A new super boat?

Racing will be more fleet than match, based under the new rule. (Francesco Ferri/ACM2005)

The Protocol has landed! The proposed boats will be very light, more like Volvo 70s or Open 60s than the former V5 IACC which they replace, but is this good for match racing? The answer is almost certainly no. They may hammer downwind at over 20 knots compared to the somewhat sedate ten-knot pace of the current AC designs, but this will make them just super expensive ‘pressure-chasers'. Finding just a tiny bit more wind pressure will increase boat speed enormously, negating the tactical effects of wind shifts and ruling out effective defensive sailing that is what one-on-one match racing is supposed to be about.

It's as if the new rule has been generated by a completely mindless group of individuals. "Oh lets make this new class 90ft long because that will be big and impressive. But hang on a minute, we can only allow these superyachts to be 5.3 metres wide because of the existing dock facilities in Valencia. So now we have the prospect of a boat with a mind bending 5.2-to-1 beam-length ratio on the waterline - enough to make a 12 metre look like a fat pig - and then the only way to make this mad concept stable is to allow an insane amount of draft. This, the new rule for the America's Cup yacht, is probably the most mindless, ill-conceived rating formula of all time. Technology and computers are never able to produce anything more coherent or sensible than the Thames Measurement-inspired, plank-on-edge cutters of the late 18th century.

The mind-boggling arrogance of those who have overseen the formulation of this rule defies belief, hijacking years of tradition with something so amateur. When you stop to think of the skill and care that went into the development of such rules as the 12 metre, the RORC, the CCA, the IOR, IMS and even the IACC rules, it makes you want to cry that the nuances of a measurement formula are to be replaced by a ‘box-rule'.

It is also sobering to see how sycophantic some of those involved in the production of the new rule are. The designers have all been around long enough to know that something that is as stupidly simplistic as this new rule does not do the America's Cup justice. It is not what it is best for the sport, but it probably is what is best for designers with the ability to exploit the new rule. Experience with similar, so-called ‘box rules' is cited as a reason to be ahead in the game of producing a winning design. Sure it's business, but don't try and cover that up as being good for the sport.

Can you imagine the conversation reported back from the smoke-filled room of the law-makers? "We want the new America's Cup boat to be 5.7 metre wide max, but that won't fit between the piers in Valencia, so we will have to make do with 5.3 metres. We also looked at optimising the mast height but the optimum rig wouldn't quite fit in a container so we lopped a bit off and then, hey presto, the techno boys said we don't really need that much mast height anyway, as we can make do with half a metre less if we make the boat a ton lighter!" Believe me they expect you to think this is clever.

These guys are interested only in the bottom line. They don't care if their rule makes for good competition. It might get changed again in 2010, so lets come up with something really hairy and scary. There is a strange consensus, despite the court case, between Oracle and Alinghi to get the event done and on the way, ignoring the hurried and muddled thinking behind the new protocol. It might serve the sponsors and unlock the mega bucks, but it doesn't produce meaningful top line racing particularly of the match racing variety the America's Cup is supposed to be.

Measurement formulas, like the IACC rule, are fun to work with. They get the most out of the technology. Actually they get the best out of events like the America's Cup. That's what they are about. Yacht designers should acknowledge their heritage, not cynically jump on any bandwagon that's available, simply because they think they have an edge that gives them the commercial high ground. But as Geoff Stagg of Farr Yacht Design, once said at a Technical Meeting for the IOR/IMS, "We don't care what you do with the rule, we will design the best boat for whatever it is".

And before anybody says it's too easy to criticise and that the existing rule had reached a dead end and something had to be done, I agree. But the IACC Rule, like the metre boat rule that inspired it, is cleverer than people think. It just needed freeing up a little, that was all - not whole scale abandonment. It is true that refining and tweaking the last drop out of the last possible rule resource gets tedious for even the most dedicated rule manipulators, but the answer lies not in throwing away the rule to replace it with a gigantic unknown, but to set about freeing up the existing one.

This would be simple enough by allowing more sail area within the exiting rig height, which is inexpensive to achieve; having a broader range on maximum and minimum displacement; and subtlety linking beam to length measurements. And the effects of this? The potential advantages of exploring greater beam with lighter displacement to cope with the extra power, or a combination of beam and displacement increase to utilise the added power would make the boats marginally faster, but would also introduce a great deal more variety and development opportunities. And it's not difficult to write these rules or adapt them. It's a piece of cake compared to formulating rules like IOR that took into account a huge number of additional criteria.

An adaptation of the exiting rule would have allowed for the continued use of updated series V IACC boats, involving much less cost and not driving away such star players as Prada, Mascalzone Latino and others. It would have allowed for the further successful exploitation of existing sponsors and their expectations. It would have broadened the design possibilities to a far greater degree than some rushed together box rule. Oh, for hindsight.

Better known in the Middle East for his powerboat designs for Al Yousuf, Julian Everitt has a successful design practice that has produced many race winning racing yacht designs over the past 30 years. He has also been Editor of the Royal Ocean Racing Club's magazine Seahorse and a columnist for Asian Marine.

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