Scary but so, so cool

Tim Jeffery joined Russell Coutts and Franck Cammas in an exploration of Larry Ellison’s latest coup de theatre

Is this the biggest carbon footprint ever in the America’s Cup? Certainly, it is one to rattle the senses. Even in an age of superlatives, the beam is staggering, the speed is phenomenal and, given the job it has to do, it is an exceptionally nimble vessel.

Think of it as a water-boatman pond insect. For all of its mass above the water, it only just caresses the surface. For BOR90, this means vast power and little to hold it back.

Then think of it another way: as a monohull. Even in the early days of trials up in Anacortes BOR90’s main hull was flying in somewhere around 8kt TWS. Immediately it was apparent that this was not a 90ft by 90ft trimaran but the world’s fastest monohull. With her bowsprit, the boat is effectively 105ft long and yet sails on just one pencil-thin hull at a time with the sort of righting moment that a normal monohull can only dream about.

Thirty knot speeds were on tap even in the first couple of outings when the crew were still sailing the boat very gingerly indeed. They were progressively loading it up to its max load case, the point at which the main hull is just flying. It is here the drag reduces dramatically, the AWS climbs and with the mast canted to windward the sail plan is at its most efficient. And all the time team members are logging gigabytes of data from the 250-odd sensors linked into the Insensys load and strain gathering network.

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