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America's Cup - Race 8 & 9


Mothership

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The decision to abandon that race is the most outrageous nonsense I have ever witnessed in 60 years of following yacht racing.

 

What, do you think, would have been the decision had the boats been on leg four or five of the race with a few minutes/seconds to go?

 

A basic tenet of yacht racing has always been that while a race committee can decide whether or not to start a race, it is the skippers decision to continue.

 

I see the evil hand of the jack-booted US Coast Guard behind this.

 

Obviously it's within the rules of this competition but, as a matter of principle, sailors should protest this bullshit on the widest front.

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Seems that Oracle has traded downwind speed for upwind. Net result is that Barker gets the jump off the line (where before Oracle could accelerate very quickly), they are more or less even off the wind (TNZ slight advantage maybe?) but we still have the edge upwind. Shame about the race stoppage, but the upside is that the excitement gets extended. Still a massive uphill for Oracle, 9 races to win to our three. And that last upwind leg showed that TNZ has real pace. An amazing contest, and we won't see these boats racing neck and neck again once this one is over. Game on.

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The decision to abandon that race is the most outrageous nonsense I have ever witnessed in 60 years of following yacht racing.

 

What, do you think, would have been the decision had the boats been on leg four or five of the race with a few minutes/seconds to go?

 

A basic tenet of yacht racing has always been that while a race committee can decide whether or not to start a race, it is the skippers decision to continue.

 

I see the evil hand of the jack-booted US Coast Guard behind this.

 

Obviously it's within the rules of this competition but, as a matter of principle, sailors should protest this bullshit on the widest front.

 

I totally agree, particularly with your point about the skipper being the one who decides what is or isn't palatable. Arbitrary nonsense that a wind gauge on the committee boat automatically calls racing off!

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Looked to me like Oracle had made some significant gains in upwind speed that caught ETNZ a little on the hop in the first race, which put ETNZ under pressure a little bit. That was probably a contributing factor with the "Jesus" moment. Perhaps there was a little bit of remedying/tweaking for ETNZ between the races and it looked like they'd dialled a little bit more upwind speed back into the equation to counter Oracle's gains.

 

Unfortunately, the magic 8 ball called off the racing due to unsafe wind conditions so we never got to see just what ETNZ could do upwind. We saw a touch of 30 knot boat speed at one point but then the plug was pulled. 30 knots upwind is just frigging insane.

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Didn't Dalts say yesterday 'just watch tomorrow' or something along those lines in one of the interviews when questioned about Oracle's upwind speed? It seems they had planned for such an eventuality looking at our performance in what there was of the second race.

 

As for the first race, watch the video of the only other race we lost and the first race today; seemed to be a lot of similarities.

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I think it is a little different from the usual mono up to the skipper.

Firstly you are dealing with apparent wind here not true wind in terms of forces on the sails. At thirty knots in 22 odd it isn't 50 but getting up there. Secondly there is no reefing. Thirdly when they are sailing on the edge it is reasonable to draw a line for the sake of safety and the contest being able to continue.

If it were simply up to the skippers neither would be keen to back off and both would be inclined just to push it a bit further to win rather than just stay intact.

Disappointing yes in that they appeared to be handling it, but not unreasonable to draw a line somewhere, preferably on the conservative side given the screams that would result if it all went wrong and say someone got killed or a boat wrecked.

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SA puts it eloquently as always:

 

Jesus christ, just let ‘em race – it was going fine – why show just how weak this whole thing really is at such a critical and pretty much awesome moment? Just when it looks like the AC is actually good sport, we are constantly reminded of the major shortcomings in this edition
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I think it is a little different from the usual mono up to the skipper.
No sorry it is unreasonable and against what the rules were until a month ago. That race was decided by the Race Committee, knot the boats, knot the crews and knot the skippers. The boats were built to handle winds in excess of that as per the original class rules. What's more the boats have handled more than that.

 

Must say I like this new format. I slept in so missed it live. 5 mins of U Tube later and I've seen all there was to see, damn handy.

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........ Secondly there is no reefing. Thirdly when they are sailing on the edge it is reasonable to draw a line for the sake of safety and the contest being able to continue.

If it were simply up to the skippers neither would be keen to back off and both would be inclined just to push it a bit further to win rather than just stay intact........

 

Exactly - it's called yacht racing. Making decisions that win or lose a race/regatta.

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