At the end of the rainbow

So what would the ‘proposed’ new AC90 Class mean for the America’s Cup... Dave Hollom takes a look

If Ernesto Bertarelli wins the current legal wrangle (a little polite clapping and a lot of indiscreet booing) he will no doubt opt to race the next competition in the new AC 90ft class (strange title in this age of metrication). If, on the other hand (big cheers), Larry Ellison wins and goes on to win a Deed of Gift Challenge in multihulls, he will, I guess, have a choice of using the Version 5 edition of the old ACC rule or, as seems more likely, the new AC90 rule, for the following match. Much has been written about the unsuitability of the AC90 rule for match racing. Many feel that the very lightweight nature of the new boat will result in large differences in speed with only small differences in pressure. This, they maintain, will lead to the large separations that aren’t conducive to good match racing.

I have always been an advocate of high- performance sailboats. To me the faster the boat the greater the sailing excitement. However, sailing excitement is not necessarily racing excitement and pure speed doesn’t always mean good match racing or, for that matter, good fleet racing. Last summer I watched both the Six Metre Worlds and the Prince of Wales Cup in International 14s, competitions involving two boats at the opposite ends of the weight spectrum. The Six Metre racing was slow, but close and exciting for the closeness. So close that at one point a large part of the fleet was overlapped between the twin leeward marks and had great ­difficulty squeezing between them.

On the other hand, the International 14 racing was fast and exciting to watch for its speed, but at the finish the fleet was very widely separated and, as a race, it was less than exciting. There were, on the other hand, many place changes among the top boats so it was by no means a procession.

One of the boats we were rooting for (we had a vested interest as it carried our foils) was leading and with the lead building lap after lap and we thought we had it in the bag. However, twixt cup and lip there’s many a slip and on the next lap it’s back in sixth place (our boat did eventually work its way back to second).

On the evidence of this comparison the doubters would seem to be vindicated. But remember, the Version 5 ACC boats were not by any means lead mines and the racing was deadly close among the top few...

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