[Closed] America's Cup

oops

Nice to hear my mate Ken Read doing the commentary still (he asked me out to the US back in '85 to stay with him and do foredeck on his J24, amongst other things, - best 6 months of my life!).
Top bloke and incredible racer.

Sharkbait, the pace of the things is blistering. Had a great curry with Mitch a couple of nights ago. Apparently, the media team can't stop laughing at Ken drawing nowt but pubes with the telescribe...
The village is pretty cool. No Guinness stand, so the hord descended on the 'French wine' stand.
Pretty certain BAR have full backing for the next Cup. Rumour among the sailors is that if TNZ win, it's likely to go back to 90' monos.

If you're struggling to get the boat foiling (which is #1 priority) they you're not likely to tack any more than absolutely necessary.

BAR's foiling wasn't that bad, the race they won against NZ they had 100% air time. They just weren't quick enough.

Christ I'm not sure mono's would be a good idea - not very 'televisual' [is this a word?].
OT..... So does your other engineer still have a job?

Well after all the TV coverage stats and interest in SocMed the change back to Monohulls would be a step backwards IMO, mind I've never been a fan of Cats but these 50fters are damn well exciting to watch... and that's the main reason for the change... changing to a two year competition is a terrible idea, keep the same protocol as is now because it's just about perfect.

Sweden loose a man over board!

The AC50's are literally too quick.At least for match racing.In fleet racing it's spectacular (if not bloody dangerous) but when it's boat on boat it means that one mistake/missed tack/wrong side of a shift loses a massive amount of ground and the race is for all intents and purpose over.
The whole point of match racing is the tactical side.It's not about about being the fastest boat....only the first boat to cross the finish line.
There's been quite a few races where despite sailing a better race tactically with better boat handling teams have lost out to raw boat speed (though Alinghi's lunge inside at the mark was amazing!!)

Well Nathan went for a swim today, Arte' are 2-1 down tonight because of the slip up.

Back tomorrow.. best of 9, first to 5.

Well I've managed to find a site that's streaming the BT feed, only saw the important bit of the last race - I can easily imagine being hurled off the side in a turn! Close stuff though.

I watched a bit of the 2000 AC straight after.... god is was like watching grass grow 🙁
Foiling HAS to stay otherwise nobody will be watching.

The whole point of match racing is the tactical side.It's about about being the fastest boat....only the first boat to cross the finish line.

Err it's [b]always[/b] been match racing.That was sort of the whole point tbh.

Back in 1851 there was no such thing as the match racing we know today - it developed as boats became so close in speed.
I guess that although today's AC cats are pretty similar in speed they're just to fast for much in the way of close quarters manouevering.

Anyway, watched to of today's races and TNZ send to have a pretty complete package with very impressive VMG.
Going to be hard for Emirates now.

Looking tough for Arte' the last tack/crash didn't do much for their lead then the reach to the finish was sooooo tight...

All to play for today, hope the wind hold up at 15knts..

although any sailing on TV is good, I wanted the rule to follow something similar to the TP52 rule. Out and out planning in a big monohull. the circa 2000 AC boats were nice, but they should have evolved into something like the TP52 boats. Still good for TV, but not quite so bat shit crazy.

wish Artemis all the luck, but this was always going to be about TNZ and Oracle.

For the AC to remain good on TV it really needs to stay close to shore and I think that does rule out bigger mono's.
Back in the early 90's I used to race in the Ultra 30's which were fairly bonkers and def needed good crew work, but I'd still prefer to watch the current boats even though most of the crew don't even need to know how to sail (which is disappointing).
The last race last leg was pretty epic - I was shouting at the TV for Arty to get it on the line. 40 knts - amazing!

Well done to ETNZ..... very convincing today - lets hope they can do the same to Oracle!

Yip, that's it. Best team won in the end.

This weekend is the Finals...

Oof, nice job ETNZ [claps].
It would have been unfair if Oracle had won that second race because of that huge wind shift.

Don't get me wrong, I love the foiling cats, except for one thing...why do they always look "nose down"? I'm sure there's a v good reason for it, but it looks wrong!

Looks well dodgy but apparently it's more aero.

I assumed it was a function of manually controlling the main foils and fixed rudder foils and dipping a bow being less risky than getting airborne.

