Team Oracle Penalized For America's Cup Rules Violations

whoever57 writes "On Saturday, Oracle Team USA and Team New Zealand will begin racing for the America's Cup in the amazing AC72 boats. However, the Oracle team starts with a significant handicap. It was recently discovered that members of Oracle Team USA made illegal changes to the boats used in the America's Cup Series (which is sailed in the smaller AC45 boats). After a hearing on Friday, the International Jury has decided on the penalty: Team Oracle will have to pay a fine and sail without some team members. More significantly, they lose two points before starting the America's Cup races against Team New Zealand. A tiny amount of weight had been added to the kingpost, in violation of the measurement rules for the class. This was reported to the measurement committee some weeks ago after its discovery by boatbuilders working for America's Cup Regatta Management (ACRM), not members of Oracle Team USA."

Comments

Wow

[ArchieBunker]

I'm sure all six of the fans who watch this race are shocked.

Re:Wow

[MightyYar]

Given that NASCAR brings in people by the hundreds of thousands, I think that lack of popularity does not necessarily detract from the Americas Cup.

Re:Wow

[BLKMGK]

Actually i watched some of the races in the run up to the cup and found it pretty interesting. The boats are sailing at as high as 50MPH with hulls nearly fully out of the water. There's tons of telemetry and the announcers are doing a decent job of explaining what's going on - it's actually fun to watch and you can see it takes a great deal of skill. Scoff if you want but I for one found it interesting, adding all of this telemetry really does add to it I think. It helps too that the boats are so damned advanced and fast!

Re:Wow

[MightyYar]

The irony is that a NASCAR team has a lot more in common with an Americas Cup team than with anything poor, trashy, or stupid.

Re:Wow

[deathguppie]

The America's cup is watched by millions. Team costs per syndicate are in the hundreds of millions making Indie racing or formula 1 a joke in comparison. What's more it is the least regulated form of racing (current situation not incumbering) of all the professional racing sports. 30 years ago they were racing mono-hull sailboats pounding through small waves. Now they are racing multihulls that litterally lift off the water on wings going faster than the traffic on the golden gate bridge and almost leaving the speed boats that trail them in the dust.
From my personal experience sailing a boat over 25knts the splashes start to feel like pebbles and then rocks hitting you.. the intensity of having a vehicle of that size moving at that speed is akin to taking Caterpillar 797 through a downhill from Pikes peak. It's amazing and a great sport at any level.

Re:Wow

[Solandri]

While it's regarded as a rich man's sport, the race has been a major driving force behind research into the use and manufacture of carbon fiber composite structures, and methods for determining computational solutions for the Navier-Stokes equation (which is still unsolved, and is not even known if there is/isn't an algorithmic solution). The race creates an incentive for the super-rich to become early adopters of these technologies. Without the race they'd probably piss their money away on gold toilet seats or who could make the biggest megayacht. At least this way they're spending money on advancing the state of the art for technologies which will eventually benefit you and me.

Re:Wow

[dkf]

the Navier-Stokes equation (which is still unsolved, and is not even known if there is/isn't an algorithmic solution)

The Navier-Stokes equation is strongly non-linear, so it's entirely expected that there are going to be very few exact algorithmic solutions (and most of those that exist are for cases where the non-linear terms are zero). The general problems with determining exact solutions to non-linear equations have been known for a long time in mathematics.

On the other hand, it does mean that turbulent flow is not about to become a boring subject to study.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure where you get your information about funding for Formula 1 from, but its bollocks, whilst the teams do not publish specific breakdowns at line item level, they spend a LOT of money every single year.

Even six years ago the teams were spending a fortune each year, See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formula_One#Revenue_and_profits for some sort of general idea,

The current estimate of Red Bull racing is they are spending in excess of $295M/year every year.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/motor-sports/topstories/The-bonkers-business-logic-of-Formula-1-teams/SP-Article1-968466.aspx

A simple Google search shows more details.

So in conclusion, the Americas cup is run every three years and costs around $100M to mount a challenge, a top F1 team spends approx $300M per year every year so spends $900M in the same timescale.

Simply put F1 costs around 9x per year than the Americas Cup. Yep you were talking bollocks.

Re:Wow

[argStyopa]

America's cup is watched by millions....barely.
http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2013/08/21/tiny-audience-for-americas-cup-tv.html

The semifinals are averaging 50-80,000 viewers.
The races just off San Francisco with the most effete/trendy/hipster crowd imaginable, averaged 800-900,000.

