As the sailing world eagerly awaits the Louis Vuitton 37th America's Cup, the intensity of the competition is only increasing. With four teams revealing their newly-designed AC75s, it's clear that each team has found unique solutions to the same questions, and the stakes have never been higher.
Design teams have been working tirelessly to deliver their best and latest thinking, while electronics and mechatronics engineers have been hard at work producing the control and power-delivery systems that will define each team’s campaign. And as the competition heats up, the teams have revealed some of their secrets.
With three teams already sailing, it's clear that fast-flight is being achieved by a combination of Barcelona-specific hull design and clever-thinking on controls. While Emirates Team New Zealand and Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli are only showing a fraction of their potential, Alinghi Red Bull Racing has everyone sitting up and taking notice with their full-span bespoke foils, which are having an enormous effect on performance.
The differences in hull design and bustle treatment are more nuanced. While it's easy to say that Emirates Team New Zealand and Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli share a similar progressive thinking, INEOS Britannia is also a contender with their own unique design. However, Alinghi Red Bull Racing has thrown a spanner in the works with their chine on the bow and full-length, considerable bustle leading to the stern.
All the teams have gone for T-section shapes at the stern run-off, but it's in the bow area where the differences are most marked. INEOS Britannia boasts real volume in their in-built, immediately voluminous bustle, while the Italians and Kiwis have aggressively flared bow profiles back to the foil arm boxes.
The deck area is also a key consideration. For anyone who has seen an overlaid flow diagram of an AC75, the biggest disturbance air passing over the yacht is at deck level, and it's here where designers and technicians have worked the hardest. The Italians have a beautifully contoured naked carbon approach, molding the side pods evenly into the deck and aft off the transom. Emirates Team New Zealand does the same with a raised ellipse stern that screams aero.
