Well, what was it?

1. Better skipper/crew? (starts, tactics, penalties, etc.)
2. Better boat? (Cat vs. Tri, curved daggers vs. straight)
3. Better rig? (wing vs. soft sails)
4. All of the above?

Totally and completely, it was a design contest in the spirit of Cap'n Nat. Truest America's Cup in 60 or 80 years, in my opinion.

It was:
1) A better engineered boat
2) A better engineered sail plan (wing and soft sails)
3) A better team effort to understand how to sail their boat in various conditions and points of sail and transitions

A5 failed on those points, came closest on #1, their sail plan, even given the soft sails was not well though out.

And, like John says, truly back to the roots of the Cup IMO.

All of the above in my opinion. Not that I have any room to judge but Erenesto should never have driven either day. I can't help but wonder that if A5 had a better start (without a penalty) if they would not have led around the first mark and could have defended the position the whole way down. I hope these two boats will live to race another day. They are truely magnificant beast in their own right. While I was rooting for BMW the whole time I must tip my hat to the boys on Alingi. Also classy was dropping their protest, whatever it was about after recognizing that at the end of the day they were beaten.

OK Match Racer wannabee's, in today's race, on the beat, when Alingi was ahead on starboard approaching the port layline with BMWO coming in on port;

Why didn't Alingi slow down, or bear off, or do -something- to cause BMWO to tack to starboard, thus slowing BMWO, forcing them into 2 more tacks, while rolling over them, then 1 tack onto the layline and lead BMWO in?

Why did they let them duck and just let them go?

It was clear to me the tri was faster when they just ran away from AL going downwind, the speed readouts always showed BMWO about 2-3 knots faster, just about all the time on the reaches, upwind they seemed about even.

I never saw the cat "Powered Up". To me it always looked like they needed more wind, less weight, I was surprised they were using any water balast at all. But they were constantly snake-waking trying to fly the hull, which is slow!

Both crews performed well on the course and both made mistakes in pre start (maybe Alinghi one more).

BMWO was most of the time the faster boat. What made the boat better?
BMWO has a longer true waterline: 130ft vs 101ft according to yachting world.
BMWO uses the full allowable width. (Why does Alinghi not?)

The wing. I think most will say that the wing was the key element. It is just so visible. But after the second race, I am not that sure anymore. The smaller platform could go more or less the same vmg upwind. Of course with stronger winds the picture would be different, but Alinghi showed a huge improvement and one might think where they would be, if they would have more boat to boat tuning, maybe even reviewed sail cuts. I account much of the advantage downwind due to the faster trimming of the wing. BMWO was more stable (I rate the helmsmen as comparable). On the reach leg, the longer and wider boat will always be faster, go on a reach with a T and you know what I mean.
There are also some other aspects in the rig: Uni vs sloop (on Friday), genaker with or without overlap, etc.

Curved vs. straight boards: Alinghis straight boards are canted. I guess there is little difference. ALinghi has both types, and we can assume that they selected the right one.

So in my conclusion the big difference came from the larger platform (on the reach BMWO was 5kts faster), the faster trimming downwind and the better prepared boat/team of BMWO.
Alinghi probably hadn't have the time to design and build a wing. But they must asked themselves why they selected a shorter and slimmer platform.
Behind each technology, there are men, which need to have the right understanding and ideas to make it. Hence: 3) "better team effort and understanding of sailing" which in consequence lead to 1) "better boat".

Cheers,

Klaus

I suspect A5's beam was limited by structural integrity. If you go wider and taller you must beef it up to handle the loads. I think that may have been why BMW went with a tri design. If it didn't have the center pod could it have handled the loads? Probably not.

All of the above plus they were just plan out sailed.

A Wingie killed Alinghi. The power and controlability of the wing won this event.

I was thinking the same thing when watching it.

However, during the A5 presser, BB said that they had wind that BWMO didn't have during that long starboard tack.

As they got in the same breeze you saw the situation change.

OK, back to my question about tactics; why did Alinghi not stick it to BMWO when they had the chance, at the cross going up to the pin? I would have made them tack, then pushed them waaayyy out past the layline, then tacked and ran away to the pin. It's worked for me many times in fleet racing, why would you let the only other boat in the race get by you, on port?? What were they thinking?

If you listened to Randy's comments at one point he was explaining the difference in BMWO's wing and A's soft sail. Noe I don't understand the math but he said that a soft sail had a ? Coefficient of 1.2 where the coefficient of The wing was closer to 2.0. And eluded to those numbers meaning that the wing is nearly twice as efficient. If that is indeed the case the wing played a huge part.

Aeroplanes stopped using "soft wings" wayyy back after WW1, about 1920 or so because the CL is greater with a solid wing vs. a one layer thick "soft sail" type ragwing WW1 biplane. Even hang gliders and windsurfers have switched over to the sails with cambered battens and a "fat" wing.

The tradeoff is supposed to be that you cannot adjust the amount of camber over a wide wind range with a rigid wing sail vs. a soft sail, but as you saw, BMWO had a fix for that with the midwing slot and the adjustable flap. And then there is weight, the wing sail weighs more and has lots more moving parts, so reliability is always an issue.

The wing was more efficient as we saw, but again, why, when there is only -one- other boat in the race, and you are in front of them, would you allow them to duck you on a starboard cross??

That's Match Racing 101.

There's only one other boat in the race. Your job is to hammer them, and then hammer them again, whenever possible, moreso if you know they are faster than you and you are one race down in a 3 race series.

So why didn't Alinghi take the shot when they had it?

That's a good question. I'm not sure Alinghi could have forced BMWO to tack, but she could have tried to ride close and attmpted to draw an offsetting penalty.

I'm not a match racing expert, but it sure seemed like BMWO had a much better understanding of match racing tactics than Alinghi.

Regards,
Eric

The certainly could have forced them to tack, just slow down a click and they would not have been able to duck and stay on the layline. BMWO would have had to either tack early, tack back, or duck way low, below the layline, then tack twice more to get back to it.

Either way, Alinghi let them off easy, without a fight, in a do or die race. Why?

I agree...not only did they let BMWO majorly off the hook, but they also massively overstood their own layline, as evidenced by their course coming into the mark. That coupled with the mess they made of the start makes you wonder who was calling their tactics....

Watch the replay(2:13:00 to 2:17:10). It was close. Maybe they didn't have the room. They were closing at 18-20 knots. It took Alinghi 20 seconds to tack, and longer to get up to speed (their fastest tack of the two races btw), they had a 104 meter lead when they crossed. Comments suggested at least 3 boat lengths to tack. I don't know Timbo, I don't do alot of match racing. . .

OK, there is one other boat, you don't care about anything but sticking it to that guy, especially if he is ON THE LAYLINE, ON PORT. I would have borne off and aimed right at them, yelling Starboard! all the way. They tack, you tack, you are now on the layline, you round, they have to tack twice to round. You just cost them two tacks and you might be able to hold them off downwind, but in this case, I think even if Alinghi had done that, BMWO was so much faster, they would have caught and passed them downwind. But Alinghy didn't even put up a fight, why not?

I think nobody on Alinghi knew anything about match racing...

I certainly don't know much about match racing. Just wondering though, BMWO fell off (borne off) early enough to establish his new course, to clear Alinghi's sterns (2:15:29), so Alinghi can now borne off and hunt BMWO? Really? Aren't rules in place to address this? Maybe we should give Spithill some credit here.

They kept on talking about how Ed baird should have been on A and driving but wasn't. whats the story with that?