The Boat That Could Sink the America’s Cup
NEWS | 15 November 2024
Update: Sweden’s Artemis Racing team crashed its AC72 in San Francisco Bay during a practice run on Thursday, May 9, 2013. One crew member was reported killed in the accident, and the boat was severely damaged and may not be salvageable. How this will affect the team and the overall America’s Cup competition remains to be seen. Ten minutes before the crash, Jimmy Spithill is in his element. On a brisk October afternoon on San Francisco Bay, Spithill is working with his team, practicing for the America’s Cup, the biggest prize in sailing. He won the event in 2010 for Larry Ellison’s Team Oracle, becoming, at 30, the youngest winning skipper in the event’s 162-year history. Among the spoils for the winning team is the prerogative to rewrite the rules of the competition, including determining the shape and construction of the boats that will be used in the next go-round. This is why today Spithill is sailing a $10 million AC72—a radical new yacht for a radically reimagined yacht race. In 2010, at the age of 30, Jimmy Spithill became the youngest winning skipper in America’s Cup history. Photograph: Jason Madara The AC72 is a catamaran: a scrim of netting stretched between twin knifelike hulls, each 72 feet long but only a few feet wide. A series of interconnected cockpits carved into the narrow hulls allows the crew to hunker down and grind two-man winches. Connecting the two blades are girderlike crossbeams. Topping it all off is a rigid wing—13 stories tall—that does double duty as both the boat’s engine and a billboard for the massive egos that animate the race. Each team builds a slightly different variation of the AC72, but the general size and shape were devised by Ellison’s people at Team Oracle. Spithill’s job right now is the same as every other America’s Cup captain’s—to discover and push the limits of this new boat. The team keeps track of top speeds, and with each new day on the water they inch that number up. Today is day eight of testing, and the crew is approaching its 40th hour under sail. At 3 pm they’re just east of Alcatraz and considering their options. The wind is blowing at 20 knots and climbing. The AC72 is designed to sail in winds between 5 and 30 knots. Should they head to the South Bay, where winds are lighter? Spithill decides to go for one last lap in front of the Golden Gate. He wants to see what his beast of a boat can do. He sets a course along the northern shore of San Francisco, aiming for a spot halfway between Alcatraz and the bridge. He’s in race mode, and the track he’s on is close to the one he’d sail if he were really competing. It’s nearly identical to the course he has already run four or five times today—with two subtle differences. The wind, already strong, is now a few knots stronger. And the day’s tide is nearing its maximum ebb. Twenty-eight-knot gusts push in through the Gate while water drains out of the bay at 5 to 6 knots. Taken together, the forces acting on the boat are the equivalent of 33-knot gusts: gale-force conditions. And 33 knots is well beyond the AC72’s comfort zone. But come race day, this is right where Spithill will want the boat to be. By the time he gets past Alcatraz, Spithill and crew find themselves in massive chop, a product of the tide and wind working against each other. And they are driving into it at full throttle. The only way to avoid getting battered is to turn and go back, risking what’s known as the “death zone” in the middle of the turn. Spithill embraces his only option. “We went for it,” he says later.
Author: Daniel Thorp-Lancaster. Adam Fisher. Scott Gilbertson. Martin Cizmar. Julian Chokkattu. Adrienne So. Parker Hall. Nena Farrell. Brenda Stolyar. Simon Hill.
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