Oracle Team USA's incredible AC72 yacht takes flight in San Francisco Bay during testing for the America's Cup.
- 34th America's Cup promises dramatic thrills and spills
- 'Dream Team' skippered by Aussie sailor Jimmy Spithill
- Hydrofoiling boats can capsize dramatically at 40 knots
AUSTRALIA'S finest sailors will star in the America's Cup next year, crewing the world's fastest racing yacht as it battles the challenger in beautiful San Francisco Bay.
The Aussies are coming: Oracle Team USA's Australian sailors. Top row: Jimmy Spithill, Tom Slingsby, Darren Bundock. Bottom row: Kyle Langford, Joe Newton, Sam Newton. Photo: Oracle
Sailing is a noisy pursuit, typically. Bow crashes on wave, sails heave and billow, ropes grind. But the cutting-edge technology at the sport's pinnacle has introduced a new, eerily silent moment.
It's when the giant catamarans for next year's America's Cup turn downwind, and the sail towering above them - bigger than the wing of a Boeing 747 - catches the wind behind.
The yachts roar with astonishing speed, faster than the wind itself, and then, as the crew take their positions, it happens.
Lift Off: Oracle Team USA's AC72 hydrofoiling during testing in San Francisco Bay. Photo: Oracle Team USA Source: Supplied
No more clash of bow against wave, or chop on the surface. It's quiet, but for the tiny hiss of a fin scything through the water below.
The entire rest of the boat, carrying the crew perched on a side, is - literally - flying.
Lift Off: Oracle Team USA's AC72 hydrofoiling during testing in San Francisco Bay. Photo: Oracle Team USA Source: Supplied
Tom Slingsby, the Australian Olympic gold medalist and one of the many Australians crewing for America 30 years after Alan Bond's triumph in Perth, says the experience is "surreal" and "almost like being on a spaceship".
Thirty years after Australia II's winged keel helped break the US stranglehold on sailing's most prized trophy, a group of Australians renowned as leaders and innovators are at the forefront of the America's Cup challenge again. They will take these inherently perilous yachts around San Francisco Bay next year.
Lift Off: Oracle Team USA's AC72 hydrofoiling during testing in San Francisco Bay. Photo: Oracle Team USA Source: Supplied
On board Oracle Team USA, gung-ho Australian skipper Jimmy Spithill defends the Cup he won in 2011, backed by a tactician, coach and core crew members from the land Down Under.
The yacht's massive 40m high sail generates so much thrust the boat lifts out of the water to glide on hydrofoils at up to 75km/h.
Lift Off: Oracle Team USA's AC72 hydrofoiling during testing in San Francisco Bay. Photo: Oracle Team USA Source: Supplied
Sailing upwind there is so much noise that the only way crews can communicate is via earpieces, downwind everything goes eerily silent.
"It's an amazing feeling," says Slingsby, the team's Australian tactician. "At top speed all the drag is out of the water and the entire boat is skimming on tiny little fins."
Sydneysider Spithill, an excitingly aggressive competitor nicknamed "Pitbull Jimmy" by fans, certainly put the $10m catamaran through its paces when he "pitch-poled" it at high speed during testing, digging it into the water and sending his crew flying.
WATCH as Oracle Team USA's AC72 dramatically capsizes during training on San Francisco Bay.
The last thing the crew heard before the flip was Spithill yelling: "keep an eye on your mates."
"We did something we were hoping we would never do," he says. "Capsize an AC72."
Oracle Team USA's AC72 capsizes dramatically during testing in San Francisco Bay. Photo: Oracle Team USA Source: Supplied
With a 14m wide rope mesh platform between the boat's two hulls and no safety harnesses, some sailors fell the equivalent of seven storeys into the water. Thankfully, there were no serious injuries, although the crash is rumoured to have caused damage totalling $2m.
