America's cup

While it may not be catsailing, I'm sure many of us will be tuning in. My prediction.....Alingi in 7. Anyone else care to make a prediction?

Care to discuss your rationale?

I don't think there is any reason to doubt that both the TNZ crew work and tactics will be outstanding. The big unknowns imo are Barker v Baird in the starting box and boat speed. And at the moment that really is what they are - unknown. So I think predictions are a bit pointless right now, at least until after the first race.

Mark.

Alinghi seems to be faster and in the AC the fastest boat wins, making the crew, tactics, etc. look good. I bet in an easy series, with few (if any) defeats.

I predict it will the same boring [censored] that all AC racing has been since it left Aukland.

rootin' for the Kiwis, thinking it's going to be Alingi again. Kiwis promise to bring back nationalism to the cup.

So could the 88 Stars and Stripes (the catamaran) beat the modern AC boats around the course?

Without a doubt. hell, an I20 can probably race boat for boat .

They go like hell upwind, and when they tack they look like they jump forward, I swear I think they make 20-30 yards of direct upwind ground on each tack.

Even then do you think a beachcat like the I20 could beat one?

Anyone have a spare AC boat laying around we could test all this out on?

I do find it interesting that our boats go faster than the AC boats and cost, what, 1/500 of one?

How fast do the AC boats go?

I think 13 or 14 knots is doing pretty well for them upwind and a little better downwind.

I watched 2 hours of the semi finals on cable the other day (sick at home) and they were doing around 8 - 9 kts up wind at around 30 deg (so the commentators were saying anyway). It looked around 15kts of breeze from the sea state. During the tacks they only slowed a knot or so and that was very brief. Jybes looked very easy to foul up with the spi pole and asymmetric being quite complicated. Any reason why they can't go for a fixed pole off the bow? I was impressed how quickly they hoisted and sucked away such a big sail though.

Tiger Mike

Taking this data we find a VMG of 9 * cos (30) = 7.79 knots

For a beach catamaran sailing at 50 degrees off the wind to achieve the same VMG it needs to travel at 7.79/cos(50) = 12.13 knots. I think an I-20 or other formula (modern) beach cat can do that in 15 knots of wind.

So on this data alone it appears a beach cat will beat an america cupper when the crew is skilled enough to make fast tacks and gybes.

Wouter

They sail 30 degrees to the wind, and keep up that kinda of speed? That is insane!

They have a terminal hull speed for gods sake. With enough wind a 16 would beat them.
NZ will take revenge on those traitors.

try 10 or 11.