America's Cup 2017

My hat's off to the Kiwi's! They just plain out-sailed Team USA.

Congrats!

BaltimoreLurker said:

My hat's off to the Kiwi's! They just plain out-sailed Team USA.

Congrats!

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Me too!

WTG, ETNZ!!! Very well done! You deserve the Cup!

(I've been recording the races on my DVR and watching them delayed, so I had to unsubscribe from this thread and avoid social media to avoid spoilers.)

I guess USA will be sweating bullets for the next few years...

Congrats NZ!

Congratulations to our NZ friends "across the dutch" [aka the Tasman sea]. I adopted the NZ pronunciation of "ditch" out of respect for this great occasion.

I hate to see us lose but Oracle was out-teched and out-sailed. So...Congratulations Team NZ! Your win is good for the America's Cup and for the sport of sailing in general. Now we have to challenge for it. I hope that's sooner than later!

stubones99 said:

I guess USA will be sweating bullets for the next few years...

Congrats NZ!

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Then they have to race against all of the other entrants to get to the big dance. Not as easy as being the holder.

BruceK said:

Congratulations to our NZ friends "across the dutch" [aka the Tasman sea]. I adopted the NZ pronunciation of "ditch" out of respect for this great occasion.

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CDreamer said:

I hate to see us lose but Oracle was out-teched and out-sailed. So...Congratulations Team NZ! Your win is good for the America's Cup and for the sport of sailing in general. Now we have to challenge for it. I hope that's sooner than later!

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Thanks guys, from a Kiwi at heart, now Aussie, on behalf of other NZers, here and elsewhere. It does appear this time they were the best team effort all round, and have set the bar high. My only hope now is that if the defence is off NZ again, and one presumes it will be, that the Aussies mount a challenge also, so all those Aussie sailors can sail for their own country's effort instead of for someone else's. That probably does add that little extra special motivation.

And to Bruce, bringing up this 'dutch' thing. Aussies maintain Kiwis say fush and chups. We NZers hear you guys as saying feesh and cheeps. Having lived here nearly 30 years now, I can say the reality is somewhere in between, on both sides.

But hey, those Kiwis were definitely thinking outside the square with their trick-cycling thing, eh bros..?

Roll on 2021 - maybe even sooner..? It is not actually part of the deed of gift that the competition has to be held four yearly after all. That is a much more recent convention. On the other hand, more often might detract from the specialness of the event..?
See yez in Auckland ..?

Congrats AUSTRALIA 1ST AND 2ND Well the captains were

BaltimoreLurker said:

My hat's off to the Kiwi's! They just plain out-sailed Team USA.

Congrats!

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Outsailed? Congrats to NZ but does anyone think that this had much to do with sailing? Really? They were wind driven machines for sure but sailing, no. Sort of like comparing bot wars to boxing. 20 minute drag races, cycle riders...one person on "sail trim" which seemed to matter little.... not much by way of tactics beyond the basics....One team had a guy who two weeks prior had never been in a sailboat race. International country oriented competition? Japan had one Japanese citizen on board. The rest from other countries. I can appreciate the technology but this has little to nothing in common with sailing. Hopefully the insanity will subside and they will go back to a format that includes some sailing skill. Just my $.02.

Paraphrasing Star Trek (appropriate?)
Its sailing Jim, but not sailing as we know it

Bring back the 12 metre boats, but skip the New York Yacht Club lawyer-types having any involvement!

firstbase said:

Outsailed? Congrats to NZ but does anyone think that this had much to do with sailing? Really? They were wind driven machines for sure but sailing, no. Sort of like comparing bot wars to boxing. 20 minute drag races, cycle riders...one person on "sail trim" which seemed to matter little.... not much by way of tactics beyond the basics....One team had a guy who two weeks prior had never been in a sailboat race. International country oriented competition? Japan had one Japanese citizen on board. The rest from other countries. I can appreciate the technology but this has little to nothing in common with sailing. Hopefully the insanity will subside and they will go back to a format that includes some sailing skill. Just my $.02.

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What little I know about sailing showed me that the Kiwi's consistently won positioning for the starts, chose better (shorter) routes up & down the course, executed tacks and jibes better than Team USA, read the wind shifts better .... but maybe those aren't sailing and match racing skills.

I didn't say zero tactics just limited from what I saw. They are afraid to jibe, afraid to tack, each being a very perilous operation. don't want to come off of those foils! No tacking duels to test and strain the other crew, no sail changes if needed because that is impossible. Pick your foil poison early in the morning because thats what you get for the day. Starts were in the box, down to the corner and back for the most part. It's a drag race. Again, I admire the technology but to compare this to SAILING a race is comparing a drag race to the 24 hours at Le Mans. Both have their place but I wouldn't watch or go to a drag race for any amount of money. Just not what I am in to.

Hey, give me a break. I'm an old guy. CHANGE IS BAD!! I grew up in and around those boats and admire all of the skills that were used to sail them fast and, when they didn't go as fast, the skills to outsmart the other boat. Seems to me that fast rules all with this format. Kiwi's were both faster and smarter and they deserved the win. Good for them.

