The first phase of America’s Cup racing begins Friday 26 May, but two teams already have points on the scoreboard. The America’s Cup Match itself begins on Saturday 17 June and one team may start with a score of minus one (-1).  The competition format is a bit complicated, but here’s what you need to know to understand the scoring.

Racing begins Friday 26 May with the double round robin America’s Cup Qualifiers. All six teams participate in the Qualifiers, including defender Oracle Team USA. Land Rover BAR start with two points, their reward for having won the America’s Cup World Series. Oracle start with one point, as runner up in the World Series. At the end of the Qualifiers, one challenger is “excused from further competition.” Ties at the end of the Qualifiers are broken based on the final standings in the America’s Cup World Series.

After the Qualifiers, the four remaining challengers face off in the Challenger Playoffs, beginning Sunday 4 June. The Challenger Playoffs are first-to-five-points semi-finals and finals, to select the team who will face Oracle in the America’s Cup Match.  No team will win the Louis Vuitton Cup, which apparently has been retired - there is no trophy for the winner of the challenger selection series.

This is the first time in America’s Cup history that the defender races in the challenger selection series. To make sure they sail to win in every race in the Qualifiers, there is a bonus point for the America’s Cup Match at stake. To win the Match, a team needs seven points, with each race worth one. This is not “best of 13” since one team may start with a score of minus one (-1) and need to win eight races to reach seven points. The negative point comes into play if one of the teams in the Match won the Qualifiers. In that case, their opponent in the Match starts at minus one. If the defender wins the Qualifiers, they start the Match with a one point lead. If a challenger wins the Qualifiers and then makes it through to the Match, they start with the one point lead. The Match starts all square if a challenger wins the Qualifiers but then is eliminated in the semi-finals or finals of the Challenger Playoffs.

Races are expected to last about twenty minutes. Compared to San Francisco, the course is shorter and the boats are faster, so they will do two and half laps of the windward leeward section of the course. As in San Francisco, the teams will enter the starting box downwind, with the port tack boat allowed to enter ten seconds before the starboard tacker. After two minutes of pre-start manoeuvres, they start on a blast reach of less than a minute, to the first mark.  This is followed by a short downwind leg and then two times upwind / downwind before a reaching leg to the finish, set a few hundred metres from the America’s Cup Village at Dockyard.

The teams will have had about twenty days of practice racing in the weeks leading up to the Qualifiers. We may think we have already identified the likely contenders and the also rans, but when racing in earnest begins, we should expect surprises. During training we have seen crew go overboard. Oracle capsized their test boat and then did it again with the race boat. Daggerboards and rudders have been badly damaged by hitting underwater objects. Crew work will have huge importance – one bad gybe can hand your opponent multiple boat lengths. At the bottom of the wind limits, in six knots, the boats will not even fly a hull. Half a knot more can get a hull out of the water, and at seven to eight knots the light air boards will enable foiling. Crossover conditions will make the decision of which boards to use crucial. The light air boards will enable flying in lighter wind but the extra drag will limit top end speed.  Even the race schedule will have an effect, especially in the Qualifiers, when every team must race twice on some days, often against a team that is fresh. In the Challenger Playoffs, teams will have to race three times. Two crew substitutions are allowed between races. One national has to be on board in every race.

The foiling AC Class cats look like they will be exciting racing machines. The demands on the crews, both for stamina and for manoeuvres, will be severe. If Bermuda delivers enough days with 12 to 14 knot winds and flat water, we will have one very exciting America’s Cup in just a few weeks.