Keep it in focus that at the beginning of the series Oracle was simply not ready. They were still developing and climbing the vertical learning curve, and starting with a new wing trimmer. Difference between Oracle and NZ is that it appears that Oracle is never satisfied and constantly pushes the development envelope, where maybe NZ got comfortable or were afraid to try drastic changes. In the end, this is an epic event, close racing, no capsizes, no structural failures, and anything but boring. This is the Cinderella story of all time. The naysayers were surprisingly wrong. There were some hiccups along the way, but Larry got it right. May we never go back to the old format.
I wonder if we might see a surge in beach cat sales after this event, as mono guys start to consider that going fast might actually be... FUN!
I know as a mono guy myself, I never seriously considered racing cats until I watched Dennis Connor (and Randy Smyth) use a 60' cat to crush that 90' Kiwi Sled of Mike Fey, back in that AC (was it 1988?).
I never thought cats could "point", because all I had ever seen of cats back in the 70's and early 80's was...Hobie 16's lying on their sides out in the bay when the wind came up, they always flipped over.
"That looks stupid" is what I thought, swimming is not sailing. I'm sure many of the mono guys are rethinking their opinions of cats as we speak, or at least I hope they are, and I hope we see some more guys make the transition. I know I'm getting a lot of questions from the guys I fly with, about what type of cat they should get into. The conversations this summer have always started with them asking me, "Have you seen those monster cats that are racing in San Francisco?", and then I give them about 2 hours worth of info, and tell them about this site, and how they can pick up a used Hobie 16 for peanuts and be out there having fun too.
Obviously racing a beach cat is much more physically demanding than sitting on a keel boat like a J24, going 5 knots upwind, and a whopping 8 knots downwind, so many fat mono guys are not going to make the jump, but I'm glad I did, or I'd be really fat by now!
