Chris_M said..

Cheers guys - Yeah many gutted looking people around work today, however, most seem to accept that it was rich man vs rich man, rather than nation vs nation.

I gotta say, I am surprised at the level of support for the kiwi boat on this forum, I was thinking that with Spithill as the skipper you lot would be Oracle all the way!

Anyhoo, I hope that Dirty Larry is happy with his shiny little trophy....it only cost him about a billion hahahahahha

PS whats the story with the automatic control on the foils???? I'd like to know how that got allowed (I mean it must run on stored power right? Its electronic!!!!)

My guess is the last three cups Oracles burnt through just over 1 billion that tri wasn't cheep (and they broke a wing on it) 2 AC monos, 2 AC 45's (or was it three), 2 AC 70 cats, support boats, spy/shadow boats, set up, people, lawyers.

I think the biggest thing for the next cup now that they've proven people will come out and watch which makes it easier to sell to sponsors is to get the cost down. This cup was 10 x more expensive than the mono hull cups.

The hydraulic power used is pressurised by the grinders, saw the set up on RAN once - is pretty cool

cRAZY Canuk said..


My guess is the last three cups Oracles burnt through just over 1 billion that tri wasn't cheep

This money could be also treated as well spent on R&D . Research and development.
If foiling and wings could be only scaled up 100 times and fully automated that mean completely new era for leisure cruise crafts and maybe commercial freighters too.
We may have totally emission free green cruise ships travelling at 40 ktn or container ships that doesn't consume oil to run engines.
Once it was a case and now again sail powered ships could travel across the world.

Imagine monster ship at the size of football field complete covered with solar panels and hundreds of sail /wings skimming on 10 -15 meters foils above ocean waves.

The last set of of AC boats generally get used as training boats for the next cup or where a team folds they sell the boats and info to a new team/highest bidder. The older mono hulls can be found in half a dozen places either used for tours or racing (sometimes both).

"Wing" sails can be found on pleasure craft, but their not really suitable for the purpose, hard for moorage, can't reef, expensive to build/maintain/repair. And their generally not two element rigs.

Wouldn't be good on cargo ships - theirs no real place to put them, longer trip times, get in the way of cranes. LNG ships are a better option IMO.

Have a peek at the little Americas cup (C class) worlds which is on right now if you liked the AC72's

Wild Oats 11's not that fast is it?

sausage said..

When it's all washed up I will love to find out what tweaking OTUSA did to the boat after they postponed R6 and whether the information correlated with NZ's setup.

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www.yachtingworld.com/blogs/matthew-sheahan/americas-cup-what-was-changed-on-oracle-555

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Key game changer
I'm also told that Oracle's big changes, I think to the rudder, were made on the 16 October, the day that both teams agreed to take off rather than race. In hindsight this could have been one of the Kiwis' big mistakes as they were on a roll at this point having 7 points to Oracle's one. Agreeing to a day off allowed Oracle to engineer their biggest leap in performance as the built the major mod. Although this didn't give them an instant win straight away, it took just one race to tweak the boat after which they won every race from the 19th onwards.

The Kiwis only won a single race after the 16th.