GUIDO TOMBETTA/TEAM ALINGH
MAX EBB
"And it must have been one of the most interesting A-Cups ever!" said Lee. "First wing sail on the cat, no rules for the big mono except 90-ft waterline as per the Deed of Gift." "Well, I enjoyed it," I said, "but consensus among the media was that it was more or less a disaster of a mismatch." "What do they know?" Lee shrugged. "The only better Cup race in recent years was in 2010, the big Alinghi cat versus the monster Oracle tri." "If I recall correctly," I said, "The cat designers in 1988 limited the waterline to 45 feet because they thought the 90-ft waterline limit might be interpreted to mean the sum of both hulls' waterlines." "For sure. I think that would be a reasonable rule going forward. Bring back the Deed of Gift rules, add up the waterlines so the best hull configuration would be unclear and up to the designers, and no stored energy, electrical or hydraulic. It's supposed to be a sailboat race." "Don't you need a lot of power to control the foils?" I asked. "No way. The problem was purely an artifact of the over-restrictive rules that banned sensible methods of adjusting the angles of the foils. It takes a huge amount of force to change the angle of attack of a foil lifting surface when you're only allowed to rotate the strut from the top. Any sensible design would use tabs, flaps and trimmable foils with balance area, easily controlled with human muscle power in real time. And like, the foiling cats would have been faster and much safer. But no, they wrote the rules to make it difficult to make foils work, then struggled to circumvent the Page 86 •
Latitude 38
• February, 2019
Lee Helm's favorite America's Cup matches, take two: 2010, Ernesto Bertarelli's big cat versus Larry Ellison's giant tri.
rules at great cost to safety and energy requirements." "Will it be any better in 2021?" I asked. "Yes, a little. Foil controls are more reasonable, but they allow — actually they require — electric power for canting the ballasted foils. And like, the worst part is, grok this, the foils are one-design! So is the mast! The two most tech-intensive design features, and they will be identical in all the boats. They've practically made the America's Cup into just another boring one-design race." "The hull shape is still open, no? "There's a box rule that dictates the basic hull shape, so there's a little wiggle room there. But like, the hull is out of the water most of the time anyway, so who cares?" "Maybe they think it will be more interesting for the spectators if the boats are evenly matched," I suggested. "You can watch evenly matched boats racing every Sunday when the Juniors are out in their El Toros," said Lee. "You can get close enough for a good view, and those kids take it really seriously." I changed the subject by digging deeper into the carton of books. "Here's another one for you: The Billionaire and the Mechanic. We already have a copy on our America's Cup shelf," I said as I handed Lee the book, "so this one's also yours. And wait, there's another book in here about the 2010 America's Cup, this one mostly about the Alenghi boat. Sorry, this one's a keeper for the library." "Cool!" Lee reacted. "I thought the
2010 races were high art. We could watch two of the fastest boats ever built go at it, representing very different design concepts. But they should never have allowed power for sail handling. It's supposed to be, like, a sailboat race. You know, no motors? Hello?" "Here's one I've never seen before," I said as I pulled another book from the box: Exposed: The Dark Side of the America’s Cup." I read from the blurb on the jacket: "The America's Cup has always been a hotbed of unbridled ambition, personal agendas, intrigue, spying, and more recently, hard-fought court cases — and that's before the boats even get out on the water to race." "Wow, I definitely want to take a look at that," said Lee. "I mean, like, without all the scandals, the protests, the lawsuits, and all front-page ink spilled by the New York Times over the last century and a half, I don't think anyone would really care about the America's Cup." "You could be right," I allowed. "Do you think there's danger that if we don't have a good legal battle over the rules, or at least a controversial protest, the whole 2021 event will be a flop?" "Heck, it's always a flop financially," Lee predicted. "Like, it's not moneyball, it's sailboat racing." "Okay Lee," I proposed. "Suppose you were the absolute monarch of the America's Cup. What would the rules look like? "That's easy," she answered. "Deed of Gift, with some corrections to recent interpretations, especially stored energy. No engines, no batteries, no motors for sail or foil controls, no hydraulic accumulators. Waterlines in measurement