By Colin Thompson

Sailing Correspondent

Oracle Team USA, the America’s Cup holders, will christen their new wing-sail foiling AC45 catamaran during this month’s training camp in San Francisco.

The AC45 was used in the last America’s Cup World Series and since then has been modified to foil like its larger cousin, the AC62, the multihull design to be sailed in the Louis Vuitton Cup (Challenger trials) and America’s Cup Match to be hosted by Bermuda in 2017.

“This will be the first time we’re all sailing on the foiling AC45, so it will be a big learning curve for the whole team and it will be interesting to see how we all gel together,” Kyle Langford, the Oracle trimmer, said.

This month’s training exercise will involve some of Oracle’s crew getting their first taste of flying above water in the high speed AC45.

“We have a few new faces and we have to get these guys out sailing on foiling cats,” Tom Slingsby, the Oracle tactician and sailing team manager, said. “Guys like Andrew Campbell and Matt Cassidy, who haven’t sailed these boats before so we’re looking forward to showing them the ropes. But we’re also looking forward to learning. As you saw in the last America’s Cup our learning curve was so steep.

“You have to go back to the last America’s Cup since we’ve sailed foiling catamarans.

“The new boat looks great and this is really going to be the start of our new America’s Cup campaign.

“It will be great to commission the new boat.”

The modified AC45 will enable Oracle to test design configurations which will prove vital in the set-up of the team’s AC62 to be used for their America’s Cup defence — the first by an American defender outside of the United States and first of any syndicate by choice — in the AC62.

All of the syndicates registered for the next America’s Cup have been allowed to have the smaller AC45 to prototype ideas for the larger AC62 to be launched at the end of next year.

“The foiling AC45 will be our tool to understand how to make our AC62 as fast a boat as possible,” Philippe Presti, the Oracle coach, said.

Luna Rossa, the Italian challenger, has been conducting tests of their own with its two foiling AC45s since last September as part of its design and sailing team development.

“The luxury of doing two-boat testing is big in that you can validate the tools for the designers,” Max Sirena, the Luna Rossa skipper, said.

“You are training with the sailing team and you can try different things on the boats, from the systems to daggerboards, rudders, wings, everything, so it’s an ongoing development process.

“Having the team working together is important. It takes time to fine-tune all the relationships and this is also very productive.”

Sirena, who won the 33rd America’s Cup with BMW Oracle Team serving as wing mast manager, said that competition in the foiling AC45s will be demanding on the sailors and exhilarating to watch for the spectators.

“The foiling AC45s are super fun,” he added. “It’s really hard to imagine going back to a displacement boat. It’s so much faster and so much fun to sail with these foiling boats.”

Local sailing enthusiasts will have a chance to take a look at the foiling AC45s in action when Bermuda hosts the America’s Cup World Series from October 16 to 18.

All participating skippers in the America’s Cup World Series could potentially receive invites to compete in the 2015 Argo Group Gold Cup to take place between October 5 and 11 in Hamilton Harbour.

America’s Cup skippers Jimmy Spithill, of Oracle, and Sir Ben Ainslie, of Ben Ainslie Racing, are past Gold Cup winners.