Some sailing stuff...

You call that sailing?

From Sailing Anarchy

Would you contest the world’s most prestigious match-racing series when half the crew can’t sail, wouldn’t know a tack from a gybe, couldn’t tie a reef knot, and never lift their heads above the gunnel? Of course not. Yet that will be the situation for the next America’s Cup, now only a few months away.

It sounds ridiculous, and it is. But that is the outcome of the Class Rules for AC37 as agreed between Grant Dalton and Sir Ben Ainslie back in 2022. Of the prescribed crew of eight, four will be grinders or cyclors. Their only role is to apply whatever physical grunt their bodies can muster to power the hydraulic and electrical systems of the swing-foil 75-foot monomarans in which the Cup will be decided. 

Early indications are that all six boats – the NZ defenders and five challengers – will employ cyclors rather than conventional grinders. They will be head down, bum up throughout each race. To reduce aerodynamic drag their positions within the hull are such that they have no view of the actual racing. 

Is this sailing? Hardly. Is there any other recognized sporting competition on the planet in which half the competitors have no applicable experience, skills or knowledge? Back in the 12-metre days, the few ‘deck apes’ chosen largely for their upper body strength didn’t spend all their time on the coffee grinders. They were genuine members of a sailing crew.

The rise of the cyclors is the reductio ad absurdum of allowing the use of stored power. The published Class Rules for the America’s Cup (which run to an exhaustive 82 pages), make it impossible to compete without the end-use of non-human power. So many functions on these boats are driven by the wattage output of the cyclors that they could not sail, let alone race, without them. 

The gap between conventional sailing and the Cup has become a chasm. There are 92 separate AC rules governing power sources and control systems. These include transmission actuators, control surface actuators, passive input devices, primary force input devices, master actuators, hydraulic intensifiers, and hydraulic accumulators. And that’s not including all the power needed for on-board electronics, circuitry, communications, and the mandatory media systems.