Persico 69F vs new Americas Cup Youth monofoiler 9F
Photos by 69F Sailing Persico & Youth Americas Cup, click for larger size & slideshow.
There is no shame in copying, we all do. Its the natural way to evolution and performance improvement. Its the best way to take proven experience from others and build upon them. And that is what I did for ie with the Scorpion F18, after ten years of sailing F18 / first design, and learning from Fischer , Melvin and many others, we took our own experience, ideas and also grabbed those aspects from others we thought were worth merging to a new hull.
We all copy, but its nice to recognize those who did it first and as start try not to copy or mess up with the name too…
Back in August 2017 we published from our Arg friends Laureano Marquinez & Nahuel Wilson their concept for a monohull foiler. It was clearly visually based on the IMOCA 60 outward J foils, but it was the first to apply same solution on a smaller scale. The IMOCA is currently a foil assisted platform (transom drags water/float) relying also on its canting keel, while the 69F its a full airborne platform.
Before Marquinez-Wilson 69F concept the actual first production monohull foiler we recall was built by Quant boats: quant-boats.com
Quant used an outward foil conf too, quite different from an IMOCA foil shape, going for a much larger & horizontal foil design, their hull is made for an early planning and does not targets a displacement mode as the IMOCA and the 69F both featuring more traditional hull shapes.
Quant boats are the pioneers in the area as far as we know on production monohull foiler.
Going back to the new Americas Cup Youth mono foiler, them copying the same exact concept from the now Persico 69F its a great praise for Wilson-Marquinez design work, and even though the AC Youth boat went for more length to get an additional crew onboard (3 vs 4) the actual main issue we have with this new boat is that they called it ‘9F’ …
Having the huge exposure due to being attached to the main Americas Cup event, someone should have told the responsible of the new Youth AC boat, that using the same concept was rather Ok (Why didn’t they went for the AC75 system instead?) , but trying to muddle both names (69F vs 9F) we think its a bit too much and no need, AC Youth should address their ‘9F’ branding.
On the original 69F, which was made a reality by Persico, news are they now have a fleet of 6 boats ready to race. Great achievement for an idea of a project we published first here back in 2017 from our friends at Wilson Marquinez Naval Architects.
