Monday, March 8, 2021
The Flying Yachts of the America's Cup
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The 2021 America's Cup is being held in New Zealand. The "boats" this year are a new class called AC75: monohulled, with soft rather than rigid sails, and of course hydrofoils. One distinctive feature is that when the wind is strong enough they can all lift one of the two paired foils into the air to reduce drag.
Team New Zealand says their machine can hit 50 knots (56 mph or 91 kph).
Truly remarkable devices, but a long way from "sailing" as it was once done. This is about the future, not the past.
CNN video here.
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2 comments:
Team New Zealand says their machine can hit 50 knots (56 mph or 91 kph).
That's a frankly staggering speed for a sailing vessel, or really any vessel at all prior to the middle of the 19th century. Very impressive.
Truly remarkable devices, but a long way from "sailing" as it was once done. This is about the future, not the past.
I strongly disagree. Aside from more advanced materials and more refinement in the designs, these ships have an awful lot in common with ancient Austronesian ones.
Sure - they don't particularly resemble European style ships of the line, which is what I think the average person's pop-culture influenced notion of "a sailing ship" is like, but 1) let's not be needlessly Eurocentric, and 2) let's also avoid the mistake of treating ships of war as somehow defining "sailing" when they were a strict minority in reality, and the overwhelming majority of all sailing craft throughout history were civilian craft, notably fishing vessels. These modern "yachts" are far more like the typical sailing ships of history than a British or Dutch threedecker ever was.
There is something missing. The majesty. You can barely see the sailors working the cranks or a Ted Turner in his hat grimacing at the wheel. It's a plastic contraption devoid of cloth and rope and planks and all things harking back to the golden age of sail. Speed climbing is what transformed rock climbing in the 1990's- completing routes in hours instead of days at the cost of ethics, aesthetic, and safety. For those who value tradition it's not a good change.
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