Agree on the NYYC types of the old days. A tough club of men to hang with and if you weren't one of the chosen then you weren't. Their time has definitely passed and that's a good thing.

BaltimoreLurker said:

What little I know about sailing showed me that the Kiwi's consistently won positioning for the starts, chose better (shorter) routes up & down the course, executed tacks and jibes better than Team USA, read the wind shifts better .... but maybe those aren't sailing and match racing skills.

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You just nailed it Darrell. I also suspect that if they did return to the older monohull type of boat, especially the 12 metres, that not only public interest, but the sailing fraternity would also lose interest. I think there is no turning back now. It is the formula one of sailing, after all. But that doesn't mean the Kiwis won't come up with a defence design that is different from those we just watched. Watch this space. Prepare to be surprised - hopefully positively...

gaston said:

Congrats AUSTRALIA 1ST AND 2ND Well the captains were

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You wash your mouth out Gaston.

However, there is a certain truth about the nationality of some crew members, which begs the question, why no Aussie entry..? Let's hope that changes for next time, as I said above. The good Aussie sailors deserve an entry to compete with. Surely they must have got over by now their boat breaking in half back in '95..?

firstbase said:

Outsailed? Congrats to NZ but does anyone think that this had much to do with sailing? Really? They were wind driven machines for sure but sailing, no.....

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. I`d prefer the 12M monohulls back than this kind of "extreme" sport, which has a much to do with sailboats as F1 has with everyday drive cars.

Peter B said:

You wash your mouth out Gaston.

However, there is a certain truth about the nationality of some crew members, which begs the question, why no Aussie entry..? Let's hope that changes for next time, as I said above. The good Aussie sailors deserve an entry to compete with. Surely they must have got over by now their boat breaking in half back in '95..?

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Won't both captains Australians ??

Peter B said:

You just nailed it Darrell. I also suspect that if they did return to the older monohull type of boat, especially the 12 metres, that not only public interest, but the sailing fraternity would also lose interest. I think there is no turning back now. It is the formula one of sailing, after all. But that doesn't mean the Kiwis won't come up with a defence design that is different from those we just watched. Watch this space. Prepare to be surprised - hopefully positively...

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Disagree (there's a surprise, huh?) Sailing fraternity wouldn't lose interest at all at least not the true sailors, the people who want to see boats sail and not drag race. Again, love the technology but this type of racing pretty much doesn't need most of the sailing skills we know. Again, there was one guy pulling on one line to trim the sails! I have to be honest, I didn't see much by way of sail trimming at all. Seemed to stay in pretty much the same place for the whole race. End of inflammatory remark.

The 50' AC Class absolutely IS sailing. What else? Higher pressure on one side of the wing, lower pressure on the other. Wind alone makes 'em go. These boats just happen to be able to sail at 4 times the wind speed. Don't you think that's amazing? I do. And the start sequences, mark roundings, protests, strategy...all basically the same as the "old days" of match racing.
Admittedly, the problem this year was that NZ was so superior to Oracle that the races weren't close. Like watching a blowout Super Bowl.

I like traditions and I race on several "traditional" classes of sailboats, from two-man to 8 man crews. They don't have cotton sails though- they're Dacron, Mylar and Kevlar. Know why? Because the new stuff is FASTER. You can bet that Sir Thomas Lipton would have used Kevlar if he had it...back in the good ol' days.

gaston said:

Weren't both captains Australians ??

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The skipper/helmsman of Oracle, Jimmy Spithill, is Aussie, and many of the crew were Aussies or English. Not sure if they had an American on her, but probably some in the team. Difficult to actually find, even googling.

On the Kiwi boat, he helmsman and rest of the crew were all Kiwis, and just the skipper/tactition was Glen Ashby, a Victorian, but granted honorary Kiwi status he lives there so much of the time.

However, yes, one gets a bit cynical about the country representation aspects, and I'd love to see some limitation of number of citizens in each boat.

Let's hope that Aussie doesn't pull out of the next one, like they did the last, even after initially being the Challenger of Record. Although with Bob Oatley's death, one wonders who might lead the Aussie challenge now.

You may be interested by this grainy photo: taken just now, shortly after low tide, in the A9 anchorage in San Diego Harbor, where I'm in the hook.

My neighbour, hard aground at every low tide, is Age of Russia, the 1992 Russian hopeful, whose syndicate ran out of coin just before the event.

I don't know who owns her now, but she's got sails, and looks ready to go!

Unless she can sail at 40-50 knots she has no chance nowadays.

Hope someone cares for her.

I suspect she's used for trips around the bay: Stars & Stripes is out daily, with a full complement of paying guests. I'll be here for a while, so I'll keep an eye out.

The news of Sint Maarten reminded me...a few years ago we anchored the sailboat there, got a little dressed up and took the dinghy in for dinner. It was pretty windy. Looked back at the boat from shore and thought, "Damn...we're dragging." So we ran back to our boat and re-anchored. It was dark by the time we finished but the next morning it was obvious that if we had kept moving backwards we would have hit two 12 meters that are chartered by tourists. In fact I think Stars & Stripes may have been one of them...there were several built. That would have made the local paper.