The Americas Cup has always been about development and innovation, which has often trickled down to production yachting design. And though the cup may have moved to multihulls, this trickle down continues. Learn how Outremer has used AC technology in their design.
The Outremer 5X was designed by VPLP, a leading naval architecture firm in France who also designed the winning Americas Cup trimaran used by Oracle Team USA in the last Americas Cup. During the last and current design process of the multihulls, 3D technology was used to develop virtual towing tanks to test the efficiency of the hull design. This offers huge benefits in time and cost savings when developing a new design as a scale model is not required and changes to the hull design can easily be made digitally and then retested. This refinement process goes on until the optimum hull design is achieved that provides the best efficiency.
This 3D towing tank was used when developing the Outremer 5X hull. As a result, the hull shape is incredibly efficient and achieves speeds in excess of 20 knots when in the right conditions.
