America's Cup 2017
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BaltimoreLurker
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I sailed and (Wednesday Night Club) raced mono-hulls for a decade. A few years ago I took a little Hobie type cat out while at a resort in Jamaica. Holy moly, was that a blast! Just a hint of a breeze and that thing took off like a scalded dog.
I understand the romance, grace and beauty of the mono-hulls. But this is racing. And I thought the last AC was far and away the most exciting I have ever seen. I would give my left ... OK, maybe not, but I'd love to take a few turns around the course on those AC72's.
Scary
Guru
Scary
Guru
I raced Hobie Cats for 20 years
I have to say this for for the last Americas cup. The multimedia format show that Ellison put on made sail boat racing accessible to more people than ever before. Watching grass grow was the common description of monohull racing. Match racing in particular is boring to all but a few diehard's. The Americas cup and big boats racing has always been about big egos and wallets to match. Larry made it exciting to watch and easy to understand. The fact is, San Francisco was a financial flop. The city made it near impossible to put on and the turn out was dismal. Why would you want to come back?
Having raced cats I could feel the raw acceleration and the ragged edge these boat were raced at. If you haven't felt 30 plus knots in open ocean on a Hobie 18 or Miracle you have no idea of the gunfighter reflexes needed to sail these incredible boats. I can only imagine what sailing a AC 72 would be like. The best way to see this event was probably in front of your big screen TV. With lay lines and overview of the course and on boat live video, it brought sailboat racing to the non sail boat racer.
I attended two days of AC 72 racing and one day on the water watching the 40's race. The forties racing around the buoy's was in my opinion the best racing, the whole fleet on the course at once, the leeward mark incredible. I have never liked match racing, too boring for me. Especially in keel boats.
Small boat racing has been dying for years. The fleets are small by comparison with the 70's and 80's. Most of the club races are in old boring plastic sail boats that creep around the course at speeds where a tenth of a knot is a big deal and the knot meter rarely reaches 8 knots. I provided the committee boat the Hobie North Americans about 6 years ago, it looked like a division race of the 80's. The youth has moved on to sail boards and kites and video games. Hopefully these new AC boats and media attention create interest in racing sail boats again. This comes from a guy that has owned and or raced a bunch of performance sail boats. Laser, Tasar, 505, Hobie 18, Hobie Miracle, Express 27, F24, Hobie 33. Swan 41.
I have to say this for for the last Americas cup. The multimedia format show that Ellison put on made sail boat racing accessible to more people than ever before. Watching grass grow was the common description of monohull racing. Match racing in particular is boring to all but a few diehard's. The Americas cup and big boats racing has always been about big egos and wallets to match. Larry made it exciting to watch and easy to understand. The fact is, San Francisco was a financial flop. The city made it near impossible to put on and the turn out was dismal. Why would you want to come back?
Having raced cats I could feel the raw acceleration and the ragged edge these boat were raced at. If you haven't felt 30 plus knots in open ocean on a Hobie 18 or Miracle you have no idea of the gunfighter reflexes needed to sail these incredible boats. I can only imagine what sailing a AC 72 would be like. The best way to see this event was probably in front of your big screen TV. With lay lines and overview of the course and on boat live video, it brought sailboat racing to the non sail boat racer.
I attended two days of AC 72 racing and one day on the water watching the 40's race. The forties racing around the buoy's was in my opinion the best racing, the whole fleet on the course at once, the leeward mark incredible. I have never liked match racing, too boring for me. Especially in keel boats.
Small boat racing has been dying for years. The fleets are small by comparison with the 70's and 80's. Most of the club races are in old boring plastic sail boats that creep around the course at speeds where a tenth of a knot is a big deal and the knot meter rarely reaches 8 knots. I provided the committee boat the Hobie North Americans about 6 years ago, it looked like a division race of the 80's. The youth has moved on to sail boards and kites and video games. Hopefully these new AC boats and media attention create interest in racing sail boats again. This comes from a guy that has owned and or raced a bunch of performance sail boats. Laser, Tasar, 505, Hobie 18, Hobie Miracle, Express 27, F24, Hobie 33. Swan 41.
To those who have written about how boring monohull racing is, that's a valid statement from the point of view of a spectator. These days, when crowds want fast, noisy excitement--the equivalent of a video game or a movie--- watching a conventional sailboat race would indeed, be very boring.
But it's a far different story to the crews. I've not had much sailboat racing experience, but for a few seasons in the early 80s I crewed on a co-worker's racing sloop. We raced in Lake Washington and on the Sound.
And even though we were not going all that fast, to be on the boat (even slow sailboats are anything but quiet when they are being driven through the water as fast as they will go) and working the sails and figuring out strategy--- it was an all-absorbing, exciting experience for every crew member.
