America's Cup - Oracle Team USA gears up two boat testing program

by Oracle Team USA media on 13 Sep 2015 Oracle Team USA is moving towards re-starting its testing program this week with boat one scheduled to be re-launched mid-week.

That will be followed by boat two - a new AC45S - later this month.

Once both boats are commissioned, trialled and up to speed, the team will move into two-boat testing mode, a mainstay of America’s Cup programs since the 1980s.

“We see the two boat program as a big competitive advantage for us in our development,” said skipper Jimmy Spithill, who is relishing the thought of getting back on Bermuda's Great Sound race course area.

“There’s been a couple of big milestones that we’ve targeted this year. For me the most important was being the first team to set up here in Bermuda and getting a summer under our belt,” he said. “We’ve achieved that and nobody else can make that up now.

“And now we’re about to enter the next phase - getting two boats on the water. We’re not quite there yet. We’re planning to re-launch the first boat this week and the second boat will follow in a couple more weeks.”



Launching, sailing and servicing two AC45S boats is a huge undertaking and one that will put stresses on the entire team said Spithill following an all-team meeting on Labor Day at the team base in Bermuda.

“It’s going to take a huge commitment from all of the shore team, boat builders, designers, everyone on the team really,” Spithill acknowledged. “But the work that happens now is very important for the America’s Cup in 2017. We haven’t got long. There’s a tight rule restriction on how many components (foils, wings) you can build and we only get to race one boat, so we need to learn as much as we can.”

Spithill says testing with two boats will accelerate the learning curve.

“The hardest thing is going out on your own and trying to get answers. The conditions are so variable, that calibrating a reliable benchmark is very challenging.

“The great thing about two boats is you have a solid benchmark. You can try something on one boat and see the effect almost immediately. So that’s important on the design side, but for the sailing team we benefit as well as we try different techniques. The gains and losses are so huge that we can learn a lot very quickly, but that only happens when you have a sparring partner.”



Initially, the goal will be to try and sail the boats together up to three times a week. But that will be monitored closely to ensure the team is learning efficiently.

“Sailing two boats creates an enormous workload for the full team. So we have to be very careful that our focus is on quality and not quantity. It’s easy in these campaigns to get caught up in thinking it’s all about the number of hours you put in.

“But we need to be efficient and smart and not burn people out. Quality trumps quantity every time.“

Watch for Oracle Team USA to get boat one back on the water later this week, weather permitting.

(For those not quite up with the play with their America's Cup acronyms, and AC45F is the 45ft one design foiling catamaran used in the America's Cup World Series. The AC45S is the Surrogate or development boat used by the team, most teams will run one or maybe two.

It consists of a boat comprising the underwater section of the AC45F hulls, with the deck cut away and a new nacelle fitted which will allow crews to stand in the hulls and grind and steer.

The boats are wheel steered, wider than the AC45F wuth a D-shaped cross beam to better deal with platform twist, and with a scaled wingsail to replicate the AC50.

AC50 (actually 49.3ft long) is the boat to be used in the America's Cup Match, it is a near one-design with one-design hulls and wingsail, but with the teams able to design their own foils and foil systems, and optimise their aerodynamic features and control systems.

Oracle Team USA are allowed to build and launch two AC50's, but must sail their first launched in the 35th America's Cup - the Challengers can build only one AC50 each. In the last Cup only the AC45F and AC72 were allowed to be used.)