Peter Isler
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Jan 13, 2010, 2:50 PM
Post #10 of 18
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Re: [James Stevralia] Starting strategy for 33rd America's Cup
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Winning a match race start requires excellent timing, good boat handling, and a boat that turns fast and accelerates quickly. The most spectacular form of starting line win features the victor blasting off the line whilst the loser flounders, down speed, with a penalty owed. These match race "kills" are rare at the professional level because they are so risky. If you go for the kill and miss, either because the umpires don't agree that the competitor fouled you or because you tried to get too fancy and your aggressive maneuvering leaves you slower than the opponent, your embarrassment is swift. It’s much safer to aim to get a slightly better start than your opponent by being on the favored side with a swifter "launch" than trying to get too fancy for your own good.
When the Alinghi's catamaran and BMW Oracle's trimaran face off in the five minute pre start in the America's Cup I don't expect we'll see too much in the way of prestart fireworks, (although with closing speed of maybe 100 knots that first entry could be pretty spectacular). The problem is multifold. Multihulls are not as maneuverable as monohulls to begin with, and neither team has a trial horse with which to practice starting line moves. Tactical pre-start moves learned on smaller cats won't necessarily "scale up" easily.
Conventional wisdom would say that the Alinghi cat, with its wider effective "wheelbase" will be less maneuverable in big turns than the US trimaran. Plus the BMW Oracle wing "sail" greatly enhances that boat's turning and acceleration ability. When we mounted the first wing on our Stars & Stripes catamaran preparing for the '88 Cup, we quickly noticed a big improvement in maneuvering versus our sister ship trial horse which sported a conventional rig.
And even if you're not buying into conventional wisdom, there's no way for either team to really know how they stack up on the acceleration/maneuvering front with their competitor... so it would be pretty risky to come out with all guns blazing in the pre start. It would not be good to watch your competitor sail off to the first mark at 40 knots whilst you are still tied in knots at the starting line.
It will be interesting to see if either team chooses to try and "dial up" their competitor during the pre start. The boats should stop very quickly when "dialed". And anyone who has sailed a multihull knows that they go backwards just fine. But tactical control in the dial up requires pin point positioning relative to the enemy and without any real life practice, nor good intel on the enemy, my guess is that this won't be a priority tactic after teams weigh risk vs. reward.
By employing conservative defensive tactics, even the boat with a pre-start/maneuvering disadvantage should be able to be able to get a fairly even start, albeit maybe giving up the favored side.
My guess is that both teams have too much on the line to risk going for the gold in earning a pre-start kill on the first race. These are much longer courses than typical AC races, and boat speed on the open course is the most valuable commodity. That's where the lion's share of each team's R&D and practice should be focused. However, if one team does exhibit a clear speed advantage during the first race, it’s probable that the "slower" team might shift into more risky, desperation pre-start tactics for the later race(s).
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