Not sure how many, if any, have been following the America’s Cup, but there have been some interesting developments.
After a lot of court battles between Ernesto Bertarelli & Larry Ellision over how the past winner and trustee of the cup Ernesto was arranging the next round of the event, it looks like a match is going to finally being held.
It will be this
Versus this:
Possibly - there are likley to be new boats built before the match. What makes this intersting is due to the amount of money being thrown at building boats, some real materials, design and engineering breakthroughs are being generated. We’ve never seen boats likes this before. We’re talking loads so high that titanium is not strong enough. The boats are entirely composite, including the sails and running rigging. These boats can actually go several times the speed of the wind.
Will these boats be up to the same quality as the Volvo Round the World boats none of which were actually seaworthy despite costing millions of pounds?
It’s called a Chinese Gybe for a reason. Pushed into the back of a wave @ 20kts and the helm lost control and accidentally gybed. Keel, ballast, sails and people all on the wrong side. These poor guys ran out of money in Singapore.
You’re thinking of the Vendee Global IMOCA single handed race. Lot’s of broken boats in that one.
No issues this time. Legally there is no restriction on what kind of boat you can use. The Swiss are using a cat - Larry a Tri.
Too bad they don’t show it tacking. It would be funny to watch that thing and a monohull having a pre-start tacking duel. The tri would bomb out for sure IMO.
What do the Chinese call a Chinese gybe? This is a serious question. I was trying to explain it to a Chinese sailor, but i didn’t want to offend him.[/quote]
I always used crash gybe to avoid offending any sensitive sensibilities.
Amazing. Biggest hard wing ever built. A wing longer than a 747’s. Just look at how fast the power boats need to go to keep up and this was just the maiden voyage.
The race itself, if it ever happens, will be pretty impressive.
A mixed bag. From an engineering and technical view, these boats are amazing. They are really on the edge of what is possible.
BOR 90 sails out on the ocean, albeit under controlled conditions, and they broke a 10 million dollar mast in 12kts of breeze. Alinghy is sailing in the UAE where conditions are very light and have set a 15kt, 1 meter wave hight restriction in their Notice of Race. They will likley race in Valencia in Feb, which could mean big breeze and big waves. Both boats are loaded up with load cells and alarms if loads get too high. BWW Oracle generates like 2gig of data a day according to a blog video.
These poor guys ran out of money in Singapore.
