American Magic splashes new AC75

As the USA challenger for the 37th America’s Cup, the New York Yacht Club American Magic team took their new AC75 for its first sail in Barcelona on May 7, 2024. Here’s an update from the team and observers:

Clare Harrington, Vice Commodore of the New York Yacht Club, had the honor of christening the team’s AC75 “Patriot.”

“The New York Yacht Club has never wavered from its core purpose of ensuring international competition at the highest level of skill and performance. That is our tradition,” said Harrington.

“However, the launch of Patriot also signifies innovation, blending two distinct elements: tradition and innovation. And so I bring to American Magic the heartfelt wishes of all 3,400 plus members of the New York Yacht Club for your success in the upcoming competition, maintaining the club’s tradition through your inspired innovation.”

Sharing the same name as its predecessor, the team’s third AC75 grabs the baton from the previous boat that nearly sank in the 2021 America’s Cup, in hopes of completing what that campaign was not able to finish.

Terry Hutchinson, President of Sailing Operations at American Magic, added: “As we reflect on the last 21 months, it’s remarkable that we set a launch date of just three days from now. As a team, we persevered through adversity, especially in the early stages of the build when things didn’t proceed perfectly.”

The development of Patriot was a collaborative effort involving American Magic’s team of 30 designers, CFD analysts, engineers, naval architects, AI resources, and boatbuilders. Over 108,000 design and 65,000 construction hours were dedicated to refining every aspect of the boat.

“We followed our own design path with Patriot as we pushed the limits of the AC75 rule while tailoring for the Barcelona venue,” shared Design Coordinator Scott Ferguson. “Our overall philosophy is minimalistic, as we’ve tried to squeeze down our volumes to the base minimum while still fitting the crew and systems into the boat.

“There are tradeoffs for every decision regarding performance, weight, energy, and forgiveness. The design team, together with the sailing, shore, and build teams, have developed what we feel is a strong package for competing at a high level here in Barcelona.”

Once the formalities had been completed just after 8am, a look around the boat revealed much about just how radical American Magic are going.

Recumbent cyclors facing aft was the first thing that leapt out and it’s one of those moments in the America’s Cup where you have to see it to believe it and hope none of the cyclors suffer sea-sickness. Interesting and will no doubt spark a thousand theories about increased wattage, sustained power, and peak loadings.

With technicians swarming the boat and sails loaded onto the chase boat, the dock-out was called at 1.30 pm and the start of a whole new chapter in the American Magic history book was written. A 7.5 nautical mile tow test was run at a variety of speeds and gave enough confidence to the team to call in the sails and complete the leg back to the base.

The team set the MN2-1 mainsail and initially opted for the J4 jib before deciding that in the conditions, that would be too under-canvassed and the J3-1 was hoisted with the obligatory LiDar cameras capturing every small nuance and detail.

A short-ish first stint was brought swiftly to a close with the technicians jumping back onboard for what looked like a jib system issue but five minutes later, the boat was sailing again with the harbour getting close. Recon recorded two tacks, one bear-away and a round-up to finish at 5pm at the harbour entrance.

“As far as first days go inside the American Magic program really this is probably our best first day,” said Hutchinson. “We would have stayed out but we got weather coming, the weatherman was skedaddling us in because apparently there’s a risk of thunderstorms here later on in the day, though I’m certain the sailors and everybody wanted to keep going.

“We’ve got a couple more days of sea-trialling and a couple more days of just working through the systems, but I would suspect very quickly we’ll be with race marks out there and we started a great pattern of development with the AC40s in how we work the boats up there and each day how we got ready to go racing in those, and so I think we’re going to follow a pretty similar pattern there and learn to develop the boat and figure out how we can extract performance.”

Following the publication of the AC37 Protocol and AC75 Class Rule on November 17, 2021, the AC75 Class Rule and AC Technical Regulations were finalized on March 17, 2022. The entry period opened December 1, 2021 and runs until July 31, 2022, but late entries for the 37th America’s Cup may be accepted until May 31, 2023. The Defender was to announce the Match Venue on September 17, 2021 but postponed the venue reveal, confirming it would be Barcelona on March 30, 2022. The 37th America’s Cup begins October 12, 2024.

Teams revealed to challenge defender Emirates Team New Zealand (NZL):
• INEOS Britannia (GBR)
• Alinghi Red Bull Racing (SUI)
• Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli Team (ITA)
• NYYC American Magic (USA)
• Orient Express Racing Team (FRA)

2023-24 Preliminary Regattas
September 14-17, 2023 (AC40): Vilanova i la Geltrú, Spain
November 30-December 2 (AC40): Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
August 22-25, 2024 (AC75): Barcelona, Spain

2024 Challenger Selection Series
August 29-September 8: Double Round Robin
September 14-19: Semi Finals (Best of 9)
September 26-October 7: Finals (Best of 13)

2024 America’s Cup
October 12-21: 37th Match (Best of 13)

For more schedule details, click here.
Additionally, 12 teams will compete in the 2024 Youth & Women’s America’s Cup.

Noticeboard: https://ac37noticeboard.acofficials.org/
Additional details: www.americascup.com/en/home

Source: NYYCAM, ACE