SAN DIEGO -
After 16 months of training in San Diego, the BMW Oracle trimaran is about to ship out.
The crew has spent the past couple of weeks training with the new wing that replaced the soft sail, and they say that wing really makes the boat fly.
"The wing is smaller in area but generates a lot more power," said Ross Halcrow who serves as the trimmer for the boat called the BOR-90.
On the open water, in optimal conditions, the BOR-90 has reached speeds up to 40 knots. And that's before they started using their new wing as the sail.
"We're learning how to use it and getting better everyday and we're really excited,' Halcrow said.
At 190 feet, the new wing measures longer than the wing on a 747 airplane. It replaces the soft-sided sail which they had *used until that mast snapped back on November 3rd.
"The great benefit is you go through a great range of power levels," said Design Coordinator Ian Burns. "Like having an engine that you can run at idle or run at full throttle and it's effecient all the time whereas soft sails, you can't run them at maximum effeciency all the time."
Docked at the Maritime Museum sits the "Stars and Stripes", a 1995 America's Cup racing boat. With it's mono-hull and soft-sided sail, it hardly resembles the new BOR-90. Which begs the question, is this new boat a sail boat?
"Absolutley," Halcrow says. "Basically, the wing is a sail. We've got 8 flaps up the back like an airplane wing so that we can control the shape of it and depth of it."
"It's very similar to racing a soft-sail boat," Burns said. "The fabric that covers most of that wing is actually quite soft. Very much like a light-weight sail cloth. Actually it's almost like two sails side-by-side."
The crew says that all the research so far shows the wing makes the BOR-90 faster than a soft sail, but they have not made a final decision on which sail to use against Allinghi in the America's Cup race which starts Feb. 8.
Regardless, they feel confident the $10 million-plus trimaran will bring home America's Cup.
"I think everyone here is ready to go racing and take it to Allinghi and do our best against them," Burns said. "The training here in San Diego has been fantastic so it's been a wonderful experience here and we're pretty much ready to go."
The boat is here for only a couple more days. They say they plan to complete testing by the end of this week and then take it apart to ship it to the race location in mid-December.
That location is still up in the air. The two sides met in court today to determine whether the race will take place off the coast of Spain or in the Persian Gulf. Alinghi asked the New York Supreme Court's Appellate Division on Wednesday to overturn a lower-court ruling that Ras al-Khaimah, United Arab Emirates is ineligible to host the best-of-three showdown due to the stipulations of the 19th-century Deed of Gift. They hope to have a ruling sometime next week.
The crew has spent the past couple of weeks training with the new wing that replaced the soft sail, and they say that wing really makes the boat fly.
"The wing is smaller in area but generates a lot more power," said Ross Halcrow who serves as the trimmer for the boat called the BOR-90.
On the open water, in optimal conditions, the BOR-90 has reached speeds up to 40 knots. And that's before they started using their new wing as the sail.
"We're learning how to use it and getting better everyday and we're really excited,' Halcrow said.
At 190 feet, the new wing measures longer than the wing on a 747 airplane. It replaces the soft-sided sail which they had *used until that mast snapped back on November 3rd.
"The great benefit is you go through a great range of power levels," said Design Coordinator Ian Burns. "Like having an engine that you can run at idle or run at full throttle and it's effecient all the time whereas soft sails, you can't run them at maximum effeciency all the time."
Docked at the Maritime Museum sits the "Stars and Stripes", a 1995 America's Cup racing boat. With it's mono-hull and soft-sided sail, it hardly resembles the new BOR-90. Which begs the question, is this new boat a sail boat?
"Absolutley," Halcrow says. "Basically, the wing is a sail. We've got 8 flaps up the back like an airplane wing so that we can control the shape of it and depth of it."
"It's very similar to racing a soft-sail boat," Burns said. "The fabric that covers most of that wing is actually quite soft. Very much like a light-weight sail cloth. Actually it's almost like two sails side-by-side."
The crew says that all the research so far shows the wing makes the BOR-90 faster than a soft sail, but they have not made a final decision on which sail to use against Allinghi in the America's Cup race which starts Feb. 8.
Regardless, they feel confident the $10 million-plus trimaran will bring home America's Cup.
"I think everyone here is ready to go racing and take it to Allinghi and do our best against them," Burns said. "The training here in San Diego has been fantastic so it's been a wonderful experience here and we're pretty much ready to go."
The boat is here for only a couple more days. They say they plan to complete testing by the end of this week and then take it apart to ship it to the race location in mid-December.
That location is still up in the air. The two sides met in court today to determine whether the race will take place off the coast of Spain or in the Persian Gulf. Alinghi asked the New York Supreme Court's Appellate Division on Wednesday to overturn a lower-court ruling that Ras al-Khaimah, United Arab Emirates is ineligible to host the best-of-three showdown due to the stipulations of the 19th-century Deed of Gift. They hope to have a ruling sometime next week.