Racing sailboats (or anything, frankly) is really about the people doing the racing. Yes, America's Cup races in the J-boat and 12 metre days and the International Fishermen's Races in the fishing schooner days drew big crowds on shore. Sometimes huge crowds.
But that was in an age before TV coverage. If people wanted to see something that sounded exciting to them, they had to go watch it in person. But I believe the real reason they raced boats back then was for one owner or skipper or crew to see if they could beat another one. If people wanted to watch, great, but that's not why they were out there.
TV coverage of anything demands a big audience share to get the ratings which is how the rates for running commercials is determined, which is the only reason TV exists, at least in this country. It's all about money. So you make it as big and noisy and fast and dangerous a show as you can. That takes a ton of money, and so you get to where we are today with the America's Cup, Formula 1, you name it.
The broadcasters couldn't care less who wins and loses in these events. The only thing relevant to the America's Cup today is the audience share. That and how much money the event itself can rake in, be it in room rates, food sold, souvenirs, you name it. So every year, the show has to be bigger and more spectacular, which means the boats have to be faster and more dramatic and the setting has to be more photogenic. Whatever it takes to get people to watch Channel A instead of Channel B.
To the people sailing the boats, I doubt things have changed much. The technology has certainly changed, and the speeds. But I suspect that today's crews are not much or any different than the crews of the Intrepid, or the Endeavour or the Bluenose. Or the 30' racing sloop I crewed on, frankly.
Nobody came to watch the races I crewed in on Lake Washington and Puget Sound. Nobody broadcast them and nobody sponsored the boats. But I suspect that when the fleet was booming down on a mark in a stiff wind with the spinnakers drawing hard, and the sound of the water going by the hulls was so loud we had to shout to make ourselves heard, it was every bit as exciting to us on board as it is to the big-boat race crews today, and the crews of yesterday.
Do I watch the America's Cup? Hell no. Even at 50 miles an hour I can't imagine anything more boring than watching a boat race except perhaps an Indy car race where the cars go around in an oval until somebody waves a flag.
It's the same reason I have no interest in going to airshows. I love flying a plane, but I have zero interest in watching them fly. To me, flying, boating, driving, and a bunch of other activities are not things I get any pleasure out of experiencing vicariously. It's why we choose to drive a 3mph narrowboat through England rather than look out at England through the windows of a tour bus or watch a show about the place on TV.
The really sad thing, I think, about the direction so many activities are going is that they are getting so expensive for the reasons I talked about above that they are pricing themselves out of the ability for most people to experience them.
My wife used to race sports cars (SCCA). Back when she did it, all you needed was a car that was fitted out to meet the fairly minimal safety regulations of the time, and that was it. If you could afford to put gas in it, get it to the track, and keep it running, you could race.
Not so today.
The reason this is too bad that the cost of these activities--- be it car racing or sailboat racing or whatever--- is forcing more and more people to become passive spectators instead of active participants. It's slowly moving people more away from reality and closer to fantasy. And it's depriving more and more people of the ability to experience things for themselves.
Now from my selfish point of view, this is great. I would LOVE it if most of the steelhead fishermen in this state would stay home and watch TV shows about it instead of going out and cluttering up the rivers where I want to fish. And the more boaters stay home and watch documentaries and TV specials about cruising in the San Juans and BC the better, because they they won't be out there crowding up the anchorages and bays and detracting from the experience we want to have by actually taking a boat out there.
I'm being facetious (sort of) but I truly think this is were it's all headed.
If I had a choice between sitting at home and watching the America's Cup on a giant screen with 500 camera angles and graphics and interviews and stuff explaining what was going on, or being back out on Lake Washington in that 30-foot racing sloop whizzing around the course at a whopping 10 knots or whatever, I'd take being on the real boat every single time.
But it's a far different story to the crews. I've not had much sailboat racing experience, but for a few seasons in the early 80s I crewed on a co-worker's racing sloop. We raced in Lake Washington and on the Sound.
And even though we were not going all that fast, to be on the boat (even slow sailboats are anything but quiet when they are being driven through the water as fast as they will go) and working the sails and figuring out strategy--- it was an all-absorbing, exciting experience for every crew member.
Racing sailboats (or anything, frankly) is really about the people doing the racing. Yes, America's Cup races in the J-boat and 12 metre days and the International Fishermen's Races in the fishing schooner days drew big crowds on shore. Sometimes huge crowds.
But that was in an age before TV coverage. If people wanted to see something that sounded exciting to them, they had to go watch it in person. But I believe the real reason they raced boats back then was for one owner or skipper or crew to see if they could beat another one. If people wanted to watch, great, but that's not why they were out there.
TV coverage of anything demands a big audience share to get the ratings which is how the rates for running commercials is determined, which is the only reason TV exists, at least in this country. It's all about money. So you make it as big and noisy and fast and dangerous a show as you can. That takes a ton of money, and so you get to where we are today with the America's Cup, Formula 1, you name it.