Oracle Team USA's AC72 capsizes dramatically during testing in San Francisco Bay. Photo: Oracle Team USA Source: Supplied
"We've been pushing the boat all the time, every day we push it more and more, and we finally found our limit," says Slingsby, who won sailing gold for Australia in London.
Jimmy Spithill captains ten sailors aboard Oracle's six tonne, $10m carbon fiber yacht, a remarkable racing machine four times lighter than Alan Bond's Australia II, which in 1983 wrestled yachting's most important trophy away from the USA for the first time in 132 years.
Thirty years on, billionaire American software tycoon Larry Ellison has bankrolled the expensively assembled California-based Oracle team, but its core personnel are all Australian.
On board, Slingsby will help Spithill marshall fellow Australians Sam Newton (bowman), Will McCarthy (grinder), Kyle Langford and Joe Newton (trimmers), while Aussie coach Darren Bundock ensures the racers are ready for the greatest challenge of their lives.
Home Sweet Home: Oracle Team USA's AC72 during testing in San Francisco Bay. Photo: Oracle Team USA Source: Supplied
September's finals series will be contested in the shark-infested waters of San Francisco Bay, with contestants battling unpredictable winds swirling off the city's skyscrapers and one of the fastest tides on Earth rushing beneath the Golden Gate Bridge.
Team USA's "wing" is so powerful it is best described as a cocked trigger primed to explode.
"The new boats are amazing," enthuses an excited Spithill, the youngest man ever to win an America's Cup, who grew up sailing on Pittwater, at the tip of Sydney's northern beaches.
"It's a completely different event from just a few years ago, a complete change."
"It's really stadium sailing. The races last about 30 minutes, and get very physical. Skippering one of these boats is a lot like driving a race car: the harder you push, the faster you go."
Lift Off: Oracle Team USA's AC72 hydrofoiling during testing in San Francisco Bay. Photo: Oracle Team USA Source: Supplied
America's Cup contenders are rolling out technological advances akin to the engineering that characterises Formula One's relentless search for speed and aerodynamic advantage.
With Olympic gold medalists as coach and tactician, plus Great Britain's four time Olympic champion Ben Ainslie at the helm, Spitall's crew is being dubbed yachting's "Dream Team".
Manned by the strongest and smartest sailors in the world, bankrolled by rich tycoons, and backed by sponsors such as Red Bull and Tag Heuer, the defender and one equally expensive competitor will fight it out on the most testing course in America's Cup history.
Over two weeks next September, in front of the Cup's biggest ever live audience, the super yachts will vie for supremacy, framed by Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge.
Home Sweet Home: Oracle Team USA's AC72 during testing in San Francisco Bay. Photo: Oracle Team USA Source: Supplied
"San Francisco Bay is a real test," says Spithill. "It's a very windy bay, the currents are always changing, and it's very tight. One boundary is close to shore, the other moves. It's very demanding, and pushes the boat and the crew to the edge. It's a lot like Formula One."
But unlike Formula One's iconic racetracks, an America's Cup course is never the same.
And while F1 simulators can reproduce almost every aspect of the bitumen, helping drivers prepare in advance, sailors have a whole stack more variables to contend with, including wind, water, gradient and sheer. Which all adds up to speed, danger and excitement.
WATCH dramatic race footage of Jimmy Spithill capsizing Oracle Team USA's AC45.
"Back in the monohull-era there was no risk and the racing wasn't great for TV," says Spithill.
"Now there is real risk involved and sailing is becoming an amazing spectator sport, both in person and on TV. We push it hard, and viewers get engaged with that."
Lift off: Oracle Team USA's AC72 during testing in San Francisco Bay. Photo: Oracle Team USA Source: Supplied
More Batboat than traditional yacht, Oracle Team USA's 22m long AC72 has been designed to be pushed to the limits, with a bow raked backwards to make the powerful boat more stable.
When it reaches top speed the boat sits out of the water on foils, a technology Made in Australia.