Dunno..dipping a bow could lead to pitchpoling...like NZ did the other day! Anyway, looks weird but they all do it (and did so during the last America's Cup)..so must make some sense. It just looks wrong.

2-0 to the Kiwis 🙂 the very very best thing that could happen to the AC is a NZ win, fingers crossed.

Err it's always been match racing.That was sort of the whole point tbh.

The first boats that raced for the cup were given a handicap. One boat would have to beat the other by a given margin. Match racing developed when rated boats were used. These are boats where the designers are given free range to design what they want but a series of measurements from the boat put into a complicated formula must give a set answer.

All thing being equal, waterline length and sail area are the deciding factors. Designers try to get an advantage by trying to beat the formula.

I prefer match racing rather than the drag races the filers tend to dish up.I guess it's not exciting enough for the sound bite generation.

 

2-0 to the Kiwis

Yes I saw that, embarrasingly I suppose I don't understand the scoring 😳

USA get a point because they won the challengers round robin stage. (I guess because they didn't have to take part in that bit, as defenders, but it made it a bit more interesting.)

3-0 up.... looking good.

We've been here before though 🙁 I suppose this time there is perhaps less scope for any miracle comeback

Warched it in the pub yesterday before an evening ride. Very entertaining.

Very entertaining. [list]

To be honest, the racing has been better in previous rounds.

 

So - Lets say TNZ hold it together and win.
They are the [u]only[/u] team that has not signed up to the proposed new rules ( Basically the same boats again - AC competitions every two years with some world series type racing beforehand - much like this time).
However, they would have the right as winners to decide the rules of the next cup, they could decide to race it in Optimists in Alaska if they wished or back to big slow mono-hulls in 5 years time. (which would kill the commercial and technical momentum making it much harder to get sponsorship)
Does anyone know what it was they did not like about the proposed rules? do they just want them tweaked or are they going to junk them completely?

It always the winners privilige to decide the format. NZ are not going to take the event backwards imo, what they may do is try and avoid the historical issue of the team with the most money winning (eg last cup Oracle $400-500m, NZ $250m)

A NZ win would be a massive step forward for the Cup

Hopefully they'll ditch the 5 day break we're currently on during which the US team disappear off and spends millions [s]copying[/s] designing/producing new kit based on the work that the other teams have done.

..... bunch of
[img] [/img]

Suppose they got rid of almost all the rules on boat design, just requiring the boats to be wind powered and only human power for sail trimming etc. (and maybe a limit on the number of crew). What would the boats look like - very similar to what we have now, but a bit bigger?

What would the boats look like

It would be [i]boat[/i], not [i]boats[/i]. Only Oracle would be able to afford it, nobody else would turn up.

Doubt they'd be a lot different at all seeing as they're hitting 40 knots now - the AC72 didn't go any quicker.
It would probably depend on the sailing venue and wind expected.

Hopefully they'll ditch the 5 day break we're currently on during which the US team disappear off and spends millions copying designing/producing new kit based on the work that the other teams have done.

From what the resident experts were saying yesterday on BT Sport the rules prevent them making major changes to their design.

Suppose they got rid of almost all the rules on boat design, just requiring the boats to be wind powered and only human power for sail trimming. What would the boats look like?

[img] ?itok=wVkF-jjl[/img]

Not consistently and def not in 10 knots of wind BigJohn.

Well that was kind of where I was coming from-
The Hulls and the wing size and sail size is a fixed design. The stated aim of that is to reduce budgets - surely that is a good thing that you would vote to keep.
The only thing that can be changed is the foils and rudders
but when foiling they are the [b]only[/b] bits in the water so in that sense the design is unrestricted.

There is a big difference in the performance of the foils and it is obviously not easy to get right bearing in mind that Martin Whitmarsh who did all the aero for Redbull F1 was working for BAR and they did not get it right.

These work well in light winds.

[img] [/img]

And go round corners
[img] [/img]

Mind you, You wouldn't get much change out of £5,000 for a board/sail/foil combo that would compete with Oracle.

Martin Whitmarsh who did all the aero for Redbull F1

No, he didn't...that was Adrian Newey

To be fair, this would give Oracle a run for its money at the moment 🙂
[img] [/img]

🙂