America's Cup: Luna Rossa's AC75 exits Persico bound for Sardinia

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Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli's first AC75 hull has left Persico's building facility in Bergamo, Italy

As is standard practice the hull of the 75ft foiling monohull has been disguised with the use of a decoy structure.

From what can be guessed the hull appears to present a low drag aerodynamic profile - as would be expected.

With a six months postponement delaying the first America's Cup World Series event to a yet to be announced date in April 2020, the design timeline for all teams has been pushed back/sideways for several months.

The Challenging teams, as well as the Defender, will be keen to see the first design attempt of the other teams and look at their treatments of certain design questions. Unlike the last America's Cup, were the hulls, platform, wingsails and

The teams second AC75 and likely race boat of all teams cannot be launched before February 15, 2020, or two months before the start of the first ACWS event in Sardinia.

Assuming an AC75 takes eight months from the start of the build process to assembly and launch, the Challenging teams will need to have their second boat in and sailing by October 2020 - that assumes that the hull is flown to NZ, and the spars are delivered to the team's Auckland base by Southern Spars.

Those assumptions being correct, then the start building date is April/May 2020 (the dates of the first ACWS). If the boat is shipped to Auckland, add another 55 days which takes the build start back to December 2019 or January 2020.

If the teams chose to launch and do some work-up and sea trialling at their home base, another set of permutations come into play geared around logistics and where they will sail during the Northern Hemisphere.

Other than a trip from New Zealand to Europe and back with Boat 1, the Defender has a much better run - with their series, the 36th Match for the America's Cup) not starting until March 6, 2021, and would probably launch their race boat in September/October 2020, and use the first boat in the ACWS events.

Or, they could launch the Race boat earlier in April and get the tail end of the Kiwi summer/Autumn, and then spend a couple of months, during the winter, doing the inevitable modifications in Auckland before relaunching and starting the work-up.

The Defender has a key advantage that all their major suppliers are based in Auckland, plus their base has been up an running for several months without the need to relocate to the venue of the Defence.

However, the permutations are endless and different for all three Super- teams, on the Challenger's side.

The worst affected is Stars and Stripes Team USA who as it stands have to compete in the April 2020 ACWS event, and spend more time on a ship than they do in training. Their schedule is so unfair, compared to the two boat teams [who have a prototype and second boat] that the remaining single boat team should, by a Protocol change, be excused from racing in the ACWS events, and told to just turn up in Auckland.

Their base is due for handover by constructors Wynyard Edge Alliance in February 2020. The Super teams will have had theirs for seven months or more (ETNZ), and five months previously in the case of Luna Rossa.




by Richard Gladwell