BMW Oracle Racing’s USA: Fast

While you may have missed the 33rd America’s Cup that was held February 8 to 14, 2010, off the coast of Valencia, Spain, a nautical battle between Société Nautique de Genevè with team Alinghi and the Golden Gate Yacht Club with team BMW Oracle Racing, the sailing skills and engineering prowess of USA 17 proved to be absolutely remarkable. BMW Oracle Racing took the cup back from Switzerland (yes, we know it is land-locked) to the U.S. by winning 2 to 0.

And its victory included speeds from the trimaran on the order of 30 knots (or about 34.5 mph), the likes of which had never been seen before in the race that has been contested since 1851. The BMW Oracle Racing team took the first race by 15:29 (that’s minutes and seconds) and the second by 5:29.

Getting so fast took time. For example, Larry Ellison established Oracle Racing in 2000 to challenge for the America’s Cup; BMW joined two years later. It raced in 2003 and lost to Alinghi. So it was essentially 10 years to achieve victory.

The exceedingly fast carbon-fiber trimaran required the skills and talents of 30 designers and scientists to design. The building of the 114-ft. long boat at Core Builders in Anacortes, WA, took 150,000 hours.

Certainly the most remarkable feature of USA is the wing sail, which is primarily carbon fiber and Kevlar covered with a shrinkable aeronautical film. This sail, which isn’t soft, is 223-ft. high and has a surface area of 7,000-ft2. It weighs 7,700 lb.

Because there are hard-core tech companies backing the boat, it shouldn’t be entirely surprising that there are in excess of 250 sensors sending 26,000 data points per second about boat performance and wind speed to a central database.