America's Cup racing has been proceeding at full speed with races in Portugal, UK and now San Diego, which just finished up last Sunday.
There have been some excellent fleet and match races, which you should check out. It's all available online at youtube. Overview below, and full Match Race from Sunday here.
The strongest teams led as expected: Oracle USA, Emirates NZ, Artemis SWE, with a nice showing by Team Korea and some bursts by Team China. It will be interesting to see how the French teams do. They and some others started a bit later, so they have some catching up practicing to do. The Coutts team looked to be sailing with an eased jib at times...just doing recon? The French have a very strong tradition of multihull racing and have some key people involved. It will be interesting to see how they do.
It does appear that start position is critical, at least in these light air conditions today (6 knots). First to the start in good position has usually won the race. In 6 knots of breeze the boats do 6kts upwind and 10 kts downwind!! Wait til the winds increase.
Check in tomorrow morning (Sunday) for more live speed competition racing. The winds are expected to kick up to 15kts which means these boats will be ripping through the water, should be exciting. http://www.americascup.com/Youtube Channel Direct
Gary Jobson's History of the America's Cup 1851 – 2007
Saturday, June 11, 7:00 - 9:00 p.m.
Bay Model Visitor’s Center, Sausalito
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Kimball Livingston: Journalist, author, screenwriter, but first and foremost an accomplished sailor, Kimball has covered every America’s Cup since 1980. He will speak about what the Cup means to Sausalito and the Bay Area and help start us on the road to the Cup! His passion for the Cup almost equals his passion for sailing on San Francisco Bay. As any Bay Area Sailor worth his/her salt knows, Kimball is the author of the classic, Sailing the Bay and was one of the writers for Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 release, WIND. He is an editor at large for SAIL Magazine and writes online at BluePlanetTimes.com.
Here is the latest footage from Orace Racing Team. These winds in Auckland were not much different from our conditions here in SF.
It's very interesting to observe the evolution of this new format and boats. It seems that because it's new -- and perhaps because of the new AC attitude -- the process is more transparent. We get to observe the teams struggling with boats pitch-poling and getting out of control.
I do wonder if by the time the AC72s start racing, they will have fine tuned the boats so much (and the cost of breaking them will be so much greater!) that the visual spectacle we can see now will have been greatly toned down.
I think Kimball remains the best sailing reporter around (several I value as highly are unfortunately not around any longer). His article on the AC races and viewing them is, I think, a textbook on what we should expect when the Cup comes in 2013.
That gigantic HD TV screen set up at the ballpark is looking better and better as the best viewing venue. I don't think watching a pair of boats flash past at 35+ knots through a screen of masts and power boat fly bridges is going to be the place to be.
It is clear that the future of high end racing lies in fast boats with dramatic action. The fact that fixed wing cats can capsize will probably add to the excitement.
ac34
Kimball Livingston: Journalist, author, screenwriter, but first and foremost an accomplished sailor, Kimball has covered every America’s Cup since 1980. He will speak about what the Cup means to Sausalito and the Bay Area and help start us on the road to the Cup! His passion for the Cup almost equals his passion for sailing on San Francisco Bay. As any Bay Area Sailor worth his/her salt knows, Kimball is the author of the classic, Sailing the Bay and was one of the writers for Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 release, WIND. He is an editor at large for