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My whole family will sit down and watch sail GP together, including Miss 11 and Mr 9. Miss 11 will go find the pre race previews / video blogg thingies and we consume all media that Sail GP can produce. She keeps track of where and when the next event is and we look forward to a race weekend, checking time zones for what time the coverage will be live, etc. Unfortunately Sail GP is taking a break while the AC is on, so we tried watching some the other day. The onwater graphics don't even tell you anything about the wind. Not which way it's going, nor its strength or speed. We watched

Anyone that races displacement needs to jettison anything to do with "traditional" yacht racing. These are not yachts as we know them, there are common elements but they are more like low flying aircraft. Apparent wind sailing is nothing new, in the 1800's they were sailing on ice doing 4x wind speed. Current record for ice boats is over 200k's! Foiling simply reduces wetted surface and here we are, its not possible to control these boats without advanced computer systems, in fact they could be sailed without any crew because humans are there for the rules not because the

While the old 12m races were long and slow by comparison, the technical difficulty of sailing them well was demonstrable which made them compelling viewing for the purist but not much so for the novice. I think the catamaran version took viewer engagement to another level for both novice and purist But these boats are hardly worth watching. We can't see what's going on and can't appreciate the tech or tactics. The graphics on screen are uninformative and commentators don't know much about sailing. Mostly it's about watch who wins the start and then wait for the next race. But

Part pissing match and part entertainment industry. Definitely no sport. Reminds me of professional wrestling.

Yes, but as far as I can tell, the whole point of match racing is to try and mess up the other boat, rather than to try and go as fast as you can. Hence, if you count the penalties, you get a get a handle on who is messing with who the most.

Penalties can be overcome, but if one boat comes off the foils they might as well just stop the race.

This one is a shocker