This is the boat with which the British want to win back the America’s Cup

Perhaps there is a curse preventing British sailing, among the most successful in the Olympic arena, from regaining the America’s Cup lost on that distant August 22, 1851 when it was still called the Hundred Guineas Cup. It seems to be a spell that cannot be broken, that of English challenges that are chock-full of talent and wealth but inevitably tremble and lurch in the presence of the Old Pitcher. The mission now falls to the third attempt by that Sir Ben Ainslie named as the savior of the Fatherland, to win back that Trophy that the English feel is theirs but has been inexorably turning its back on them for more than a century and a half.

So here is yet another boat, the new AC 75 Ineos Britannia, the fourth AC 75 after Alinghi Red Bull Racing, Luna Rossa and Team New Zealand. A boat that once again confirms how the new generation of ACs is more homologated than the previous one, with the only exception of Alinghi at the moment that seems to have taken a somewhat different design path than the other challengers.

Ineos Britannia – What AC 75 will be

Little more has been seen of the boat, which is almost always shown, even in reports by the spy team following Ineos, on the reservoir. However, from a first glance one can see that there are similarities especially with Luna Rossa and Team New Zealand.

We can perhaps say that the British boat is a middle ground between the extreme pursuit of aerodynamics of that Italian boat, and the New Zealand “load-bearing hull” (as we called it in our in-depth article). Indeed, elements reminiscent of one and the other boat can be seen. In the bow, the British have more volume at the top and seem to be mostly concerned with possible ballasting.

Britannia seems to have a more V-shaped hull section and less flat in the front area than the New Zealanders, and in this it seems to resemble Luna Rossa more. Instead, from mid-hull toward the stern, a flat surface seems to reign, aimed at recreating the famous air cushion between the hull and water surface .

Interesting foils, which are covered but whose shapes can be guessed, and which are likely to be new appendages. Britannia in the last Cup used a variant of Y-shaped foils, while the pair mounted on the new AC 75 is clearly flat, along the lines of the generation ushered in by the Kiwis as early as 2020, but there will be more specifics to see about the shapes as soon as they are uncovered.

The vertical surface of the hull, the one that thus includes the long keel, seems important as already seen in Luna Rossa, and again the idea seems to be aimed at Spanish waves, which, with the little wind expected, are one of the designers’ bogeymen.

At the stern the boat is “angular,” and here the choice seems very similar to that of Luna Rossa, which in the rear area shows a fairly sharp edge at the stern, with an anti drift function when the boat is displacing.

Ultimately, judgment on the boat remains suspended also because we have seen that with the liveries of these AC 75s the shapes are not always intuitable at first glance; it will be necessary to wait for the first sailing to get a more comprehensive look.

Mauro Giuffrè