Admiral’s Cup: No easy answers

The return of the Admiral’s Cup is already influencing the design, purchase, and modification of serious raceboats. Yet the central question facing every owner, designer, and campaign manager is deceptively simple: what sort of boat can win an event that asks for excellence in almost every mode of sailing?

The program combines short windward-leeward races in the Solent, a coastal race, the Channel Race, and the 700-mile Rolex Fastnet Race. That combination rules out easy answers. Raw speed alone is not enough.

A boat that is devastating in one condition but vulnerable everywhere else could lose the series in a single, heavily weighted offshore race. Conversely, a conservative platform may avoid disaster but lack the pace required to win at the top level. The challenge is to find the broadest useful performance envelope without diluting the qualities that make the boat genuinely fast. – Full report