long and looked like people expected a sailboat to look.
The IACC rule was very successful for abut 15 years. In the first couple of challenges people tried out all kinds of new things like two rudders and no keel. But the wackier ideas did not pan out. The Americans lost the second Cup to be sailed in IACC boats. Dennis Connor is the only skipper to lose the Cup twice (in Newport in 1982 and later in San Diego in 1995). By this time the race had become truly internationalized. The winning boat was from New Zealand. After a successful defense the Kiwis eventually lost to a Swiss boat in 2003. Since Switzerland lacked a salt water coastline, and the dead effectively mandated the races take place in salt water, the contest was moved to Spain.
The calm of the IACC rule era came to an abrupt end in 2010 when Larry Ellison of Oracle software fame was successful in another series of legal wrangling's that made the Michael Fey 1988 legal shenanigans look like patty cake. The result was that he secured the right to be the sole challenger that year. The Swiss said "if you want to be that way we are going to defend in a 115' catamaran". Larry responded "well, if you're going to be that way we will challenge in a 115' trimaran (three hulls) and we are going to use a wing sail". Frankly the Swiss didn't think Ellison could put his boat together fast enough. But Ellison dumped 250 million dollars into the campaign, got the boat built, and won the Cup.
Now I am going to change the subject slightly for a minute. As I indicated above, the 1982 race was the first one to be shown on TV. It turned out that the Australian challenge was a rating smash. Boats from all over the world showed up. And everyone had to tune in to cheer on their own national boat. And the TV technology was now getting good enough to do a good job of showing the race. A large international audience developed for the event. And enough interesting things happened to maintain audience enthusiasm for subsequent Cups.
That is right up until 2007. Going in it looked like all the ingredients for an exciting event were present. And by this time the challenger series had become a very big deal. The Louis Vuitton fashion house had been signed up as a continuing sponsor of the "Louis Vuitton Cup". The actual America's Cup race was always between two boats, a challenger and a defender. In 2007 11 challengers showed up. The racing necessary to winnow this fleet down to a single boat was exciting and interesting. So the Louis Vuitton Cup races were a TV success. But then came the actual America's Cup races. The Louis Vuitton Cup was decided on June 6. Racing for the America's Cup was supposed to take place at the rate of a race a day with about one day in 3 thrown in as rest days. But the last of the 7 races it took to decide the Cup did not take place until July 3. The Swiss were very unsure of the speed of their boat. They claimed that they did not interfere with the race committee but there were many delays and outright postponements. This played bloody hell with the TV coverage. Watching sailboats bob up and down waiting for something to happen does not make for compelling television.
2010 turned into an even bigger fiasco than 2007, from a TV perspective. The boats were big and fast. This should have made for good TV. But as a result of the court room maneuvers there were only two America's Cup races and no Louis Vuitton Cup races at all. To make a really bad situation even worse, the court machinations were so fierce that it was unclear when the races would go off until a week before the first race. So most of the world had no rooting interest in the outcome. Only the Swiss and the Americans had a dog in the hunt. And the races were scheduled to go off literally in the middle of the night. The start time translated to 2 AM in the Pacific Time Zone. As a result of all this there was no TV coverage in the U.S.
And then there was the problem of the wind. You can't have a sailboat race without wind. Normally the Cup races were scheduled for the Summer. The part of Spain (Valencia) that was the venue has pretty reliable winds in the Summer. But, again due to the legal back and forth, the races ended up taking place in February. Wind is much harder to come by in Valencia in February. So the races were delayed until about 6 AM my time. So each race day I was treated to about 4 hours of watching boats bob up and down before the race actually went off. This is a shall we say less than optimal set of circumstances in which to build and keep a big TV audience.
So that brings us to the current America's Cup challenge, the thirty-fourth. So, how's it going? The organizers are very aware of the things have gone on the last two times around and have tried to fix them. The first thing they did was to decide to hold the races in San Francisco, literally in the harbor. This makes for wonderful backdrops. Typically the boats have had to be towed miles out into the open ocean to the race course. Then the background consists primarily of open water with a few spectator boats bobbing around. The "Bay" backdrop is much more convenient for both competitors and spectators. If you have a view of the right part of San Francisco Bay, say from an office building, then you can watch the boats and you can do it for free. And you have not just the races to watch but all the training etc. that goes into preparing for the races. This is a giant improvement.
The second thing they did was to try and make the races themselves more exciting to watch. They did this two ways. First then invested in a large amount of technology. There are microphones and TV cameras all over the boats. So you can see a number of "crew's eye" views of what is going on. It's the same idea as the "in car" cameras in NASCAR cars. But the boats are much bigger (72' long), much more complex, and have a crew of about 10. So you get a bunch of views of how the boat is behaving and what the crew is doing. Then they have added a number of high tech overlays to the TV pictures. You know how they will digitally add the "first down" line to a TV picture. Will this is done to the N'th degree.
