what a fuster cluck…
part of me want to put some blame on the race committee for a poorly designed course. hit a boat, hit a mark or run aground… not real nice options…
Only part of you? There was absolutely no reason to have a mark so close to shore in such conditions (they stop when they jibe). It was dicey to get two of those wide hulls around that mark without having problems with rights of way. That mark could have been in the middle of the course and achieved the same thing, but with no cluster.
But I suppose this is being promoted as a spectator sport, so closeness and crashes are encouraged.
That is correct.
The ACWS with the AC45s is also supposed to be a learning period for the crews, before they get the AC72s for the LV Cup and AC races, which will be about a year from now.
All races were like a lottery, nobody could predict the winner !
I do not think that this is a nice publicity for the cup ! Sponsors may be more far away. For the time being only 3 boats are supposed to go ahead with ac72 !
ClaudioD
The commentators mentioned that the winds were so light that they would not have sailed in any other type of boat, such as a regular monohull. Per the rules, they changed the course & number of legs accordingly for the conditions, and the races seemed fair, although some people had more experience in lighter air.
I think it was good to see how friendly things were lately. I saw two occasions when one skipper hailed the other, and both acted courteously and professionally. It was very nice after suffering through a few Nas-T-car events at the neighbor’s house.
a few races back there was some starting line antics, and when seen from above inthe helicopters, I can’t be 100% sure, but it looked like there was barely enough space for all the boats on the line…
Not only that, but on the last day, the commentator (Mr. Jacobsen) said “the boats are lining up for the start.” Which sounded as if they had to be in a line prior to the gun, but I think he was just saying that as the boats happened to be in a line, as you’d expect from equally- matched boats. After that, they all raced to the first mark, and then separated as we usually do in radio sailing.
On that last day, I thought that any one of us could’ve sailed the course, or at least called the moves, as we are very familiar with ‘drift tactics.’ 
The horse & pony AC45WS scoreboard showed five yachts (+50%) did not finish last fleet race because they ran out of time when they did not finish within 10 minutes of the winner and they get no points for their efforts :mad: …racing should have been cancelled.
I think the RC did the right thing by letting the race start, and then abandoning the race after the time limit. You could see that the weather was changing during the race, and it even started raining later when the boats were being lifted out.
Artemis have had a shocker…
Just before their new AC 72 is ready, they wrecked their first wing.
It was quite a windy day here in Valencia and from the sounds of it the wing will never sail again.
Thankfully no one was hurt, but the damage to the sailing program will be immense.
We were planning to have a easy summer with not much work, so we could recouperate after the last 5 months working flat out building masts with ultra tight schedules…
I guess that will go in the bin as well!
Hi ,
Interesting, how many dollars thrown out of the windows ?
ClaudioD
Circa €3.5 million. Ouch!
That’s not all that much compared to the old IACC monohull boats and campaigns. IMO, that’s one of the big reasons these new boats were designed.
but they were not paying 3.5 million euro for ONE SAIL…
No, that’s about the cost of one IACC boat, plus one or two more plus spare masts and more sails. I think the sails were about US$10,000 each
Just to clarify, IACC V5 yachts are no more than €1.5 - 2m to put on the water in its raw form.
There is very little too them, they are considered very costly as the accuracy required during the build absorbs a huge amount of time.
By far the biggest cost of the 32nd Cup was the sailors. 2 full time teams of 17, plus spares in case of injury…( for at least 6 teams!)
Then if you consider that they are on the water training week after week, coupled with the fine tuning and development, followed by maintainance required the costs are just epic.
We flew 2 cup boats to Dubai for some winter training… Just for 6 weeks. Nuts!
A blank 3DL main cost somewhere around €50,000 I seem to remember. That was before the sailmakers spent a minimum 1 week working to cut and then finish the sail.
The wing was in no way different to a boat build.
