World Series is on. Can watch live on YouTube at a reasonable hour this weekend:
Both Centre/Daggerboards have the 'L' shaped foil.
If you look closely the rudder blade on the back has a "T" foil
^ nup. (I been watching on the TV in the lounge. comfy)
Bump.
Racing's been better than expected. Races only take about 10-15 minutes. There are usually two match races per day, followed by a fleet race. Or something like that.
They aren't slow.
Winners go through to the big boats:
tvnz.co.nz/sailing-news/jury-decision-boosts-team-nz-video-5124078
You can even play drinking games: a shot every time you here an Australian accent/Aussie skipper rounds a buoy in first place. (You'll be on the floor)
Spithill tries to forward loop:
In a former life I was a deckhand on Gretel, Australias first 12m. We used to "match race" Southern Cross up the whitsunday passage on almost a daily basis doing the day trip thing for the tourists. Amazing memories.....I remember thinking that going away from the 12m rule and allowing just about anything to enter made it a technology battle and not a sailing battle. Great to see the new boats are following a similar design rule again. Clearly high tech but very very impressive to watch. Would love to have a run on one.
Should be noted, that this is only the precursor to the actual americas cup event. The actual event is definately not one design, and the teams have been working pretty hard on their individual AC72 designs (72 foot wing-sails cats)
The pictures of the NZ 72 foiling are unreal. The Oracle boat hit the water a couple weeks ago but they snapped the foils.
Point of the 40's was to help the lesser teams with the tech. make so they could buy the smaller boats with the wingsails and they could reverse engineer em.
Not sure hwo it will all turn out but my monies on the Kiwi's, and some awsome spills.