They add virtual 100 meter grid lines so you can see where the boats are on the course. The boats have super-GPS so they know where the boats are down to the inch. They also know how fast the boats are going and in what direction, also to very high precision. So in the long shots they can tag each boat with a flag indicating the identity of the boat. They can also show how fast and in what direction the boat is going. They can even calculate which boat is ahead and by how much. (This is difficult to do because you have to figure in the current wind direction and do some trigonometry to get the correct answer.) They also put virtual tracks on the water so you can see exactly where each boat has gone. All this makes it much easier to follow the action.
They have also amped up the action. The boats they are using are not traditional pretty sailboats. They are high tech catamarans. The hulls are 72' long. They have "wing" sails that are about 130' in size. And they are freaking fast. A typical 12 meter would go 6-8 knots (roughly miles per hour). A typical IACC boat would go 10-12 knots. These boats go 25-40 knots. The commentators are frequently pointing out that the boats are going faster than the speed limit on the nearby Golden Gate bridge. One boat actually went faster than 50 miles per hour for a few seconds. Then there is the part that wasn't planned. It just happened.
The basic design of the wet part of the boat consists of two skinny hulls that are about 72' long. Each hull has a long skinny rudder at the back that is in round numbers 10 feet deep and 2 feet wide. Each hull is also equipped with a dagger board. This is roughly 15' deep and perhaps 3' wide. The dagger board on one hull, the "windward" hull is raised to cut down on drag and the other one is left down to reduce the sideways motion of the boat. The rest of the boat is supposed to be dry above the water. That's the idea anyhow.
But about a year ago the New Zealand team (officially "Emirates Team New Zealand", colloquially the "Kiwis") figured out how to hydrofoil the boat. Dragging a wetted surface through the water, especially at high speed, takes a lot of energy. If you dreg less wetted surface through the water you can go a lot faster if your sails, etc. provide the same amount of energy. A hydrofoil is an airplane wing that is in the water. It takes a big wing to lift something in the air. It takes a much smaller wing to lift something in the water. The Kiwis figured out how to get the whole boat out of the water with the exception of the rudder and the dagger board.
They did this by using a bent dagger board. Most of it goes straight down as in the old configuration. But they added a bend and an additional piece about 5' long that sticks out sideways. They also put a small wing on the bottom of the rudder. One of these boats weighs about 14,000 lbs. (very heavy, if you are lifting it yourself, very light for something that size). Hydro foiling is very hard to pull off. But if you do pull it off the small amount of surface area represented by the small wing on the bottom of the rudder and the bent part of the dagger board is enough to hold the rest of the boat out of the water. And getting both 72' long hulls out of the water reduces the wetted surface dramatically. And with both hulls out of the water the boat goes unbelievably fast, if you can avoid crashing it. (A couple of boats have crashed and the result has been a number of parts floating in the water.)
So these boats are unbelievably fast. And the scenery is great. And the high tech toys really help viewers follow what's going on. So the whole thing should be a roaring success. What could possibly go wrong? Well, a couple of things. The first thing is that these boats are fantastically expensive.
Remember when 11 teams showed up to challenge in 2007. Well, this time around the organizers did things to try to get the same kind of turnout. They sponsored a bunch of races all over the world that were billed as "America's Cup runup races". To make it easier for teams to participate in these runup races they had a bunch of essentially identical 45' catamarans with wing sails built. With lots of events spread around the world sponsor money should have been easier to come by. It worked. They had about 8 teams participate. Several teams campaigned two boats, And the events were pretty popular. So the "runup" events were considered a success.
But when it came to be time to build the boats for the real event things changed. The boats for the real event are 72' long and each team is on its own to build their boat. This means that each team has much more freedom to come up with whatever they think will make their boat go fast. But also drives the expense up a lot. The boats are longer. But they are also wider and taller. So they don't cost roughly twice what a 45' boat will cost, they cost about 8 times (2x2x2). This turned out to be too rich for most of the teams. There are only three challengers, teams from Sweden (Artemis Challenge), Italy (officially "Luna Rosa" but essentially Prada), and the aforementioned Kiwis (oil money from the United Arab Emirates, boat building and sailing skills from the New Zealanders).
That's bad enough but then tragedy happened. The Artemis boat flipped and a crew member got caught underneath. It took 10 minutes to cut him free. He had emergency air but only 3 minutes worth. He drowned. This caused everyone to become extremely safety conscious. One of the complaints about the 2007 event was that a narrow wind range caused too many delays. So the wind range for the 34th Cup was initially set to be very broad. But after the heightened concern for safety the top end of the wind range was cut. This has resulted in several races being cancelled due to too much wind.
As I write this we have finished the preliminary rounds and are into the finals of the Louis Vuitton Cup. So far we have had four scheduled race days in this series. Another change from previous Cups is to schedule two races per day. So far at least one race has gone off each race day. But on three of the four days scheduled so far the second race has had to be cancelled due to too much wind. I would characterize this as "not good". The good news is that we have gotten off at least one race each day. This is not a disaster. But having an event, in this case the second race, not go off at its scheduled time is not how you make TV executives happy.
