Well, if their bows had been up and they had been planing, they probably would not have pitchpoled. Right? He said the boat was definitely going THROUGH the water. And, no, they did not use any artificial means of creating rooster tails. This is Henry (Enrique) Rodriguez, a close friend of ours who lives right down the street. He is right here at our home frequently. I was telling him about the thread that you started on the forum, and so he told me of his own experiences on the Tornado and Nacra 6.0. He campaigned for quite a while for the Olympics on the Tornado crewing for Robbie Daniel, and it was the two of them that were on the Tornado during the video. And the time records for distance races kind of speak for themselves. Henry was skippering and Hans Meijer crewing during the 110-mile Key Largo Steeplechase when they set the record of 5 hours 40 minutes on a Nacra 6.0, and it was during that race that they were clocked, via their GPS, at some sustained speeds of 27-28 knots. As I said, if he is wrong about the knots and it was actually miles per hour, that is still impressive. Definitely above your 22-knot "barrier" and no planing involved. In that particular race, even though most of it was a reach, there were also several slower areas, upwind sections, mangrove canals to go through with lessened wind, so they HAD to be going very fast at some points to achieve that overall time.
Maybe you are right on paper, but I don't think your theory holds up on the water.