America’s Cup, then and now

There are a few places in the world where America’s Cup history remains alive on the water, with Roger Marshall offering this observation from Newport, RI:

I was sitting on my front deck the other evening watching the wooden hulled 12-meter Heritage sailing past Castle Hill. The boat was followed by Columbia or was it Gleam? It was too far away to read the number, but these boats still have a life going on 50 years beyond their conception as America’s Cup contenders.

Yes, they are taking tourists out for a quick cruise around the entrance to Narragansett Bay, but it’s a life. As I watch Heritage and the other twelve tack – slowly in the dying southerly – their ‘crews’ shifting from low to high side, I think of all the innovations that trickled down to the regular sailor from the America’s Cup.

Steel, aluminum, then carbon fiber masts; Dacron, and later, carbon sails; big and bigger winches, C-foil headstay (the first single headstay carefully delivered to Newport on an 18-wheeler because they were afraid to bend it and possibly kink it), and later twin foil headstays. The twelves were, and still are, stately reminders of what the America’s Cup once was.

As for today’s America’s Cup, I suspect the composite foilers are now destined for the scrap heap after one or two regattas. Is there trickle down? Maybe in foil design for small boats and boards, but I don’t see mum and dad putting on their helmets, strapping the kids in chairs with cyclor pedals, and foiling off to Block Island or Nantucket for the weekend.