America's Cup Disaster

Wow, I guess people see what they want to see.

After yo-yoing back and forth on the video I see the stern of A5 releasing the stern wave quite nicely, no worse than the BMW-O boat. I caught the BMW-O leeward roostertail in one shot, seems to be coming off the leeward corner of their stern.

I tried to get a couple of screen shots for comparison. Not very good, but I sure never see the A5 stern halfway immersed. Chance wished Mariner's wake would have looked like this (although from the surface you would not have visually seen any difference in Mariner's wake and a "normal" 12s wake).

 

Yes, you're right Paul, we see what we see - and maybe I am biased. However it "appeared" to me that A5's wake was not clean and it's a fact of life, a hard turning transom on a displacement hull forced down by weight and wind power, is going to be disturbed and messy and draggy. Conversely the amas on BMW-O, narrower and finer looking "to me" have a far less churned up wake. But then, as I say .....

 

I think what we saw today was the guys who sailed Formula 40s 20+ years ago were pretty smart when they concluded tris were faster than cats, due to wetted area, righting moment, longitudinal stiffness, etc.

We also saw the guys who sail C Class cats were pretty smart when they concluded wing sails are better than soft sails.

Did you note the much smaller overlap of the BMW-O downwind sail? Maybe some better aero there, due to the extra power of the wing?

 

Tris tend to have relatively low volume amas (sp?). Alinghi seems to have lots of volume in the hulls and to sit pretty lightly on the water, or to have a lot of rocker so the ends, particularly the bows, sit high. In the typical tri flying two hulls the ama is pretty loaded, but Alinghi's hull doesn't sink much, even when the other hull is out of the water. It would take a lot of lift to reduce the surface area much and if you did the ends of the hull would start to come out of the water. Even though I'm sure these boats are way past hull speed, shortening the water line length is generally not a good idea, except at low speeds, not 20-30 knots. If you are powered up and have picked up a lot of water and pumped it into the windward hull for RM, displacement goes up and then maybe lift makes more sense.

Of course, like everyone else, I'm just speculating on why Alinghy went with straight boards today.

 

For a topic that so many folk claimed had lost its interest the AC seems to have attracted a near record of posts in the last few hours!

 

==========
Terry, did you watch the race?

 

official race results Teddy
anyone who says otherwise is simply living in there own universe

simple fact is Denis came back and humiliated the Munchkins 4/zip
its a fact

you remembered just perfectly so no worries

cheers
B

pps
back in the day out on the cape any of the contenders were called munchkins by us locals so dont go getting all high and mighty thinking its a reference to anyone particular
all in good fun folks
all in good fun

peace
B

 

What you said was:

So your statement that a Cat won in 87 is wrong, DC won with a 12M in 1987. The Cat was NOT sailed against the Australian "munchkins". The Cat was sailed against Fay's Challenger from New Zealand.

rather than look it up and say "sorry, '88 not '87" you argue the fact.

R

 

Boston,

I'm sorry to relay this info to you, but the S&S cat did not win the AC in '87.

The year was 1988. I sat in my 18th street Costa Mesa living room and watched the whole thing with cat sailing buddies. We consumed mass quantities of pizza and beer and had a rousing good time yelling at the tube.

If you want to see it, I have it all on VHS Hi-Fi. That same year, the Lakers beat the Pistons for the NBA title, the Dodgers beat the supposedly unbeatable Oakland A's in the World Series and all was good in SoCal. At least in my house it was.

 

The cat was 1988.

The 87 results are 12's.

 

Wikipedia:
The 1987 America's Cup was the twenty-seventh running of the America's Cup regatta and the first time for 132 years that it had not been hosted by the New York Yacht Club.

American syndicate Stars & Stripes, sailed by Dennis Conner, beat Kookaburra III, sailed by Iain Murray, by four wins to nil in the best of seven final series.[1] Conner, the winning skipper had thus become the first person to lose the America's Cup, and the first to win it back.

The series was held in Gage Roads off Fremantle, Western Australia between December 1986 and February 1987. The Royal Perth Yacht Club was the defending club and the organiser of the defence series.[2] Yacht Club Costa Smeralda of Porto Cervo, Sardinia was appointed the challenger of record and hence the organiser the challenger series.[3][4]

The 1987 Series was the last time that 12-metre class yachts were used in the America's Cup

So it was 12m.. and cat came 1988..

 

I think the nit picking is an obvious attempt to ameliorate the loss in some way
some folks are just poor looser's

no sense arguing the little things
fact of the mater is old Denis kicked *** next time around
the meat of the issue is
Denis won
in a cat

 

Yes you are right!

 

Hi Ted,

Do you really think that it would have made any difference if I had? Paul tried to lead the conversation along with fairly obvious hints and it went nowhere. The time came to just put it out there and try to end the goofiness. I failed.

 

Its always best to just come right out and say something rather than play games

Maybe in future we can find a way to communicate a little better and avoid any animosities developing over the minutia

cheers as always
B