USA Today - America's Cup is most high-tech in 162 years

I love how many of these articles portray the race as all about the boat technology and there's no sailing skill or tactical elements involved....

I'd beg to differ. While there is certainly "X" amount of performance available based on the boats, it's still all comes down to execution on the water....

I think the end of that USA Today story mentioned that....

It's time for another cup of Caen

Good call. I mis-read it thinking they were too - referring to how all the sailing skill has been engineered out of the Cup...


Thanks

Re. the sailor's skill comments; in races 9+10, we saw just how important it is to win the start, and winning the start is 100% dependent on the sailor's skills.

So skill is still very much required to win, regardless of the technology, but I realize most non-sailors (and writers) have absolutely no idea of what's actually going on in the prestart, all they see is the speeds after the start.

There have been plenty of human blunders, everything from boat handling (foiling when they don't want to, coming off foils at the wrong time, blown tacks, slow gybes, poor roundings, etc.) to bad tactics and strategy.

The technology just makes the boats so fast that the human mistakes can crush you. Of course, the same happens with the slow boats, but the distances aren't quite as magnified.

Jonson's best quote of the last few years (still not sure of he meant this as a compliment, BTW): "Match racing on steroids!"

EDOT: Relative to monohulls, the pre-starts have been pretty boring. No dial-ups, chasing each other through the spectator fleet, etc.

Mike

Come ON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oracle had a big lefty on that last leg but just short of laying the mark, maybe they could have done two gybes well before the mark to overtake ETNZ?

Oracle was slightly faster, just NZ ran a better race.

I got in late. leg 3/5. I hope they have a miracle turn around. It has certainly not been the slaughter I thought it would be when all of this started.

If it wasn't for the shift or current at the end of leg 4 that would've changed everything.

Oracle has to win every race from now on, that is just very unlikely.

What's the fat lady doing?

Drinking tea with plenty of honey and warming up....

I'm going to call this whole thing rigged if Oracle manages to pull it off. lol

Stretching. Or was that scratching? OK, I just made myself puke...

Mike

For Europeans SF has been the perfect location with races starting at 10pm.
If they race at 1pm in Auckland it will be 3am in Europe

Wow. Postponement just at the start.

No kidding! 5 seconds? If that?!

Foul?