Americas Cup: whats next?

You know, based upon the TV popularity of poker, the present trend of crapshoot environmental design , and the big money being thrown around. I propose that the next Americas Cup not be done in boats at all.

TV freindly America's Cup Rules

Required: Std 52 card deck, Cribbage board.

1) Defender and Challanger both ante up $100M with the Defender selected host venue. Of this $150M goes to charity and $50M to the host venue. This sets the best 2 out of 3 "Match". The Challanger picks the Day to start the first "Race", the Defender picks the strating Time.

2) On the appointed day(s) set by the Challanger, the two syndicates show up for the "Race". The board, with red and black pegs, and deck are provided by the venue. The Defender gets all the red cards, the Challanger all the black. If there is any abnormality in the deck at this time, the syndicate Lawyers will have a WWF Cage Match to decide the outcome.

3) Each syndicate secretly choses 1 card from thier 26, this is the "Boat".

4) Each secretly discards 5 cards from thier remaining 25 cards (NOTE: Swiss Rules: the Defender gets to choose which 5 the Challanger discards).

5) A coin is tossed and the toss winner takes the remaining 40 cards and shuffles them, the toss loser cuts the deck no more than 5 times, and the deck placed face down at the end of the board. This is the "Swell". When the Swell is placed, both sides reveil thier Boat.

6) The top two cards are pulled off the Swell and turned face up. This is the "Puff"

7) Each syndicate sums the value (face cards are 10, all other thier spots) of the Puff with their Boat. The syndicate closest to 18 pegs 7 holes with the peg of thier Boat color first, if both are closest, then both peg 7 at the same time. The one further from 18 pegs 7 minus the difference between the two hands, but not less than 1, with the peg of their Boat color after the other syndicate. If the sum of the Puff and Boat is over 26, that Boat is assesd to have broken and the syndicate cannot further peg for the rest of the Swell.

8) After both syndicates have pegged, the Puff is discarded and the next two top cards are drawn. Play procededs per (7).

9) First Syndicate to 121st hole is the race winner. If neither syndicate reaches 121 before the Swell is depleted then the Race is "Over Time Limit" and does not count for the Match. If both sides happen to peg 121 simlatniously per (7), then the Race is a "Draw" and does not count in the Match

10) Races will occur every other day after the first at the venue until the conditions of the Match are completed.

 

Whats next?

From Scuttlebutt 3055:

quoting Ellison:

" I kind of like monohulls. All my racing experience is on monohulls. But if
what the kids want to watch is multihulls because it's more exciting, we'll
go multihulls. We've got to make this a great sport from the point of view
of the participant, especially the kid who's just getting into the sport,
and from the point of view of the viewer on television."

 

Overwhelmingly, kids who are into sailing are into slower/medium speed craft, and especially slow simple boats. Even now that the multis have been in the Youth Worlds for a few years, they attract far fewer young sailors than the slower monos. The current kid's board is (according to calcs and experience here) slower in normal winds than the original Windsurfer, but it's still popular.

Once again, there is an INVERSE correlation between high speed and high popularity. Pure speed just doesn't sell to the typical person.

 

Well, for the AC you don't need high popularity in the sense of many participants. The pros will sail whatever they get paid to sail.

I have to say the most exciting sailing I have ever watched on TV was the old 18 footer match racing. We didn't get it here in the USA, I could only catch it while overseas.

I would even be interested in seeing a format like the old Laser Slalom course off StFYC. Not match racing as we know it, but it had a lot more boathandling and was fun to watch.

Who knows what Larry has planned. He does say some things that are not very realistic:

"he does want to alter the competition's design rules -- a prerogative of the winner -- so that it would take as little as $3 million to mount a campaign. That way national teams that have abandoned America's Cup racing, like Sweden and South Africa, would probably return."

Sure bet, a two or three year campaign for US$3MM? You couldn't do a TP program for that, let alone something like the AC.

 

Sure, you're right about the pros of course. It's just that there's no real basis for the oft-heard claim that "kids need fast boats to lure them into sailing".

The most exciting sailing I've seen is surf slalom or wave competition on windsurfers, but people like the chief designer for the biggest sailmaker and the CEO of the biggest board maker are now looking back and saying that the emphasis on high performance like that is what stuffed the sport. I just don't wanna see boat sailing go down the same plughole.

 

=======================
Larry didn't say that. He said: " But if
what the kids want to watch is multihulls because it's more exciting, we'll
go multihulls." In my opinion its MUCH more exciting to WATCH multihulls than it is to watch leadbellies. This last Cup was thrilling just seeing the boats under sail flying a hull or two-a whole new dimension to watching the Americas Cup and one that will add to the popularity of the Cup for TV.

 

correlation matrix

I agree!
Regarding correlation one can have participating factors, positive or negative. Thus, Doug can, for instance, have -0.999998 for kids and CT249 can, for instance, have +1.0 for kids.
Regards,
Booster

 

so, altering the AC's rules is a prerogative of the winner eh! At last, my chance to make an impact in the boating World. We'll hold the competition in my local pond. By the time the challengers have figured out how to get under the bridges, around the sunken tree, past the shallows where the herons teach their nestling how to fish and around the fish hatchery, and have grounded a couple of times going past the island ...

