Technology makes America's Cup plain sailing

Net Results: All I know about sailing, I learned as a child at summer camps in America. Unless you come from a sporty family, that's true of most Americans. Summer camp is where we got sent off to learn sailing, horse riding, swimming, and singing annoying songs to torture some poor coach driver.

In sailing, we learned basic knots; how to rig a mast, and how to right your boat in the lake and climb back in, once you'd tipped it over while showing off. We used little fibreglass boats and zipped across those little campside lakes at what seemed like atrocious speeds.

Last week, I saw what sailing is like for grown-ups. Not just sailing, but sailing at its highest level of technological achievement, the yachts and teams that will contest the America's Cup in 2007 and are busy facing off in pre-regatta races in Valencia until the cup takes place.

I was fascinated that technology has always been centre stage in the cup, from the first race run in 1851. This makes the race the world's oldest team sports trophy, predating the first modern Olympics by 45 years.

The race takes its name from the yacht called America, which sailed from New York to Britain in 1851, to compete against the best the British could line out against her. On August 22nd, 1851, 14 British boats raced her around the Isle of Wight, with Queen Victoria watching from the royal yacht. America came in a clear first, ahead of Aurora. Her success was attributed to a sophisticated design using new techniques and the America's Cup was born to honour the yacht.

Fast forward to 2005 and technology has a whole new meaning in the graceful, lightweight, carbon fibre yachts that will compete. Each carries some 120 sensors attached to various locations, and which supply a constant stream of data during practice sessions.

That data is crunched through databases and analysed each morning after a practice race says Ian Burns, the design co-ordinator for Oracle BMW's pre-regatta boat, which is competing in Valencia.

The information can influence everything from racing technique to hull design.

All the information, lab work and racing experience gained over the three years of the pre-regatta will make up some 200,000 hours of research and development that will go into producing the yachts - there will be two per team - that take to the water when the cup race rolls around in 2007.

Building each team's boats will take some 30,000 hours of work. Their forerunners in Valencia are amazing things - built of carbon fibre 10 times stronger than steel and up to 75 per cent lighter.

They are open at the back so water can pour through them, and they have no motor, so they have to be towed out on each morning of a race to the start position.

Most of the boat's weight is concentrated in the keel. While the carbon fibre hull weighs two tons, the keel is a whopping 19 tons, designed to keep these 24-metre sleek creatures from flipping over when they tilt way over to one side and skate at up to 20 knots (23 miles per hour) across the sea's surface.

The masts are astonishing too - at 33 metres, they are taller than a boat's length, and when flying a spinnaker, the billowing sail that has over 500 square metres of surface designed to capture as much wind as possible, the sight takes your breath away. Even the sails are made of carbon fibre, some 14 miles of carbon fibre thread woven back and forth in specially designed moulds for each type of sail, says Burns.

Boats carry a variety of sails for each race after tacticians determine the type of weather likely to be encountered. The carbon sails look extraordinary, a shimmery aluminium silver tinged with black in a kind of sharkskin effect.

Burns says it is extremely difficult to get hold of carbon fibre as the Pentagon gets first dibs on all US supplies. Carbon fibre is a prime ingredient for fighter planes and other implements of war, and in the US, the defence industry's needs for Iraq are considered more important than racing yachts.

The boats take a 17-member crew, though they are allowed an 18th member as an observer, a treat handed out to well-heeled VIPs with sailing experience by the millionaires and billionaires boat owners, such as Oracle's founder and chief executive, Larry Ellison, and the Bertellis, who run Prada.

Watching these beautiful boats race was different to any type of sailing I'd ever seen, although the flotilla of yachts chasing the race are a reminder that it remains a sport enjoyed mostly by those with money or of a certain social class.

However that is changing. According to Oracle, the point of staging a three-year regatta and racing offshore rather than in the open ocean is to make the race viewable to people onshore.

Cup devotees hope to broaden its appeal which, having had the thrill of the chase last week, is a laudable goal.

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[ http://www.americascup.com/en/ ]