While the AC75s of the 36th America’s Cup remain shrink-wrapped and idle while the Challenger of Record and Defender draft their protocol, the engineers and designers at Italy’s Persico Marine have been advancing their own Cup afterparty in the form of a 40-foot version of the flying beasts of Auckland, and in late July announced plans to push ahead with a production run of what will be called the Persico Fly40 One Design.
“Persico Marine has thus opened a new market segment targeted at owners, for whom the ‘new normal’ will be a foiler with canting arms – a high-performance, one-design-class monohull conceived for an upwind start, tacking duels and every aspect of the traditional regatta, but at three times the windspeed,” the builder states in its announcement in early August.
The Persico Fly40 is conceived as a 38-foot, 3,527-pound foiling vessel with a designed takeoff in 7 knots of true windspeed. Designed for a crew of 5, Persico says, “the Fly40 can be trailered and moved easily.”
“In the last five months we have dedicated ourselves to achieving an impressive goal: transferring our research and development of the 36th America’s Cup to the market,” says Marcello Persico, president Persico Marine. “In an instant, on the day we saw our AC75s sail for the first time, all our previous accomplishments up to that moment became ‘the past.’ Following the revolutionary innovations of the last edition of the America’s Cup and thanks to the performance of the AC75, a visionary and radical foiling craft, we are witnessing a real change in paradigm: the time is right to raise the regatta field to a new dimension that will allow everyone to experience fly-foiling.”
Structural engineering is provided by Pure Design & Engineering from New Zealand, which also worked with Emirates Team New Zealand; naval architecture and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is led by Caponnetto Hueber, a collaborator with Luna Rossa, the 36th America’s Cup Challenger of Record. To help lead the project, they’ve also tapped Luna Rossa co-helmsman Francesco Bruni.
“By presenting an advanced 40-foot foiler today, we are in a position to play a central role in revolutionizing the market,” Bruni says. “I am sure this project will have great success and am very happy to be part of it. This is a promising moment for the sailing world.”
As with the Persico 69F circuit currently underway, Persico says the Fly40 One Design class will feature an owner-driver styled circuit with Persico providing support and services.