Oh wait. You gotta win under their rules first, right? I knew there was a catch ...

 

I convinced quite a few non-sailors to take a look at the great technology in play at the last cup. The actual races could not hold the attention of even one of them. While I watched the races on replay I was fast forwarding through a lot of it myself.

There was nothing interesting at all to the general public when it came to watching those boats sail in the races. After the pre-start, seeing the boats sail for 5 minutes was more than enough for virtually every non-sailor I know.

Most racing sailors I know weren't any more interested than the non-sailors. It was simply a video of two boats sailing along by themselves, not an exciting match race in any way.

 

Oh come on, Paul. How could watching two very different boats costing hundreds of millions of dollars toddle around alone in 3-7 knots of breeze not get the general public excited? Especially when you get to watch it on the Internet in a tiny window at bad resolution? Complete with "buffering" delays!

Perhaps it is that they can't see the investment of money. Here's an idea, why not put a final layer of cash on top of the all the carbon used? That way, the general public could get a hint of the spending done by two poorly behaved boy-children to satisfy their egos. That's it! Vacuum bag cash into all the layups! Maybe each lawyer used in negotiations should have to be a deck hand on the boats, so the participants minimize their squabbling to keep the decks clear.

There has got to be a special place in hell for people who would spend this kind of money on a non-event ego-stroking like this. Ellison sounds lately like he's rethinking the spending a little for the next round.

--
Bill

 

My computer didn't have any buffering delays. Maybe you need a better connection. Also, my screen isn't so tiny on one of my monitors.

Most of the people I told to watch are interested in technology stuff and understand wings and things. Most of these folks are engineers and like things like F1 and LeMans type sportscars. Two of them were very interested in the wing, as they know something about an industry where wings are used and the American wing dwarfed the projects they have worked on.

There was plenty of wind for the boats to sail fully powered up. They were flying hulls. So the amount of wind didn't seem to be a factor.

The amount of money spent was not an issue. F1 teams spend far more.

What was an issue was no matter how interested these people were in things like carbon construction, wing details, etc watching the "races" was worse than watching Golf. At least in a golf telecast something significant to the leaderboard happens every 5 minutes or so.

F1 racing is almost as bad as AC racing, but every once in a while something does happen. Someone goes for a pass, someone goes off, a tire shreds and takes bodywork with it, a motor goes Poof, a pit stop goes very wrong, etc.


I wonder how much Ellison has spent since the end of the last race? I'll wager it is quite a chunk of the amount he has suggested for an entry level team to have as a budget for their entire program.

 

Yes, they were fully powered up, and yes the technical performance was amazing no doubt. The problem is that it was cold, clinical and lacked any excitement, danger and drama. The best and only moment was the match racing confrontation on the start line.

I agree with your assessment entirely - but comparing the atrophying sport of yacht racing to F1 is not really fair. F1 brings the national pride, the petrochemical industry, sports car manufacturers, engine manufacturers, control systems developers, tire manufacturers etc. all to one highly visible worldwide display case. It isn't fair to compare budgets. The eventual consumer impact of Formula One is amazing, although delayed by a few years. The eventual consumer impact of the America's Cup is non-existent.

I think the budget of the past AC was astounding in proportion to the resultant (lack of) economic impact.

--
Bill

 

Not many who watch sport are concerned about the economic impact/trickle down.

There is no trickle down from the NBA, NFL, or Aussie Rules Football to the general public. Yet people watch these sports.

There is no trickle down from NASCAR racing. There was once a NASCAR Driver named Dick Trickle.

The clubs the PGA pros use have little to do with the technology used by weekend golfers. Yet people watch the PGA every weekend.

It is possible that funding from this last cup has allowed some technology to move toward the general public. Wind measurement, head's up display, construction methods, design tools, etc.

However, the success of a sporting event is not measured by how much technology trickle down comes out of it.

 

Fine bunch of "engineers" that didn't enjoy seeing the two fastest America's Cup boats in the history of the event sailing at close to thirty knots "with alarms going off all over the place". Remarkable configuration changes on USA with a 10 degree plus change in rake from jib to no jib. The first use of lifting hydrofoils in the history of the Americas Cup. The first use of powered movable ballast ever in a Cup. Designed right on the edge with 200' rigs
and technology never seen before the engineers I know watched with enthusiasm and apprehension-it was extraordinarily exciting if you had even a remote clue what you were looking at.
I think Ellison is right on target going for fast boats that can have an excitement not matched by leadbellies in any conditions-except maybe Perth.
Thats the real answer: extraordinarily fast boats sailing in conditions like Perth.
I hope speed and the fastest boats possible are a fixture in future Cups along with challenging conditions.

 

No, watching boats sail along by themselves for an hour or so is not exciting for any sane person.

I'm willing to bet I have more information about the "technology" used than The Lord does, so more than a "remote clue", and I did not find it exciting. Neither did the designers or racers that I know, who also have more than a "remote clue".