Blast off for Ainslie’s America’s Cup

Two more America’s Cup teams launched their first AC75 foiling monohull designs in October, illustrating the varying design approaches of each of the four teams. Sir Ben Ainslie’s INEOS Team UK named its new boat Britannia and revealed a design with a distinctive cutaway bow. It was preceded two days earlier by Challenger of Record Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli Team’s design, which some say shares design thinking with Defender Emirates Team New Zealand.

The British challenger represents a colossal expenditure of time and specialist expertise – 90,000 hours of design time and 50,000 hours of build time, according to Ainslie.

All four teams – Emirates Team New Zealand, American Magic, Luna Rossa and INEOS Team UK – are now trialling their first AC75s, and rapidly accruing the data and knowledge they need ahead of the first World Series event in Sardinia next April, and a tight timeline for building their subsequent versions in 2020.

All the teams are watching each other very closely and being highly guarded about their design