This is somewhere around the ratings received by NBC's "Last Call" at midnight.

This is a marginal sport irrelevant to 99.9999% of the population, and in which the only participants are giant conglomerates or kajillionaires. Granted, formula one racing, etc are likewise only for the big-money teams, but pretty much everyone drives. Sailing as a regular activity is already a marginal sport performed only by the tiniest rind of enthusiasts, that 'pro sailing' is like the margin of the margin of the margin. I don't doubt that it takes tremendous ability, intelligence, and teamwork. It's just that the bulk of us can neither see it nor appreciate it if we could.

Re:Wow

[wanax]

The boats are incredible, but it's not sailing in any accessible aspect. I love sailing sunfishes on lake morey, or bigger boats on lake champlain (and I know enough about my skill level to avoid of wider waters like the Sound). But what they're doing now is so totally foreign to everybody who's ever sailed a boat... I've watched a few of the 'challenger races' and I could scarcely tell what direction the wind was coming due to the airfoils (they have to both tack coming upwind and gibe going downwind) except for the speed of the boat (~25kn upwind, ~40kn downwind). This was, as far as I can tell from the PR material, meant to make the race more exciting, but since it dropped the number of teams down to 4, there was never any mystery that team New Zealand would challenge Oracle since so few people could afford to build the boats and spend time racing them (even Oracle has cosponsors)... I absolutely agree though that the announcers and TV coverage has been phenomenal.

Re:Wow

[Russ1642]

Don't bring facts into this discussion.

Re:Wow

[Creedo]

Well, it may be far more technical than most people get, but I wouldn't say that it's "totally foreign." I also sail Sunfish, I'm not a racer myself, but I'm familiar with the lengths some of the catamaran sailors around here go to wring the most competitive advantage from their boats. These guys just spend WAY more time and money on it than a regular sailor could ever dream of.
Dammit, now I'll never get any work done today. I'll be thinking about sailing all afternoon.

Explanation...

[wbr1]

A tiny amount of weight had been added to the kingpost, in violation of the measurement rules for the class.

So that is where Larry Ellison hid the pennies he hears from ask.com toolbar spam on the Java installer.

Re:Explanation...

[guttentag]

So that is where Larry Ellison hid the pennies he hears from ask.com toolbar spam on the Java installer.

Ironically, TFA has an ad on the sidebar that exhorts the reader to install a "Customized Toolbar for Serious Sailors" by the site that is hosting TFA. The ad seems to move around, so if you're having trouble locating it, here's the gif itself. I wonder if Ellison has this toolbar installed... being a serious sailor and all.

Re:Explanation...

[SeaFox]

Not quite, I think this is related, though.

Apparently the shipbuilders for Oracle's boat didn't see the little checkbox to turn off "Install Kingpost PC (personal craft) speedup" before they agreed to the blueprints.

Re:Explanation...

[vrt3]

If people google for "java download" they get this page: . On that page there is a big red button called "Free Java Download". That's the most straightforward way to download Java, and it gives you an installer with the toolbar (at least on Windows; I don't know on other platformst).

Not only that: even if you install Java from a non-toolbar installer, the automatic updates (if they even work) use the toolbar-version of the installer AFAIK.

That's why people say there's a toolbar in the Java installer.

Re:Explanation...

[SeaFox]

Can someone please explain why people say there's a toolbar in the Java installer? I have always gotten the JRE/JDK from http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html and have never encountered such a thing. Am I the only one who knows these even exist?

Most people just get it from the home page, and that's a different installer.
Remember, a large number of people who get Java only do so because Pogo tells them to. For those people this is "surfing the internet". And they're going to click the first search result, which is that same installer. Yeah, your page is the third result, but they will ask "Is 'Java SE' the same as 'Java'?" and they'll skip it.

When the consumer version automatically notifies you of an update, the updater has the same type of installer (with the tag-along software), so you have to uncheck the option every time you update Java now.

Sometimes I wonder if people have making life more difficult for themselves just to give them something to rant about.

More difficult like digging through a tech-net website looking for a installation program, and coming to this page (which would intimidate any non-techy person)?

Re:Explanation...

[AmiMoJo]

You visited a random link without AdBlock? Eww. That's like sleeping with some random bint you met in a pub without a condom. You could catch all sorts as nasty things!

No worries...

[JohnA]

Oracle is planning to sue the America's Cup team for violating their patents on "Boat API v1.0"... that'll teach them to build a boat using standard terms like hull, sail, and rudder!

Oh

[cold fjord]

Somebody on Team Larry isn't going to get a bonus this year.