Lift off: Oracle Team USA's AC72 during testing in San Francisco Bay. Photo: Oracle Team USA Source: Supplied
"There's very little drag when we are hydrofoiling," says Oracle's five-times America's Cup winning senior engineer, the Dutchman Dirk Kramers: Basically, we're flying."
"It's a very tricky business, getting the whole boat up on foils, with only the board and rudder in the water, and it's tricky keeping control when there are only certain things we can adjust."
Gutted: Jimmy Spithill after Oracle Team USA's AC72 capsized dramatically during testing in San Francisco Bay. Photo: Oracle Team USA Source: Supplied
With a thick rule book, and strict boat design parameters, teams are kept on a level playing field.
Carbon fiber has dramatically reduced the weight of Cup yachts in recent years, with a commensurate increase in speed. Oracle's AC72 weighs six tonnes, when predecessors topped the scales at up to 24 tonnes.
"Weight is drag," says Kramers. "Lose weight and you go fast: very fast."
Add a sail unlike any seen before and the potential for speed, and for disaster, is unprecedented.
Oracle Team USA's AC72 capsizes dramatically during testing in San Francisco Bay. Photo: Oracle Team USA Source: Supplied
"It's a very demanding boat," says Spithill. "It's not like you cruise out and put a sail up, the wing always wants to go, it always creates a lot of thrust. Sailing it takes a lot of concentration."
"We tipped it over from pushing it very hard, that's the risk that is now in the sport today. I don't think tipping is a good thing, but people can see that it is difficult. It engages the audience."
Oracle Team USA's AC72 capsizes dramatically during testing in San Francisco Bay. Photo: Oracle Team USA Source: Supplied
"The danger level has gone up a lot," agrees Kramers. "Safety is a big issue. Our boat is 14m wide, so if you fall off you are falling six or seven stories, jumping into the water or holding on."
"The guys carry safety equipment, knifes, breathing apparatus, and we have a chase boat ready to help. We're really pushing these yachts - but you wouldn't want to take them too far offshore."
Oracle Team USA's AC72 capsizes dramatically during testing in San Francisco Bay. Photo: Oracle Team USA Source: Supplied
"We need 30 people and a big crane just to to get it into the water, and as you lift the wing the boat just wants to fly. She always wants to go sailing."
With multimillion dollar budgets and up to a hundred engineers beavering away in the boatyard, today's America's Cup teams resemble well oiled F1 operations. But by pitting man against the elements with limited technological assistance, the race retains its purity.
Once the boat enters the racing area there is no communication between shore and land, all decisions are made onboard," says Kramers.
There are no engines or motorised winches on Oracle - the most powerful yacht ever built is powered by the muscles of its sailors, and remains forever at the vagaries of wind and tide.
Competed for since 1851, when the schooner America defeated the Royal Yacht Squadron in a race around the Isle of Wight and took the trophy back to the New York Yacht Club, the Cup spent 132 years in the USA before Alan Bond's Australia II finally ended America's stranglehold.
Go Aussie Go: Australia II snatches the America's Cup in 1983. Photo: WA Museum Source: Supplied
The Royal Perth Yacht Club's 1983 victory, after 26 unsuccessful challenges, marked a new era for the America's Cup, and sparked joyous scenes across Australia.
Interviewed that day at a dawn celebration in Claremont, Western Australia, then Prime Minister Bob Hawke famously said "Any boss who sacks anyone for not turning up today is a bum".
Lift Off: Oracle Team USA's AC72 hydrofoiling during testing in San Francisco Bay. Photo: Oracle Team USA Source: Supplied
Sydneysider Spithill is hoping a few of his friends back home will be enjoying a day off next September. "Most of my mates are footie players or racing drivers," says the skipper.
"Before they weren't into sailing, now it's high-paced, like a V8 supercar race, they're hooked."
On the 30th anniversary of our greatest sailing triumph, the Aussies are coming again.
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