Americas Cup Valencia Style

You get a measure of how seriously the Spanish Mediterranean city of Valencia is taking its position as host of the 2007 America's Cup challenge when you arrive at the new port area, where even the manhole covers for water, power and drainage tunnels are cast with the Auld Mug logo on them.

The shipping container handling area has been moved and an entire yacht basin constructed in the inner harbour. The various America's Cup yacht bases front this pool that has ready access by road and water transport.

Heading out of the port for racing the yachts pass by a brand new facility known as the Foredeck Club. This multilayered building wasn't there a few months ago or the terraced, landscaped gardens that connect the port entrance to the beachfront and flank the opposite side of the channel. The channel in front of the Foredeck Club has mooring space for VIP boats and two tall ships had already taken up residence when we visited in late February. Ironically, one of the major attractions on the Foredeck Club's promenade area is a replica of the famous winged keel from Australia II.

The America's Cup Port investment runs into hundreds of millions of Euros but is justified by an agreement that Valencia is now the European base for the challengers' event, the Louis Vuitton Series and subsequent America's Cup defences by European syndicates. The USA and NZ have been nominated as the other defence site countries.

Many of the syndicates weren't in residence during our visit, preferring to train in relative privacy up and down the Mediterranean coast. Switzerland's Alinghi Team, the defending Cup holder, was conducting two-boat training in Dubai. However, many of the syndicate bases were open and visitors flocked in and out of the public areas. Alinghi, BMW Oracle and Prada were doing a roaring trade, selling souvenirs and showing off their high-tech sailing simulation devices.

BMW Oracle Racing had a complete America's Cup yacht on the hard, outside their showroom, with an access walkway that allowed visitors to inspect the deck and cockpit machinery.

Alinghi Team went a step further, putting a replica of the 2003 Cup-winning yacht SUI64 in the water outside the Alinghi Base. This boat wasn't just a floating memory either, but was fully kitted out as a simulator. Underwater hydraulics canted the boat at up to 30 degrees and 'tacked' it through 90 degrees. It took a full crew of 'gorillas' and trimmers to operate, with the helmsman and tactician barking out orders in true America's Cup style – great fun.

2007 CUP RULES
Alinghi Team raced to a 5-0 victory against Team New Zealand in March 2003, returning the Auld Mug to Europe for the first time since it departed for the New York Yacht Club following the inaugural race in 1851.

For the 2007 Cup defence, Alinghi Team accepted the American challenger, BMW Oracle Racing, as the Challenger of Record and to guarantee equality of treatment between teams, delegated the organisation of the 32nd America's Cup to a newly created organisation, America's Cup Management (ACM).

The America's Cup has its own class of yacht - the America's Cup Class yacht. It was devised in 1989 and applied from the 28th America's Cup regatta held in San Diego in 1992.

The design parameters of the America's Cup Class Rules (ACC Rules) are revised by the Defender and the Challenger of Record after each America's Cup Regatta.

Alinghi Team as Defender of the America's Cup along with the Challenger of Record, BMW Oracle Racing, has implemented a fifth revision of the ACC Rules substantially revising and re-writing them. The result is version 5.0 which will be in use for the 32nd America's Cup Regatta and preceding challenger selection races.

The version 5.0 changes are said to better reflect the expected conditions in Valencia and to put the ACC Rules into plain English reducing interpretation disputes.

Major reforms include: one ton off the displacement; 100mm added to the draft to maintain upwind performance; an increase in sail area; and greater use of exotic materials, particularly in the rigging. Inflatable sail battens are examples of permitted innovations.

The yachts must still carry 17 crew and they have the option to carry an 18th person as an observer. This person must sit behind the helmsman on the stern and may not contribute to the racing. If the team prefers, there is the option to carry 100kg of weight instead.

The rules are tight and all competing yachts are subject to very stringent inspection and measurement during construction, and prior to and during racing.

CHANGES SINCE 1992
The ACC boats came into being as a result of the 1988 fiasco in which an American catamaran unsurprisingly defeated a New Zealand monohull. The one-class ACC boats first met in 1992 and America³ took care of Il Moro di Venezia to retain the Cup in the USA.

America³ measured 23.77m OAL, had a beam of 5.45m and a 3.96m draft. It tipped the scales at 21.97t and had 295.5m² of fore and aft sail area.

In 1995, NZ's Black Magic gave Denis Conner his second America's Cup defeat – an unenviable skipper's record. Black Magic measured 24.2m OAL, had a very narrow 4.05m beam and a 4m draft. Displacement was 24.7t and sail area went up to 330m².

NZ retained the Cup in 2000 with Team New Zealand's NZL-60, the undoubted 'breakthrough' design of the ACC era to date. This boat had a slightly wider beam at 4.25m and an OAL of 25.8m, with a 3.96m draft. Displacement was 27.9t and the sail area was 325m².

Alinghi Team's SU164 took the Cup in 2003, with an OAL of 25m, a beam of 4m and a draft of 4m, with 25t displacement.

America³ and Black Magic both had four-spreader rigs with jumpers at their mastheads. NZL-60 and SU164 had three-spreader rigs with jumpers. America³ had three runners each side: masthead, jib-head and mid-mast, but Black Magic and NZL-60 had only two. Black Magic had masthead and jib-head runners, while NZL-60 had jib-head and mid-mast runners, without a masthead runner. SU164 eclipsed all of them with four-branch runners, to masthead, jib-head, third spreader and second spreader.

Bulb keels and very deep rudders have been ACC yacht features since 1992. The earlier yachts had tail fins on their keel bulbs, but later designs have adopted thinner, longer wings aft of the keel-to-bulb junction. The chord of keels and rudders has become progressively thinner and narrower over the years.

Headsail sheeting hardware changed after America³. It had two headsail sheeting tracks each side, one located more forward than the other. Black Magic introduced an 'axle' style travelling block that was advanced on NZL-60 to allow two-dimensional adjustment of the sheet block.

NZL-60 also established the cockpit pattern of twin steering wheels, four double grinders, twin runner winches and a centre-pedestal mainsheet winch.

NZL-60 changed the style of mast bracing, from the traditional diagonals between spreaders to X-bracing between successive spreader tips. SU164 adopted this mast design in 2003.

We weren't able to get close enough to the 2007 challenge boats to see precise details of the latest developments, but it's obvious that mainsails this year are aircraft-wing designs, with large, horizontal 'headboards' that extend the head of the sail to more than two-thirds the length of the foot. According to a couple of the Alinghi people we spoke to, the change in mainsail design is well worth the shortened sail life.

Let the racing begin!