America's Cup

[David W Pratt]

Went over to Newport yesterday to watch the races. Man what a madhouse, but only one close call.
Those cats are fast! The crew work is impressive, the gennakers roll out before they are through bearing off.
Had a nice southerly of about 15+kt and a strong incoming, north flowing tide, so smooth water, aside from the spectator wash.

[JBreeze]

Planned to walk over to Ft. Wetherill to watch, but never made it. I don't know much at all about sailing, so I decided to watch it on the internet to hear the commentary and learn something. Yes, it is impressive to watch the catamarans pirouette around the powerboats that mark the "gates". How are the powerboats held in position?? I didn't see any evidence of anchor lines.

Did I understand correctly that the cats to be used in S.F. are quite a bit larger, like 70+ ft? I hope the S.F. course is more exciting than Newport.... basically the Newport course requires the boats to go back and forth 8 or so times in the most narrow portion of East Passage.

FWIW - the finals are televised on NBC today (Sunday) afternoon.

[Canoeyawl]

In San Francisco a light air day will be about a 20 knot breeze.

[JBreeze]

15 minutes before the race, and the wind measurement from Historic Hill, Newport is 0.0 mph - from the West!

Actually, there is a slight breeze right now in my backyard in Jamestown

[Old Dryfoot]

Wow the sure don't hesitate to get reeeeeal close to one another.....

[Curtism]

Planned to walk over to Ft. Wetherill to watch, but never made it. I don't know much at all about sailing, so I decided to watch it on the internet to hear the commentary and learn something. Yes, it is impressive to watch the catamarans pirouette around the powerboats that mark the "gates". How are the powerboats held in position?? I didn't see any evidence of anchor lines.

Did I understand correctly that the cats to be used in S.F. are quite a bit larger, like 70+ ft? I hope the S.F. course is more exciting than Newport.... basically the Newport course requires the boats to go back and forth 8 or so times in the most narrow portion of East Passage.

FWIW - the finals are televised on NBC today (Sunday) afternoon.

Thanks for the heads up about the broadcast, I happened to see this in plenty of time to catch the race. It's been years since I paid any attention to the cup regattas and my, how things have changed.

If you watched it you may have heard one of the announcers mention the marker boat were held in place by GPS, though he didn't elaborate other than to mention it was so they didn't have anchor lines to foul up the race boats. So, I guess autopilots are used? It's hard to picture them fending off tides and wind and manage to remain stationary otherwise.

The on-board cameras and microphones add a nice bit of dimension to the telecast. One announcer mentioned that he was glad they didn't have that tech when he raced with Ted Turner back in the day because much of the audio wouldn't have been suitable for TV. Yea, I'll bet.

[skuthorp]

Nice to see the big boys can pitch-pole a cat too

Spectacular though.

[Hwyl]

I was there on Sunday, I thought it was great, before the start Team Energy sailed through the spectator fleet, a couple of boatlengths from us. Not sure why they did it, but it was ballsy. Then we were parked opposite the windward mark.

Fantastic sailors, nice to see Luna Rosa play the indentations in the shoreline to time her tacks.

[David W Pratt]

I have a friend, Curt, who sailed against The Mouth of the South in college and had hi DSQd for bad language