Just three weeks after the christening of the sister ship USA-71, USA-76 was presented today. The sisters are actually twins, as a complex and expensive process was used to build them.
Today, on the USA's Independence Day, the American team Oracle Racing christened its second America's Cup boat in New Zealand. No expense or effort was spared in the construction of the boat in order to obtain two hulls that are as identical as possible. Normally, the hull of an America's Cup boat is laminated over a positive core, i.e. over a model of the hull. Oracle Racing, however, built in a negative mould. First a model of the future hull was milled, then a mould, a shell, was built with this core, into which the boats were then laminated. The advantage over the positive construction method is that the actual hull hardly needs to be filled or otherwise reworked, as the mould can be prepared accordingly before laminating. In addition, this method produces hulls that are as identical as possible. The major disadvantage of this construction method is the higher cost, which is why negative shells are otherwise only used for large series.
The result is extremely satisfying for boat builder Tim Smyth: "In all the America's Cup yachts we have built in our career, we have never seen boats like this.
The advantage of two identical hulls is that if changes are made to one boat, whether to the underwater appendages or the rig, the results from the subsequent comparison runs of both boats are more accurate than if an error tolerance due to different hull shapes had to be taken into account.
Both yachts should now be in the water as soon as possible so that they can start the trim and comparison races.
On Monday, 8 July, the BMW Group will announce details of its sponsorship of the Oracle team. YACHT online will report...
Lars Bolle
Chief Editor Digital