"miniscule"

[girlintraining]

Okay, from what I'm reading here, this sounds like a gross over-reaction and a lot of rich old people taking shit way, way, way too seriously -- over an apparent lead weight added to some doo-hicky mc-shippy thing which if I spent the next several hours orgasming over the idea of captaining an overly-expensive boat with no practical application other than being a giant penis floating through the waves, I might understand the function of.

Such as it is though, I'm a computer geek, and the only thing I understand is performance. And everything I've read is that the change was tiny, and would probably have less effect on the performance of the ship than whether one of the teammates ate at McDonald's and forgot to crap after. No, I'm perfectly serious -- it seems that all this hub-a-bub amounts to someone having nailed a few ounces of metal to some part of the ship and it would have next to no impact on the ship's performance. So from an engineering and sport performance perspective... it's a tempest in a teapot.

So why the angry rich people hating on Oracle? As far as I can tell, They're angry and running about calling it "cheating" over what appears to be a simple case of not understanding the horribly dense and overly-complicated rules, in a new ship class that just debuted this year.

It's like NASCAR finding out that someone used windex to clean the windshield instead of the pre-approved isopropyl alcohol mix and deciding it was cheating, that NASCAR's reputation was ruined, and the only way to fix it would be to put the driver and the entire pit team out for a good public flogging while the guy with the jet pack flies over head carrying an American flag hung upside down and a long banner saying "You assholes! You killed it for everyone."

Fucking rich people. If it were me, I'd say screw it, build a submarine, and go out there and play Jaws with their rich-ass ships, sinking all of them one by one while Ride of the Valkyries played from giant water-proof speakers... because if there's one thing I hate more than people taking themselves too seriously, it's taking themselves too seriously and being rich pompous bastards while doing it. -_-

Oracle... you heard it here first: Build a U-boat and go sink those rich asshats.

Re:"miniscule"

[whoever57]

it seems that all this hub-a-bub amounts to someone having nailed a few ounces of metal to some part of the ship and it would have next to no impact on the ship's performance. So from an engineering and sport performance perspective... it's a tempest in a teapot.

That is the most puzzling part of this: why? any advantage would be far too small to make any difference to the outcome of a race.

So why the angry rich people hating on Oracle? As far as I can tell, They're angry and running about calling it "cheating" over what appears to be a simple case of not understanding the horribly dense and overly-complicated rules, in a new ship class that just debuted this year.

Last year, actually. It was an AC45 that was modified. These boats have been racing for over a year and are effectively a one-design class. This wasn't an accidental rule violation. This was weight added deliberately:

The suspect forward kingpost appeared to have been filled with a resin/ballast slurry of some type. and weighed 3.744 kg.

And:

Oracle... you heard it here first: Build a U-boat and go sink those rich asshats.

In this competition, Oracle are the richest of the rich asshats.

Re:"miniscule"

[MightyYar]

I think you pretty much have the gist of it - the speculation is that the weight replaced an instrument package or something else that was hanging there before. It was 5 lbs - less effect than an inch or two of a crewman's buttock on the rail.

That said, I'll remind you that rich "asshats" pretty much own all sports teams. NASCAR may have humble origins, but the teams are now owned by people who could just as well build a yacht.

Re:"miniscule"

[viperidaenz]

There is a difference between the Americas Cup and NASCAR

If you want the best car in the world, New Zealand probably isn't the first choice.
If you want the best sailing boat in the world, New Zealand is the only choice.

Re:"miniscule"

[MightyYar]

Them Kiwis can sail!

Re:"miniscule"

[BLKMGK]

These boats are heavily heavily instrumented and tested - it was also not just one boat. I think that maybe they figured out that doing this was an advantage of some sort and thought they could get away with it. It's being made to sound really miniscule but one cannot help but wonder why they did it and then even denied having done it after being caught.

It's a cool race to watch and these boats seriously fly. When i watched the Oracle boat was stomping another boat pretty good and had a multiple knot advantage over it's competitor. If I were on the rules committee I'd be taking a VERY close look at the rest of those boats, I doubt this was the only change..

Re:"miniscule"

[Anonymous Coward]

That is the most puzzling part of this: why? any advantage
would be far too small to make any difference to the outcome
of a race.

Oracle are playing down the advantage it would give, and the local
media are lapping up that spin. Obviously if you are going to risk
your career over such a move (and make no mistake, the tampering is
no minor issue, look up the water ballast fiasco of a few years ago,
in the sport these guys are now the equivalent of Lance Armstrong)
you'd be damn sure in your mind that the advantage gained would be
worth that risk. The AC45s love the extra weight up forward and
since seconds count and the boats are supposed to be identical,
every little change translates to a big advantage.

