AC 34 ~ What’s the Future?

I’ve had the very fortunate experience of watching the amazing multihull face-off in Valencia for AC33 and only a few weeks later being ringside for some of the Louis Vuitton Series racing in the Hauraki Gulf, Auckland.  A half dozen experienced AC teams sharing two of the V5 AC boats, minus the AC mainsail logos for this event, interesting!  Great support obvious from Team New Zealand running that many races, sharing boats, replacing spinnaker poles, chutes, and patching the occasional bow and keeping it all running!

A tip from some locals on Sailing Anarchy led us to watch the LV racing from North Head in Auckland.  This is a great park setting, old cannons, grass, a few benches, and a super view of Waitemata Harbour and the Hauraki Gulf.  It was also an easy walk from our lodging in Devonport.

We had no idea what to expect when we first hiked up the hill.  But just as we crested the top of the point, we spotted two big square top mainsails heeled over and headed our way.  Wow!  The windward mark was about ½ mile offshore directly in front of us.  There were a scattering of folks already watching the race.  Several had transistor radios, remember those, and were happy to let another visitor listen in to the announcer calling out the race progress.  It was beautiful, warm, sunny, and best of all windy.  You could see the boats working in the puffs off the point and gauging the current coming out of the harbor.

Flashback to Valencia in February.  Two amazing boats, the Darsena and AC headquarters, the beach nearby, and all the charm of Valencia and Spain.  But of course it was frickin cold in February on the Med!  The racing took place well off shore and the courses did not lend themselves to easy spectating.  Certainly not the fault of the Spanish hosts or the boats, but difficult conditions to watch.

Whenever I get to talk to someone about the America’s Cup, the discussion always comes to where will the next race be, what kind of boats, when?  And the answer, no one knows yet.

Here’s my thoughts:

The boats almost don’t matter.  You could run it in TP52s and it would be a blast to watch.  Or ORMA 60 Tris would be pretty exciting too.  But the boats should reflect the latest state of the art technology.  They should be similar to floating Formula One cars pushing the limits of the box rule that defines them.  But not so far out that only two crazy guys can afford to build them.

The venue really needs one major element, wind!  Consistent, predictable wind.  Racing in 5 to 10 knots of breeze is not very fun to watch unless you have 100 foot long multis with 200 foot high wing masts.  And even then the pictures don’t show a lot happening.  And you spend a lot of time explaining why they can’t go racing in that vicious 15 knot wind.  Watching the AC monohulls dicing in 20 plus knots of wind in Auckland, heeled over, struggling to get kites up and down, is fun to watch even with 70 odd foot lead mines!  And if people can sit on a hillside, for free, and be up close and watching and hearing the boats, that is a huge plus.

San Francisco would be great.  It sure has wind, you can sit on the beach or the grass and almost touch the boats, it’s not what you call warm, but the sun comes out sometimes.  I love San Diego, but there’s rarely much wind in Summer, and the racing is far offshore.  Newport, RI suffers the same in both cases and throws fog in to boot.  After that it’s far off to New Zealand or Australia for breeze, sun, great sailing and spectating, and people who really want to go down and watch the action.  

Sounds like it has to be on the Bay up North if it’s going to be held in the USA and really provide the kind of spectacle that it should be.  I’ll be there for sure.  Cats, Tris, or fast light leadmines.  Oh, and I’d like it much better if they would leave the snowmobile/tractor engines off again.  Sailboats guys, please!  My 2 cents.