Culture
How the America's Cup works: a beginner's guide for Naples 2027
No sailing required: the jug, the cast, the flying boat and how to read a race from the sea wall before summer 2027.
Photo: Geoff McKay from Palmerston North, New Zealand, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Where the Cup comes from — one race in 1851
This is how the America's Cup works, for anyone heading to Naples in summer 2027 knowing nothing about sailing. It starts on 22 August 1851, when the New York schooner America beat about 15 Royal Yacht Squadron yachts round the Isle of Wight. Legend has it that when Queen Victoria asked who was second, the reply was that there is no second.
The prize was the Squadron's £100 Cup, a bottomless silver ewer from 1848 that Italians call la Vecchia Brocca. In 1857 it went to the New York Yacht Club under a Deed of Gift — rewritten in 1887 and, with later amendments, still in force — that says who may challenge and how. Grant Dalton, CEO of Emirates Team New Zealand, calls it the oldest trophy in international sport.
The New York Yacht Club kept it for 132 years, until 26 September 1983, when Australia II and its winged keel beat Dennis Conner's Liberty 4–3. That year also brought the first Louis Vuitton Cup, the series that picks the challenger.
The cast — Defender, Challenger of Record, Protocol
The Defender is the club holding the Cup: in 2027 the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron with Emirates Team New Zealand, going for a third straight defence. The Challenger of Record is the first club whose challenge the Defender accepts — on 19 October 2024 that was the Royal Yacht Squadron of Cowes, through Royal Yacht Squadron Racing Ltd, whose team is GB1.
Those two write the Protocol, the rulebook agreed under the Deed of Gift; the current one, dated 12 August 2025, created the America's Cup Partnership. The other challengers are Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli, racing for Naples' own Circolo del Remo e della Vela Italia, Tudor Team Alinghi, La Roche-Posay Racing Team, ARC Team USA and Team Australia.
The six challengers race each other in the Louis Vuitton Cup; the survivor then meets the Defender in the Match, one on one, for the jug. Racing runs 22 May–19 July 2027, with starts planned from 14:00.
The boat — why an AC75 looks like that
An AC75 is a 20.7 m hull, about 22.9 m or 75 ft overall, with no keel. Two foil arms cant in and out: the foil in the water lifts the boat and holds it upright while the other is raised as ballast, which is why you see a hull flying clear of the sea with a wing sticking out sideways. The twin-skinned mainsail works with the mast like an aircraft wing.
Five people sail it, at least one a woman, plus a guest racer who, under the class rule, may not contribute to sailing the boat in any way. The top speed recorded in Barcelona in 2024 was over 55 knots, about 100 km/h.
There is no engine, and no cyclors either: the Protocol bans manual power except for steering, so a one-design battery system now supplies the hydraulic power that cyclors pedalled out in 2024. The smaller boats raced in September 2026, and again in the Youth and Women's America's Cups in June and July 2027, are AC40s: 12 m one-design foiling monohulls with four aboard.
A race from the shore — pre-start to finish
What follows is under the rules used in Barcelona in 2024; the 2027 Sailing Instructions have not been published. One boat enters the start box two minutes and ten seconds before the gun, the other at two minutes, then they chase each other behind a line of roughly 300 metres, each trying to cross at full speed exactly on the gun. Too early and you are OCS: go back, or within three seconds of the gun take a 75-metre penalty.
The course is windward-leeward: a gate at the top, a gate at the bottom, usually six legs, inside virtual boundaries — you see them on the TV graphics, as in Barcelona, the crews on their on-board screens. Upwind the boats zigzag by tacking, downwind they gybe, and the layline is the line from which a boat reaches the next gate without another turn.
Umpires watch from the water and a booth ashore; a penalised boat shows a blue light and slows until it has given back 75 metres. The organisers aim for about 21 minutes a race, 12 in the round robins. At the 2026 preliminary regatta a Saturday grecale of around 18 knots sat close to the AC40s' 21-knot limit and Sunday's start slipped an hour, so be on the seafront by 13:00 and expect to wait.
How it is scored — and six words for the sea wall
The Louis Vuitton Cup opens with a weekend of fleet racing, all seven AC75s at once for the first time, then a triple round robin of one-on-one matches; the Defender sails those but is scored separately and leaves after the third. The top three challengers go straight to the semi-finals, the bottom three fight a repechage, first to 3, for the last spot; semi-finals are first to 5, the Final first to 7 of 13.
The Match, from 10 July, is the same shape: New Zealand against the Louis Vuitton Cup winner, again first to 7. A 7–0 could be over in a few afternoons; a 7–6 could run close to the 19 July limit, which is why nobody can give you the date of the last race.
Six words for the sea wall, then. Foiling is the hull clear of the water with only the foils and rudder in it; a tack is a turn through the wind going upwind, a gybe the same turn going downwind. The gate is the pair of marks at each end of the course, and a splash-down is a boat falling off its foils in a wall of white water while the other boat, still flying, pulls away. The dock-out is the boats leaving their bases — in 2027, the reason to go out to Bagnoli.
That is more than many first-timers on the Lungomare knew in September 2026. For the Cup weeks, our advice as a Naples-based team at Vesuview is to sleep within a 20-minute walk of Via Caracciolo; the rest you learn on the sea wall.
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