The broadcasters couldn't care less who wins and loses in these events. The only thing relevant to the America's Cup today is the audience share. That and how much money the event itself can rake in, be it in room rates, food sold, souvenirs, you name it. So every year, the show has to be bigger and more spectacular, which means the boats have to be faster and more dramatic and the setting has to be more photogenic. Whatever it takes to get people to watch Channel A instead of Channel B.
To the people sailing the boats, I doubt things have changed much. The technology has certainly changed, and the speeds. But I suspect that today's crews are not much or any different than the crews of the Intrepid, or the Endeavour or the Bluenose. Or the 30' racing sloop I crewed on, frankly.
Nobody came to watch the races I crewed in on Lake Washington and Puget Sound. Nobody broadcast them and nobody sponsored the boats. But I suspect that when the fleet was booming down on a mark in a stiff wind with the spinnakers drawing hard, and the sound of the water going by the hulls was so loud we had to shout to make ourselves heard, it was every bit as exciting to us on board as it is to the big-boat race crews today, and the crews of yesterday.
Do I watch the America's Cup? Hell no. Even at 50 miles an hour I can't imagine anything more boring than watching a boat race except perhaps an Indy car race where the cars go around in an oval until somebody waves a flag.
It's the same reason I have no interest in going to airshows. I love flying a plane, but I have zero interest in watching them fly. To me, flying, boating, driving, and a bunch of other activities are not things I get any pleasure out of experiencing vicariously. It's why we choose to drive a 3mph narrowboat through England rather than look out at England through the windows of a tour bus or watch a show about the place on TV.
The really sad thing, I think, about the direction so many activities are going is that they are getting so expensive for the reasons I talked about above that they are pricing themselves out of the ability for most people to experience them.
My wife used to race sports cars (SCCA). Back when she did it, all you needed was a car that was fitted out to meet the fairly minimal safety regulations of the time, and that was it. If you could afford to put gas in it, get it to the track, and keep it running, you could race.
Not so today.
The reason this is too bad that the cost of these activities--- be it car racing or sailboat racing or whatever--- is forcing more and more people to become passive spectators instead of active participants. It's slowly moving people more away from reality and closer to fantasy. And it's depriving more and more people of the ability to experience things for themselves.
Now from my selfish point of view, this is great. I would LOVE it if most of the steelhead fishermen in this state would stay home and watch TV shows about it instead of going out and cluttering up the rivers where I want to fish. And the more boaters stay home and watch documentaries and TV specials about cruising in the San Juans and BC the better, because they they won't be out there crowding up the anchorages and bays and detracting from the experience we want to have by actually taking a boat out there.
I'm being facetious (sort of) but I truly think this is were it's all headed.
If I had a choice between sitting at home and watching the America's Cup on a giant screen with 500 camera angles and graphics and interviews and stuff explaining what was going on, or being back out on Lake Washington in that 30-foot racing sloop whizzing around the course at a whopping 10 knots or whatever, I'd take being on the real boat every single time.
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It's like all sports, we either like them or not. To me sailing is a leisurely experience and I just don't connect with racing sailboats, nor do I with powerboats. Now, oddly, my wife and I do watch auto racing other than Formula One. I do think technology of today does make sailboat racing more enjoyable to watch on television as it affords the ability to see more. I also think the amazing comeback this year got attention of some who normally wouldn't watch either. Someone mentioned earlier it not mattering to the promoters who wins. Well, it does actually. There is great benefit to a US win or at least the US being competitive as the US television audience is the prime target.
But for those who enjoy it, I'm happy for them. And even if I watched in on television, I don't care where it is. I'd care only if Fort Lauderdale was involved and the city was going to spend money on it plus it would be disruptive to me. Only selfish reasons.
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When bligh and I met, we joked about starting a TF Trawler Race. Whoever finished the race burning the least amount of fuel wins. It would be just about as exciting as sailboat racing.
I don't know about the race promoters. But the network(s) broadcasting the event don't care other than what you said--- a US win or involvement will most likely garner a larger ratings share in the US, so they can swing a bigger bat when it comes to negotiating commercial buys. So it's all basically just about the money.
When we say it's not about the money, it probably is. But I suspect none of us did our jobs for free. Even if you're running a business to benefit others, profits become essential if you wish to keep doing it. Those like Ellison and sports owners just operate at an entire different level beyond those most of us can even imagine.
Wxx3
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Dennis Conner and Stars and Stripes got me into America's Cup for the first time and I've been a big fan ever since, until this past year. I loved that Dennis wanted to bring the Cup back to Newport.
This past year, with the small number of challengers, the reduced maximum wind speed and the impression that more than ever the entire race is won at the start, has made the entire venue less appealing.
