The Great Debate

The blue-ribbon panel representedy
five of the remaining six teams.

For the past 13 years the America’s Cup Class Rule has been scrutinized as designers and every type of specialist you can imagine look for ways to exploit the rule. With 81 boats produced through four generations, nearly every stone has been overturned in the quest for speed. Although the designs have migrated to one corner of the rule, getting their designers to agree on how to stimulate its continued growth is nearly as difficult as getting consistent springtime sailing conditions on the Hauraki Gulf.

A blue-ribbon panel of Cup designers was convened last week prior to the start of the Louis Vuitton Cup Quarter Finals Repechage Round. And there was no shortage of opinions about the rule’s practicality and life expectancy.

Victory Challenge’s German “Mani” Frers, Jr., thinks the rule is doing a good job and that the Protocol should be looked at for change before the AC Rule. Laurie Davidson, a two-time Cup winning designer with Team New Zealand who now works with OneWorld, feels the Rule has reached a plateau. Bruce Nelson, also with OneWorld, and Bruce Farr, working with Oracle BMW Racing, agree that the rule should be changed to reduce maximum displacement. Doug Peterson, Prada’s exiled two-time America’s Cup winning designer, feels that the type-forming the restrictions encourage is good for the event and match-racing. Alinghi’s Rolf Vrolijk and Team New Zealand’s Tom Schnackenberg caution that it’s not up to the designers to decide whether to change the rule. The interests of sponsors, supporters and sailors must also be considered. Although not present at the conference, Jim Pugh of Reichel/Pugh Yacht Design, designers of Team Dennis Conner’s two boats, would throw the rule out and start all over. Pugh advocates a purely development class.

The America’s Cup Class Rule was created in 1989 to bring life to an event headed for a light-air venue, San Diego, Calif. It grew out of the controversial 1988 match between Michael Fay’s 130-foot monohull and Dennis Conner’s 60-foot catamaran. A group of some 25 naval architects and yacht designers gathered in England late that year for what were dubbed the “Southampton Meetings.” They were tasked with creating a new class to boost the interest level of the America’s Cup. The boat had to be powerful to contend with the light winds off the Southern California coastline. It also had to be spectacular for television, which meant oversized and under-crewed.

The designers gathered had in mind a light-displacement, beamy boat. They defined parameters such as length and sail area. They placed maximum limits on beam (5.5 metres) and draft (4 metres) and a minimum and maximum for displacement (16 tons to 25 tons). They didn’t envision that their idea of light and beamy would be exploited at the other end. “I can tell you that there was a lot more discussion about the lower end of the displacement limit than the upper end,” said Nelson, referring to the Southampton meetings. “When the rule was formed, the boats were intended to be 20 tons or lighter; 285 square meters of sail was target.”

AC sloops can nose dive in heavy
winds because of their weight.

San Diego’s light air, however, required a powerful boat. Displacement quickly rose to the maximum, which increased stability as the added weight was concentrated in the ballast bulb at the bottom of a 4-metre keel strut. Meanwhile, sail area crept up to 325 square meters, where it is today. But San Diego’s conditions had a unique variable, a long ocean swell with a wind-driven chop. To combat the wavy conditions, waterline continually narrowed as it had no minimum limit. “After Fremantle the America’s Cup community decided to retire the 12-Metres because they were so big and heavy, they didn’t represent modern designs or technology,” says Nelson. “Now we’re heavier and narrower. One of these days it needs to get sorted out.

Nelson, a designer of six Cup yachts since the introduction of the class, is a major proponent of lowering displacement. A two-time All-American at the University of Michigan where he studied Naval Architecture, Nelson spends a good amount of time racing on his designs. In 1999-2000, he regularly crewed aboard his designs for AmericaOne. “Sailing upwind in heavy stuff is not pleasant. It’s frightening,” says Nelson. “The dynamic loads produced by that 20-ton bulb swagging around down there are difficult to predict and manage. In short steep waves it produces a quick and violent motion. I don’t think it’s a healthy thing.”

Pugh backs Nelson’s lighter displacement ambition, but has more grandiose ideas in mind. He and partner John Reichel helped design America3, USA-23, which won the Cup in ’92. They also were part of the Fluid Thinking design group that produced oneAustralia, AUS-35, which sank in ’95. For Team Dennis Conner, Reichel/Pugh have created two ultra-narrow sloops, perhaps with a waterline beam of no more than 9 feet wide. They’ve been called the narrowest boats in the fleet.

Davidson, a believer in narrow ACC sloops, wonders whether they are the answer to the question: How narrow is too narrow? “You have to be able to support the rig,” Pugh says. “We’re trying to push the limits of what we can achieve in terms of low drag. I’m sure that the limits we’ve seen can be explored farther.” Pugh intimated the beam they chose was dictated by the need to support the rig. But he would like to see an open America’s Cup Rule. He feels that all restrictions should be removed to make it more developmental and less type-forming. “This rule is pretty confining in terms of what you can do conceptually,” Pugh says. “In the next few years there will be some huge developments in rigs. It’s a big area for evolution, but it can’t happen in the Cup class the way the rule is. So if it is a leader, it should be more developmental.”

But type-forming is not necessarily bad for the class or the event. Peterson, who has remained in Auckland after being fired by Prada in October, points out that the type-forming restrictions help keep the boats closer together. He thinks the boats are just fine for the America’s Cup. In particular he feels they’re good match-racing boats. They’re close-winded so they stay close together around the racecourse. Lifting the restrictions could produce radically different designs that might just sail around the course rather than match-race. “It’s like racing a Melges 24 against a Star boat,” Peterson says. “The high-performance boat would pick a side and go there, whereas the Star is more tactical. Downwind, the high-performance boat would sail hot, VMG angles. They don’t necessarily stay close.”

During the America’s Cup Rule’s lifespan it has withstood the onslaught of more than 500 specialists – ranging from naval architects, to yacht designers, to hydrodynamicists, to aerodynamicists, to finite element analysts, to journalists – who relentlessly search for loopholes and faults. While discussion of change is good to stimulate the thought process, it’s unlikely to happen overnight. All parties involved agree that it’s not up to the designers to determine what happens to the rule. “We need to involve the funders, the sponsors, the media and of course the sailors as well in this discussion,” says Schnackenberg. “If it’s just the designers who are making the choice about the rule then you might get a designers’ rule. But the America’s Cup is an event much bigger than that these days.”