![\"AC34SFJuneD16_1234\"](\"http:\/\/www.blueplanettimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/AC34SFJuneD16_1234-672x372.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The next generation will look much like this 2013 generation challenger from New Zealand, but they\u2019re a new breed<\/em><\/p>\n By Kimball Livingston Posted April 13, 2014<\/strong><\/p>\n Gino Morrelli believes the next generation of America\u2019s Cup catamarans will revolutionize upwind tactics. He foresees the boats foiling through tacks without slowing down, and if there is no price for tacking, that\u2019s a new calculus, isn\u2019t it? A new game.<\/p>\n Smaller, faster, safer. It\u2019s quite a package that Morrelli is talking about, and he knows a bit. His firm of\u00a0Morrelli & Melvin<\/a>\u00a0wrote the design rule for what we will call, for now, the AC62. That is, ten feet shorter than the AC72s of 2013 and shrunk appropriately in other dimensions as well. Add-in some one-design components, factor-in the fact that a lot of the design possibilities have already been explored\u2014we know what the next generation will look like\u2014and you have a boat that is cheaper to design and cheaper to build, even with amped-up technology. His partner Pete Melvin has been hard on the case.<\/p>\n At which point Morrelli adds the ultimate qualifier, \u201cWe can lower the cost to entry, but we can\u2019t make it cheaper to win the America\u2019s Cup.\u201d<\/p>\n Write this on the board twenty-five times: An America\u2019s Cup team will always spend whatever it can get.<\/p>\n I shared billing with Gino over the weekend for a program at Strictly Sail Pacific, which opened my window onto what\u2019s coming next, with a little caution tape on the windowsill: \u201cWe finished our job about four weeks ago,\u201d Morrelli told the audience. \u201cIn our last iteration, the boat was 62 feet, but now we\u2019ve handed it over to Oracle and Russell and the boys to fuss it out with the Challenger of Record and Iain Murray. That is, the Aussies from Hamilton Island Yacht Club. Between them, a lot can happen. We\u2019re now out of the loop, but something\u2019s cooking . . . At some point they have to pull the trigger and publish the design rule and let people start working on the new boats, even if they don\u2019t decide the venue until deep in the process.\u201d<\/p>\n How can you design the boat if you don\u2019t know the venue? Or if, as Larry Ellison once suggested, there could be more than one venue? Good question. Here we go\u2014<\/p>\n Gino again: \u201cOne thing that was possible under the AC72 rule, but now is mandated, is a wing design that can be over-rotated to a negative angle of attack. You would do this at the top of the wing, so that instead of pushing the boat over, it\u2019s actually pulling the boat up. Theoretically, if you\u2019re bearing away around the weather mark in 30 knots, you can crank the wing inside out to get positive righting moment. You get a safer turn. The downside is that you\u2019re inducing drag, which slows you down, so you\u2019re going to have to learn how to actually do this. But it\u2019s one way to build a big rig that will perform in San Diego but survive San Francisco.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are provisions in the new class rule to allow different wing sizes and jib sizes, but the ability to over-rotate the wing gives us a tool for sailing in a wide wind range with one wing.\u201d<\/p>\n Early in the development of the original design rule for the AC72s, there were no restrictions on foiling surfaces. Restrictions were added at the insistence of the then-Challenger of Record, but we know now that the result was merely to make the boats trickier to design and less safe for the sailors.<\/p>\n This time out, Gino says, \u201cWe\u2019ve got everybody to agree to take the brakes off foiling. The boats will foil by design. We\u2019ll be able to actively change the angle of the rudder posts to adjust the angle of attack of the T-foils on the rudders\u2014in 2013 we could make changes between races, not during a race\u2014and the T-foils will be symmetrical, and bigger. This is part of what brings us to foiling tacks. You\u2019ll have more chance to use low angles of attack to give you the highest glide speed through the tack. We\u2019ll see who can glide to weather the farthest.\u201d<\/p>\n This likewise opens new imaginings in what it means to attack, attack, attack.<\/p>\n On the safety side, there is now a minimum bow volume, for buoyancy if the boat augurs in. \u201cNew Zealand had the biggest bows in the fleet in 2014,\u201d Gino said. \u201cThey stuffed it in that one race and survived. After the fact we sat down with the Oracle Racing guys to analyze the video of that incident, and we determined that, if Oracle had done the same thing, they would have been upside down. So, the new bow dimensions are much closer to the NZ spec than to the Oracle spec.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Photo by Daniel Forster<\/em><\/p>\n You might recall, ETNZ took that serious nose dive in an early race, and Oracle did this less-radical face plant on the reach to the first mark in the deciding, final race, which could have come out rather differently. As seen through the lens of Daniel Forster\u00a0. . .<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n With hulls now functioning as components of a foil-delivery system, the extra bow volume builds a safety margin with no meaningful downside. A little more carbon, a little more weight, a little more windage, but equalized through the fleet. Where Oracle had a safety advantage over the Emirates Team New Zealand boat was in its protective cockpits. When ETNZ stuffed it, bodies were flung forward against each other\u2014there weren\u2019t enough grab points\u2014and as the boat sailed on, there were fewer crew on deck. The \u201cAC62? mandates cockpits.<\/p>\n For an easy point of cost saving, \u201cThat crazy aerodynamic structure on the underside of Oracle, fairing-in the dolphin striker, will be restricted. It represented a lot of research, a lot of engineering and a lot of carbon. By going one-design on those components, we\u2019re saving the teams a lot of development, so now we get calls from the CFD [Computational Fluid Dynamics] engineers saying, \u2018Hey, what about our lunch?