Proof of Concept (!)
... The cityfront on Sunday was packed, almost the way I imagined when the Cup was announced for San Francisco, and it’s about time we got to see Norbert Bajurin dancing for joy, again.
... Two years ago, it was an article of faith that we could match race 72-foot catamarans. Now it’s a fact and it’s happening on foils, and the spray is flying on the racecourse and even as a spectator it makes my heart race and that’s not all there is. Jimmy Spithill has it that, “The only thing slowing these boats now is cavitation. That’s like hitting a governor on a motor. Otherwise, we’d be seeing speeds in the fifties.”
Close crosses. Passes. Larry Ellison has been a risk taker at every stage of his career, and his multiple leaps from AC32 to AC34—an electronically defined and monitored race course, wing powered cats, raw speed—have finally clicked. Proof of concept, and maybe it would have been better to have held off until 2014, and gone up against the World Cup for eyeballs but with fully-developed boats (Emirates Team New Zealand wing trimmer Glenn Ashby says the learning curve is still “nearly vertical”) but who knew that, going in?
... One of the great Aussie journos,
Rob Mundle, posts on my Facebook: ” It’s time for the kiwis to bolt the wheels back on … but I, and thousands of others here in Australia, won’t care if it goes down to the very last race. Thanks to Larry E and his visionaries, AC 34 is the greatest image changer, and interest grabbing moment, our sport has ever seen. The public interest in a match that doesn’t involve Oz is unprecedented. Now we just have to organize an Australian challenge for the next match … wherever that might be!”
One breakage would do nicely.
