America's cup - ya ol' mug

“ARRRRRR!”

“R”

“Great tacking duel on the first weather leg. Seven seconds, SUI leads at first mark.”

“NZ passes SUI on down wind and leads by 14 second at the mark.”

“Holla Alinghi!”

“NZ just blew the whole program. They just received the first 'on water' penalty in cup history. The penalty will cause a real controversy, because of the subjective nature of such decisions. Wait a minute, the wind just shifted and SUIs' spinaker pole broke. NZ has to make a complete 360 degree rotation before the finish because of the penalty.
Anyway, NZ would have won without having to do the penalty turn. But , as is SUI wins by 2 seconds. See ya in 4 years.”

“Wow, this is more arcane than hockey!”

“Only a couple of hundred meters befor the finish line Alinghi was leading 120 sec. Then the wind shifted. NZ was flying past them. Then NZ had to do their penalty turn... Alinghi was limping into the finish.
last edited: 7/03/07 9:38:27 AM”

“Had new Zealand waited until they were closer to the finish line to take the penalty turn, they would have won. By being 150 meters from the line when they turned they had to cover too much distance at the slower post turn speed. Atleast an american was steering the winning boat.”

“yeah...how comes you guys don't have your own boat in the race, if you have such a fabulous captain? Instead the man is racing off with a swiss boat.
lol”

“I am confused.... How is a broken piece of hardware, spinnaker hardware at that, a penalty for the NZ crew? Did they make contact with the pole?”

“The broken pole was caused by the wind shift 10 minutes after the penalty. The penalty was caused by NZ not giving SUI its' right of way, which caused the Swiss boat to alter course to avoid a collison.

Euro, Larry Ellison of Oracle-BMWs' team did well ,but were beaten by the Italy in the challenger sail off. Now that all teams compete for the sailors, independent of nationality, money determines the sailors'teams. It's really more of a corporate money cup than international competition.”

“thanks uncliff... that clears it up.”

“Another way of looking at the cup is a bunch of private people or corporations spend about $60 to $100 Million each on finding the next advance in wind powered technology.

Not a penny in tax dollars, and the America's Cup has always been a technological race.
America first won it with a more streamlined underwater hull shape and cotton sails which were both lighter and stronger than the flax based linen of the opposing boats.

Then Bulb keels rather than full length keels concentrated more weight for less wet surface area, and much faster turns.

Aluminum hulls meant more of the hull weight could be concentrated in the keel allowing more sail area up top.

The Australian's won by changing the keel shape so it gave better lateral resistance as the boat was heeled when beating upwind.

The New Zealander's won by changing hull material from Aluminum to GRP (Glass Reinforced Plastic or Fiberglass) allowing more freedom of shape to the hull, and allowing fast modification of hull shape for fine tuning.

The last race in NZ had a lot of innovations tested, from double steering (front and back) to a double hull (NZ) but these were ideas that did not work and it was won by the better prepared boat and crew on the day.

This years race was the same, no advances, just who was better for the day.
I say for the day because one boat may be faster in 10kt winds and the other in 12kt winds, one boat gets lucky.

There was a glaring difference in competence between the NZ 'A' team who were hired by the Swiss with Russell Coutts and the NZ 'B' team still sailing for NZ with dropped and twisted spinnakers. But if one look at the early drag races out of the starting box it is pretty hard to beat a faster boat, and Alinghi was faster.

Just as NASA going into space has provided a lot of technical advances that became available to the public (like space blankets), so too does the America's Cup but all in non-polluting wind power, and at no cost to the taxpayer. Buy a sailboat today and it has dacron sails, streamlined hull, aluminum pars, winch shape, all kinds of stuff coming out of these type of races.


I love it.”

“With waning interest in the 'Cup' since it left the grasp of american hands , My own solution would be a merger with the 'WWE'and some 'NASCAR' flavor. Breeding race horses has more practical application than the billions thrown into these water holes. A couple more millions gains you 3/4" in a mile which leads to a trip to the bar for more snooty politics.”

“A couple more millions gains you 3/4" in a mile which leads to a trip to the bar for more snooty politics.”
salebored
10:54:03 AM
7/04/07

Sounds cheap compared to space travel.”

“Sailing may well have been the very furthest thing from the minds of John Rex Whinfield and James Tennant Dickson when they patented PET in 1941.”

“REv, don't think I'll buy stock in any rocket kooks soon. Ofcourse, the US tax payer has a way of funding all of these brainstorms unvoluntarily. After a two few many, health care should pay atleast some of that rocket bill , because it helped me relax. Yah, and ah...”