\u2019 Then there\u2019s the grinders union . . .\u201d<\/p>\n The big picture view of the 2013 America\u2019s Cup is that Oracle Racing built a faster boat\u2014more aerodynamic, twistier, harder to sail\u2014and learned how to sail it just in time. Mastering upwind foiling was the key, and one key to that was grinding style. You probably know the old joke, \u201cYou just keep grinding and if I need any sheet I\u2019ll take it.\u201d Well, launching the comeback, that\u2019s exactly what was going on aboard Oracle. Trimmer Kyle Langford needed instant response to keep the boat on knife\u2019s edge. Asking the boys to pump oil to generate hydraulic pressure for trimming built in a delay that just didn\u2019t cut it. So the grinders would grind all the way. No stored energy was allowed under the AC72 rule, but the new rule as written by Morrelli & Melvin, in consultation with Oracle Racing\u2019s Russell Coutts and Ian Burns, for example, will permit a component of stored energy. The grinders may still be grinding steadily, but not frantically. At least, according to the numbers. As one result, the crew has been reduced to the tune of two grinders. That\u2019s two less jobs on the payroll per boat, and two less jobs per boat in the America\u2019s Cup Industry.<\/p>\n Gino Morrelli has a laid back<\/strong>\u00a0Southern California style, and he comes by it honestly. The whole team at Morrelli & Melvin Design and Engineering has been known to shove work and hit the beach when the surf is up. Morrelli describes himself as, \u201cA longboard kind of guy.\u201d It\u2019s not far from their Newport Beach offices to the sand. Obviously, they also crank out the work. M&M also developed the design rule for the AC72s, and they were the principal authors of the design of Emirates Team New Zealand. They\u2019ve been part of the America\u2019s Cup every time multihulls have been in the game: 1988, 2010 and on. They\u2019re also part of cutting edge multihull racing at every level from A-cats up, and cruising cats from the Hobie Wave to Gunboats. And when I want to impress the nieces and nephews, I just tell\u2019em, yep, I know the folks who designed the Jungle Cruise boats for Disneyland. Those are their only monohulls, I believe, unless you count stand up paddleboards.<\/p>\n The Q&A rambled a bit. Naturally, a Bay Area audience wanted to know if the 2017 match will be sailed here. I voiced my stubborn optimism that it will, simply because that\u2019s what ought to happen.<\/p>\n Someone asked why Artemis Racing still has its base in Alameda, and their 45 is sometimes seen on the bay. Gino responded that, well, everybody has to be someplace, \u201cand I think they\u2019re betting that the next races will be here.\u201d<\/p>\n Another circuit in AC45s? Here\u2019s Gino: \u201cThe 45s attract a lot of interest from the start-up teams. It\u2019s a way to bring in sponsors and show the racing to a home audience. On the upside, it\u2019s pretty easy to convert an AC45 to a foiler. On the downside, the logistics are completely nuts. The circuit was a giant loss leader. No way could it stand on its own. Larry wrote the check for the whole show the last time, but I don\u2019t know how interested he might be in helping those start-up teams get a foothold. He\u2019s already spent so many hundreds of millions on this. I figure the AC45s are a tier 3 decision right now.\u201d<\/p>\n What\u2019s the status of Morrelli & Melvin vis a vis AC35? \u201cWe\u2019re free agents again. We\u2019ve been contacted by a number of the guys, but everybody\u2019s waiting for the Class Rule and the Protocol.\u201d<\/p>\n More challengers next time? \u201cSixish. The Aussies are in, and Artemis. Luna Rossa. Probably the Kiwis, and the French are trying hard and so is Britain, with Ben Ainslie. The design box is tighter and smaller, but I guarantee you there\u2019s enough room inside the box that someone\u2019s going to come up with a faster boat than somebody else.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The New America\u2019s Cup Cat The next generation will look much like this 2013 generation challenger from New Zealand, but they\u2019re a new breed By Kimball Livingston Posted April 13, 2014 Gino Morrelli believes the next generation of America\u2019s Cup catamarans will revolutionize upwind tactics. He foresees the boats foiling through tacks without slowing down, … Continue reading SMALLER, FASTER, SAFER, THE NEXT AMERICA’S CUP BOATS<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,1954,1675],"tags":[1996,2657],"class_list":["post-8222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-americas-cup","category-americas-cup-35","category-foils-americas-cup","tag-ac-62","tag-americas-cup-35"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stephenlirakis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stephenlirakis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stephenlirakis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stephenlirakis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stephenlirakis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8222"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stephenlirakis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8222\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8223,"href":"https:\/\/stephenlirakis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8222\/revisions\/8223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stephenlirakis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stephenlirakis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stephenlirakis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Photo](\"http:\/\/www.blueplanettimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/Daniel-Forster2.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Gino\"](\"http:\/\/www.blueplanettimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/Gino.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n