This is intentional cheating, the scandal will be if they don't get
banned from the sport for years.

Re:"miniscule"

[Osgeld]

there's an international crisis every month, we cant stay all sheltered up and bunkered down for our entire lives

Re:"miniscule"

[viperidaenz]

It's not really an international race though. Both Team New Zealand and Team Larry are skippered by Kiwis.

It's more like Auckland vs Wellington.

Re:"miniscule"

[kermidge]

Nice. America's Cup has long had, and had a reputation for, arcane rules. Just as for the Formula cars, Indy, etc., the rules are meant to offer two things, a level playing field, and yet room for engineering and technical innovation and the manner in which the vehicle is driven within the rules that give that level field. A similar approach is done for smaller class boats but the rules are much simpler.

It's all supposed to boil down to how well one can design and build a boat (that's matched evenly with others) and then how well can one sail it.

America's Cup is indeed a playground for the rich. Yet one may readily and enjoyably participate in small class boat races at a local sailing club, often for no more money than just showing up and offering to crew. For more serious stuff it's generally expected that you have proper clothing, an approved harness and flotation jacket along with proper devices (lamp, flares, horn.) If you get up into Mackinac Race territory, then it starts getting serious, but even twenty, thirty years ago it was fairly casual. It's fine if one just wants to day-sail; but the small class boats offer an entry point to people with boats and practical small boat handling while dancing on the edge.

Re:"miniscule"

[adolf]

Thank you for the linked citation. Your posting is exemplary in ways that many others fail.

I note one obvious problem with your citation: Therein, it is proclaimed that there are fans of Oracle.

Who are these "fans"? Please elaborate.

Re:"miniscule"

[timeOday]

Okay, from what I'm reading here, this sounds like a gross over-reaction and a lot of rich old people taking shit way, way, way too seriously --

Have you heard about the covenants in gated communities? (Hope you don't want to ride a scooter!) You are talking about a bunch of rich guys. Their self-appointed function in life is to tell other people what to do, because they know better. The Augusta National golf club just started admitting blacks in 1990 and women just last year . Let us ponder on that for a moment.

Re:"miniscule"

[whoever57]

It's all supposed to boil down to how well one can design and build a boat (that's matched evenly with others) and then how well can one sail it.

The AC45 class (the type of boat in which this rule violation occurred) is supposed to be a manufacturer-supplied one-design boat. In this class, it should come down to only how well the boats are sailed -- the boats themselves should be identical.

Re:"miniscule"

[deathguppie]

The "king post" is what keeps the bow sprit from moving aft when pressure from the sail is added to it. The only reason for adding weight to it in this situation is if the bow happened to be rising to quickly. The rules imply that any wing shape added to the keel/centerboard must stay in the same angle/plane for the duration of the race. Designers skipped this rule by creating a moveable lifting plane on the bow of the boat. Tilting this plane lifts the boat up off of the water. However, this is a balancing act. It takes a lot of skill and design compitence to create and run one of these rigs. The NZ team was the first to figure out the cheat, and everyone else has been playing catch up. Team Oracles boat designed by Paul Burke, was not designed with the lifting planes originally intended. In this case some of the team members took it upon themselves to level the feild by adding weight to keep the bows from popping up to quickly and losing control of when they would and would not plane on the hydrofoils. It is a bit picky, but those people involved knew well what they were doing and went through lengths to cover it up. If they had just put a hunk of lead up there, judges would probably just have said "hey you can't do that".. but instead it was found buried purposely put there. That is pretty much willfull defiance of the rules. I'm an american shipwright from the northwest where these boats are built, so I'm definately on the US side.. but I see the significance of the decision, both ways.

Re:"miniscule"

[sjames]

Even among rich asshats Oracle and Ellison stand out as rich asshats.,/p

Re:"miniscule"

[lxs]

They got caught.

Re:"miniscule"

[Skater]

Ellison and his friends sure do have a fucked up sense of priorities racing their damned yachts in the midst of an international crisis. A pox on all their houses I say.

I'm curious to hear what you think Ellison should do about the Syria situation. Convince them to install Oracle and hope the fees bring them to their knees?

Re:"miniscule"

[Christopher_G_Lewis]

And then lied about it. That's the kicker. Of the five that were caught.one was given a warning, one was banned for the first four AC races, and three were banned from this AC.