And there has also been another problem. The races have been parades. If neither boat breaks down, then the boat that is the first one to the first mark has always wins the race, at least so far. But the problem is even worse that that. If neither boat breaks the Kiwis have always beat the Italians. And if neither boat breaks the Italians always beat the Artemis boat. In fact, at this point the Artemis boat has been officially eliminated. This leaves only the Kiwis and the Italians. That's why it is the "finals". We are down to just two boats. But so far the Italians have not been able to figure out how to beat the Kiwis.
Like the problem with the small field this problem may not be as bad as it looks. It has been true many times that there are fast boats and slow boats and it hasn't taken long to be able to sort out which is which. In spite of this, TV audiences have been large and enthusiastic in the past. The Louis Vuitton Cup contest is not over yet. So it is possible that the Italians will find some way to start winning. But they don't have much time.
And we really don't know who is faster between the (presumably) Kiwis and the defenders, the Oracle team sponsored by Larry Ellison. There have been no "head to head" matches under race conditions. On paper Oracle looks to be favored. Ellison has very deep pockets and has assembled a first rate team. But the Kiwis have pulled a rabbit out of a hat before. Remember they have won the Cup once and defended it successfully once. So they know how to play effectively at this level. They have lots of oil money behind them. And finally, they were the first team to pull off "foiling", the short hand name for this hydro foiling business. It turns out to be very tricky to do. And if you handle one of these boats badly, and by this I mean "slightly wrong", you can lose 100 meters of position relative to the other boat in a few seconds. If you actually handle the boat badly then you can end up with a boat that is upside down and in pieces, also in a few seconds.
Let me wrap things up with a quick peak toward the future. I don't know who is going to win. I would have to give a slight edge to Oracle at this point. But I may change my mind after the first race between the Oracle boat and the Louis Vuitton winner. Regardless of how it comes out though, another interesting question is what will the 35th defense look like? There are a lot of people including my mother that would like things to go back to when the boats looked like traditional sailboats. I don't think that is going to happen. I also think all this high tech TV stuff is here to stay. I think everyone feels it is a good addition. I hope that if the venue moves because Oracle loses, the new venue will be as audience friendly as the San Francisco Bay venue is.
Larry Ellison has opined that he is concerned with cost and safety issues relating to the current 72' boats. He said he is thinking of maybe switching to the 45' "runup" boats for the Cup. (This assumes he wins the Cup allowing him to maintain control.) I am not sure it is possible to put that genie back in the bottle. The current boats are way cool so I can't see going away from a "catamaran with a wing sail" design. One easy fix to the safety issue is to jack up the weight requirements. The current boats weigh about 14,000 lbs. You can make the boats much stronger and do some additional changes by changing the rule to make the boats, say 1,000 lbs. heavier. By requiring various parts to be a little heavier, a hundred pounds here, two hundred pounds there, you can eliminate any reason to make parts just strong enough. If you are required to make a part heavier you may as well make it stronger.
You can mandate that the hulls be stronger by requiring them to be heavier. You can also change the rule to require them to contain more volume. The increase in volume, if properly done, will make the boats harder to go nose over. These and other rule changes can make the boats safer. This will perhaps make them a little slower. But I don't think that designers, builders, and sailors have run out of tricks to make the boats to go faster. So I think you can make relatively small tweaks that make the boats a lot safer with little sacrifice in speed given an otherwise identical design. But at the same time designers, builders, and sailors will simultaneously figure out how to make the boats faster. The design will not stay "otherwise identical". I think the result of combining pro-safety changes with "go faster" changes will be new boats that are both faster and safer than the current boats.
The biggest factor affecting the cost of the boats is their overall size. The 45' boats are definitely cheaper. But I am not sure that you can go to a 45' boat and have people associate that boat with the "biggest and baddest thing out there", which is what people expect of a modern America's Cup boat. If I had to bet, I would predict that they will stick with the current 72 footer. But if they do decide to change the size of the boat I would recommend that they not go all the way to 45'. They could perhaps go to 60', the size of the Dennis Conner boat in '89. Perhaps you can go a little smaller, say 55'. But I don't think you want to go any smaller than that. Downsizing to 60' or 55' would reduce cost and increase safety but it would also eliminate the "used boat" option.
One money saving option that has been available for most past Cups is to buy a boat from one of the teams after the race. It is many years since an older boat has been competitive. But it represents a starting point for a new team and a trial horse for an established team. So even a non-competitive boat is helpful. In the current Cup no one could get a used boat because no one had ever build a boat like the current ones before. If the Cup sticks with the 72' boats there will be old boats available after the Cup has been decided. Assuming none of the boats is destroyed, there will be an Artemis, one or two (I think 2 but I am not sure) Kiwi boats, one or two (again I am not sure) Italian boats, and two Oracle boats that represent possible "used boat" opportunities. It's not a lot of boats but it is more than none.
One thing I am sure of is that the technology will continue to evolve at warp speed between the current defense and the next one. It (the technology race) should be fun to watch regardless of how interesting (or not) the sailboat races also turn out to be.
