Personally I think BMWO was the better boat BUT I think Alinghy lost the cup mostly on

-1- bad handling and tactics.

It wouldn't be the first time a slower boat won the AC by employing superior tacktics. Unnecessary pre-start penalties REALLY don't help and can have a huge effect on moral. Low speed tacks are also stupid to attempt on a cat this size (if not at any size). And what about the slow reacher set after rounding the mark in race 1 ? Rule of thumb in F18/F16 racing is that each additional second required to set the spi and make it draw costs you 10 mtr. It took A. about a minute to get that reacher drawing = 600 mtr out the door. BMWO's set was right on the mark.

-2- bad sail choice

Flying the genoa upwind against the wingmast. That just aggrevates the pointing disadvantage of a sloop soft sail setup. (overlapping) Genoa's always point lower then a blade jib. That much we know from lots of beach cat racing. Size of the jib is NOT that important as long as it is sufficiently large to achieve the positive interaction between mainsail and jib. Main is less likely to stall (boat settles down) and jib develops full drive at a much smaller angle of attack to apparent wind due to updraft of the mainsail.

-3- Having the disadvantaged design

There is no arguing that the Wing sail is superior on the downwind legs. The advantage upwind seems to be smaller as I think the A-cat wingmast experiment of Bob Hall in one of the recent A-cat worlds also indicated. The ability of the wing to operate efficiently (and not stall) at large angles of attack favour it especially on the offwind courses. Having said that A. could in my opinion have been more competitive with better handling and tactical choices. I saw a huge improvement of A. when comparing the 2nd race with the 1st. Was that the result of Loick Peyron at the helm (and also helped by some lucky windshifts) ?


End conclusion;

Alinghy was soundly beaten by BMWO on all fronts; tactics, handling and boat design

I also do think the AC is inherently unfair. The USA is afterall a collection of 50 (independent) states under a single name whereas all other nations must find the resources and technology inside a much smaller area with much smaller industrial bases. I think it was a great achievement of team Alinghy to even have build A5 in the mountainous region of Zwitserland. This nation is not known for their shipbuilding credentials or access to proper (offshore) testing grounds! Point in case; it was argued that they couldn't use 3D sails because the only sailmaker capable of making these at this size was located in the USA. I like team BMWO better for their presentations and willingness to provide proper online coverage and credit to the other team but Ernesto may have a point when he refers to the AC setup as favouring the USA.

Nevertheless A. was soundly beaten.

Personally I see no reason to favour the tri over the cat or to attribute the loss of A. to 10 feet less overall width. A. is also lighter and as we know the smaller F16's are as fast as the wider and heavier F18's. It is all in the ratio's and NOT in the absolute sizes.

I love BMWO wing and have alwasy had a thing for large tri's but I also think Alinghy has build an absolutely beautyful boat. I would have loved to have seen more tight racing between the two.

If only the two of them can now agree on BMWO putting their soft sail rig on, take E. of the helm in favour of Peyron and do a demo race series of 7 races as a promo. Let Alinghy get some experience in wit handling and then go head to head to show large multihulls can result in exciting sailboat match racing. Afterall both have sunk enormous amounts of money in these projects and it seems such a waste to have done so for only 2 races.

Wouter