Again calling for incredible accuracy, as the data acquired during testing has to be trusted 110% as it was seen as the next step in terms of wing sail evolution. Not just in design, but in construction as well.
You will learn nothing if your data is inaccurate because the sail behaves differently on each tack or irratically.
Even if it is only slightly, there are so many sensors, it will be seen.
That figure is insignificant, as now they start from zero. It must be super painful swallowing that fact.
Just to add, it was so costly it will not be repeated EVER again. I would be very suprised if any one will try a technical challenge of that magnitude for this Cup a second time…
The issue with costs of this 34th Cup are unknown… It’s a platform that has never been tried. You can estimate all you like, but in reality no one really knows what it will cost. I am pretty sure you will get no change from €100m especially as rigs will be a “disposable” item which is why you can build up to 8 of them I think.
This is really expensive. No other way to put it…
The price of being a pioneer with Artemis being the first 72 wing ! but really glad to hear no-one hurt.
Jim, I understand conditions off Valencia were fairly light when the mishap happened, any idea of the cause… structural failure, pitch pole or dock side handling error ?
Either way says the fragility of such a big wing is now questionable with to-days composites, will they be capable of handling sailing in heavier conditions ? or will one mistake cost millions and put a team out of the AC Cup running ?
Or are the next generation of new composites are now being called for ! …such as graphene!? http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/06/science/06nobel.html?_r=1 which will make todays price for a wing look like chicken feed
Cheers Alan
P.S Sorry to hear you summer just got thrown out the window !
After seeing some of the ac45s flip, I can appreciate the strong design of the wing. I usually wonder if the top will break or maybe the mount will break.
From what I heard it sounds like it reached structural limits, rather than a sailing error.
It had some very unique features that I cannot go into, but I’m sure that these contributed to its demise.
Just a note on the AC 45’s perceived strength… Just as some things cannot be scaled down, the reverse is also true.
If you build a wing to survive a pitch pole or capsize, then it’s far too heavy scaled to a AC 72!
The wing was a pioneer, and hopefully will serve as a stepping stone onwards. The JYD design office is well known for its forward thinking and so many design features forund across the fleet in the Volvo Ocean Race at the moment, were initially penned in this office quite a few years ago now.
If you can’t understand why there is so much money involved I thought I’d explain a little further. . It’s because the materials have to be top spec, which obviously costs.
Then everything is hand built.
The big tooling is CNC’d for sure, but the thousands of smaller parts and ancillaries are mainly hand crafted which requires the best tools which saves time by discouraging small mistakes.
All the fibre is laid by hand which requires a big team of skilled individuals working in a climate controlled "clean"room.
Then all the parts are cured under extreme pressures, which means a tighter control on vac bagging procedures for a perfect vac which can be very time consuming and Autoclaves are not cheap to run either.
All the components are trimmed, fitted or assembled by hand.
All the secondary bonding has to be vacuumed down and post cured or is laid in pre-preg and cured in situ.
Everything is checked, and load tested manually to ensure no early teething problems turn into major problems in a split second.
The tolerances are tight so everyone has to maintain a high standard or your re-making a part.
All adds up to hours… Thousands of man hours can be spent on a single area, just to complete the tasks on the drawing(s)!
Designers, boatbuilders, Riggers, Hydraulic engineers, Electronic engineers, Machinists and Sailmakers all played their part in the build…
Thats enough for now…it’s getting late.
It’s going to be interesting to see how they handle this situation and see what comes from it. Cheers and Ciao!
Jim -
I don’t see this development as being much different from any first generation AC boats - or even production boats. Unless you can sell them, and make more that are able to be sold, all of your points of development happen - whether on the scale of a 72 footer, or that of an 18 foot “A” Class cat. The move from wood to plastic, and plastic to carbon in hulls faced similar “unknown” issues. From strength, to required scantlings, to delaminations - all the same - just on a different scale. And I do understand it takes a “few hours” longer to sand down a 72 foot hull than an 18 foot one. [smile]