Further, three of the offenders are being sent to their national sailing organization with a recommendation of no further action, but two of them are being sent back for further punishment with the declaration of lying and knowingly modifying the boats. Because each of these sailors sails under the international racing rules, and are being charged with "[a] gross breach of a rule and good sportsmanship" they are going to get the hammer. There is precedence in sailing (sorry, no linkage) that these two guys could be banned from competing for years. And this is *all* racing, from the AC and Olympics and club beer can racing. This is the equivalent of A-Rod being told he can't play ball anywhere in the world, including his church softball league. The closest analogy is the banning for life of the Chicago Black Sox.

So don't think this is a trivial situation, these guys will probably never race professionally ever again in their lives.

How do I?

[Fnord666]

How do I moderate an article as off topic?

Re:How do I?

[cold fjord]

Two choices. Get it while it is in the submission queue and vote it down, or don't post in it if it becomes a story on the front page.

Re:How do I?

[bluefoxlucid]

Have you ever actually analyzed the engineering requirements for a good boat? Oh sure, rednecks love those power boats with a V10 Dodge Viper engine driving some screws by brute force in the most inefficient way possible; but have you ever actually looked at boats?

Let's put it this way: The Chinese Junk is the best boat ever made. It's harder to sail than a modern sail boat, but functionally superior when handled properly. It was the inspiration for sealed partitions--thousands of years ago you could sink a boat by holing it, and then the Europeans found out that the Chinese put a bunch of rooms in the boat and made it possible to seal them so you'd only take on so much water. They started storing rum in some of the partitions. The rigging on the sails allows for better agility and faster sailing in all winds--including directly into the wind.

Modern boats have surpassed the junk in some respects and trailed it in others. They're easier to sail and faster in some conditions; they're designed to hold level and sail more efficiently than old models, but these adaptations can go back to the junk easily (the main difference in a Junk vs a modern boat is its sail rigging); they're made of better materials that decrease drag and improve balance and handling, allowing for straighter and faster sailing and less risk of capsizing; and so on.

All in all, in thousands of years of engineering, we've managed to make some improvements and some trade-offs... very little in the way of actual advancement. Not only is it hard to engineer a ship that can sail and sail quickly, but it's hard to pilot one. It's hard to maintain one. You have to deal with wind going the wrong way and then you have to manipulate the sails to harness power from the wind and directly turn that into driving force--you're not turning a turbine, you're catching the wind going east and making the boat go northwest. It's not even as simple as cutting in and then turning and dropping out; the goal is to keep as much wind in your sails as possible--to pull in the full of the wind 100% of the time while sailing directly in the opposite direction from where the wind is trying to push you. Not very easy.

It's a huge, huge engineering problem. It's complex and these are fairly amazing machines. But by all means, go ahead and go out there with a few two-by-fours and some wax and a tarp and build yourself a top-tier sailboat, and see how quick you can cut across the harbor. Make sure the coast guard's there too; your mommy might need to come pick you up when your little boat sinks.

The only thing cool about this article...

[jesseck]

The only thing cool about this article is the pictures of the sailboats in the linked stories. Especially the one about the "Amazing AC72 Boats". I didn't realize a sailboat could get up out of the water like that- that is some impressive engineering.

Re:The only thing cool about this article...

[whoever57]

Google "foiling moth video" and prepare to have your mind blown with what can be done with a lot less money!

Re:The only thing cool about this article...

[erikkemperman]

Thanks for sharing, that's pretty awesome

Get Past The Bucks

[wrackspurt]

America's Cup

The history and prestige associated with the America's Cup attracts not only the world's top sailors and yacht designers but also the involvement of wealthy entrepreneurs and sponsors. It is a test not only of sailing skill and boat and sail design, but also of fund-raising and management skills.

It's still sailing at its best and sailing is one of the most graceful and productive things we've ever done. The yachts are elegant, no matter your hatred for the rich who own and sail them.

Re:Get Past The Bucks

[whoever57]

These boats have hit 50MPH on the water - not KNOTS, MPH!

Uh, you know that 50 knots is faster than 50 MPH, right?

Annoying event for San Francisco

[Animats]

San Francisco's hosting of this event was a big mistake. For an event that consists of two boats going round and round some can buoys, it seems to require way too much infrastructure. A mile of the San Francisco waterfront is full of Americas Cup tents, towers, and related crap.

Full jury decision

[Berre]

The full jury decision (including details of the modification) can be found here: http://noticeboard.americascup.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/JN117.pdf