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Enough is enough. It’s time we acknowledged that the people who conceived the rules for the next America’s Cup might have lost all rational connection with the sport of sailing.
You want proof? The release late last week of their revised Class Rules and Technical Regulations for AC37 (under the signature of Grant Dalton for the defenders) reminds us of the depth of this madness. Their obsession with hi-tech foiling monohulls has taken them into an impenetrable maze of detail that only the elite few of that exclusive clique of Americup professionals could understand.
They have, to put it bluntly, managed to disappear up their own collective fundamental orifices.
Consider this: the Class Rules run to 82 pages while the Technical Regulations fill another 45 pages. The Rules contain 1,190 specific rules, stipulations, formulas, diagrams, specifications and inclusions, and that’s not including the qualifications and exemptions. The Regulations have 533 separate line entries, including 163 definitions. (Yep, I counted them all.)
You can scroll to any page and find rules and regulations that are so obscure that they read like the nuthouse mutterings of some demented technocrat. Here’s my personal favourite:
7.8 Parts of the Yacht that can cover the crew shall be limited with reference to an elliptical prism (a solid right elliptic cylinder) which has a major axis of 450 mm, minor axis of 200 mm and a height of 600 mm. When viewed from above and orthogonal to MWP, no more than 35% of the area of the prism projected to MWP shall be capable of being covered by any part of the yacht above the prism other than the mast, sails and rigging…
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