Quote:
Originally Posted by rider
The America Cup has always been a bit of an embarrassment to sailors, I recon it puts more people off the sport than it gets interested. Its just rich guys puffing testosterone at each other.
Real yacht racing doesnt include law courts, most penalties are taken on the water, using sportsman like behavour. otherwise disagreements are settled by the protest committee.
In this series, Alinghi would be ahead out of the start and then the man who paid the bills would take over the helm.. with the inevitable results. 3-zip to BMW.
Baron Lipton had about 6 goes at getting the cup in the early 1900's and was asked what America Cup racing was like. He anwered that it was like "taking a cold shower whilst burning 20 pound notes."
And I'm just speechless about the stupidity of a little 3 race competition for such a famous event.
Regarding the boats, BMW Oracle was a dog when it had a soft sail, it had so much beam twist that the top third of the sail would get a 45degree twist in a gust. but as soon as they put the solid wing sail on it turned into a different beast entirely. - I bet they wouldn't like to have played with it in 35 knots though.
That said, I LOVE the boats, a 90 footer with two hulls out the water doing 3 times the wind speed is never boring.
In these boats the huge increase in speed you get from a minor wind speed change means that sometimes they have to sail into a knock if the velocity-made-good equation is more efficient. Tactics are very complicated, and decisions have to be made fast.
Hope they don't go back to mono's and tactics based entirely on wind shift. ZZZZzzzzzzz.
BTW, I sail both monos and multihulls so I hope this doesn't start a "Bathtub Verses Raft with trainer wheels" debate.
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If you read John Bertrands book "Born to Win" the actual sailors love it and treat it like it should be they just use the rich folks to enable them to compete in 1983 the sailors only got I think $12 a day for their sailing.