Yes, they are following the money, just as the NBA has done for the last 20 years, with the result that they have less fans and people watching than ever before.
dimer2
Moderator Emeritus
Agree. I was there and now I feel old!
I don't remember the exact year, but some time in the early 1900s (I think), as word got out about the new, fast fishing schooners that were entering the fleets in New England and the Canadian Maritimes, the New York Yacht Club invited some of the owners to bring their schooners down to Newport and participate in one of the season's big club events.
The schooner owners, some of whom were also the boat's captains readily agreed and they took several of their big schooners down the coast.
These were boats and crews who were used to working the Grand and Georges Banks in everything from calm conditions to dowright hideous storms, and had long since learned to take it all in stride. They arrived and were snickered at by the high-society club members and local residents aspiring to high-society status, but they went about preparing their big schooners without comment.
Come the first race day all the boats were prepared to go out, or perhaps even had gone out, when the race committee decided to call off the race due to high winds. IIRC, the winds were some 25 or 30 knots.
The first reaction of the fishing crews was astonishment, quickly followed by disgust at the wimpy attitude of the club members. To the fishermen, 30 knots was a pleasant day for a sail. So after what I can imagine was a sound verbal thrashing of the race committee, the fishermen got back on their boats and went home.
But the race bug had bitten, so the fishermen decided to hold their own races. One of the requirements for entering was that the boat had to have fished commercially during the year of the race. This was to ensure that the boats were true fishing boats and not some purpose-built yacht gussied up to look like a fishing boat.
They named the race the International Fishermen's Race. Perhaps the International was included because entrants were from both the US and Canada.
The most famous race winner was the schooner Bluenose, from Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. Once she started racing, I don't believe she ever lost.
But while Bluenose is most remembered today for her unbroken string of victories in the Fishermen's Race, every season saw her had at work on the banks, fishing for cod.
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That may have been your impression, but not at all close to what actually occurred.
The boat that won the start won 12 races and lost 7. Oracle came back and won 4 races after being behind at the first mark, and NZ came back and won 3 after being behind at the first mark. After being behind at the second mark, Oracle and NZ both came back and won 3 races each. After the third mark NZ came back and won 1 race. Not much need for the fifth leg though. Have you seen an AC that remotely compares to this?
Never has there been so much passing in the AC.
BruceK
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Isn`t there a story about someone using a monkey instead of a person as the forward hand in an early AC race (always assuming you could tell the difference)?
If I categorize current hightec cat AC racing as different, exciting, and distantly related to sailing, I get to like it.
If I categorize current hightec cat AC racing as different, exciting, and distantly related to sailing, I get to like it.
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Don't remind me. I had just bought my second trailer yacht back then, a maxi version of 26 ft, a Gazelle called Black Widow. About that time NZ's KZ7 was wasting the competition, and big bad Dennis Connor made a huge fuss and accused NZ of cheating. "After all", he claimed, "why would you build a 12Metre AC yacht out of fibreglass, if you didn't want to cheat..?"
(up to then the 12M AC class were all built of aluminium)
As a result, in the end they took core samples, and proved it met the scantlings exactly, and he gave up on that. That was his second rule protest defeat, having had his protest re the Australia II's winged keel thrown out after a legal wrangle in the previous stousch in Newport in '83, when the cup ended up in Fremantle.
I remember the occasion well for one good reason, and one not so good.
I won my first race in the gazelle at that time, and by a large margin, and it was kinda neat all the club members back in the clubhouse, over a beer, calling for core samples.
The not so good aspect was that KZ7 beat all comers, until the final sail off for the challenger spot. It just so happened Connors Stars and Stripes was a bit of a slow dog in any but really heavy conditions, but like recently in San Francisco, the weather Gods were agin the Kiwis, and that series of races struck the strongest winds of the whole series and he won. The rest, as you know is history. Star and Stripes easily won, as the Aussi boat, Kookaburra II, was a dog also, only worse, and if Connor hadn't won the right to challenge, there was no doubt KZ7 would have taken the cup back to Auckland right then. As it happens it took another two tries and 8 yrs to pull that off in San Diego.
Lostsailor13
Senior Member
Michael Fay and the KZ1 in 1988 was the race that got me interested,and have only been following the past 2 races,its hard to imagine Te Rehutai doing 49 knots,that's insane
In 2002 Sir Michael Fay was honored in joigning the America's Cup Hall of Fame.
The America's Cup Hall of Fame is located next to Herreshoff Marine Museum of Bristol, RI, both are must see places.
(Bristol, RI, was the town where lived Anthony Quinn, also where he was buried in the land of his property.)
The America's Cup Hall of Fame is located next to Herreshoff Marine Museum of Bristol, RI, both are must see places.
(Bristol, RI, was the town where lived Anthony Quinn, also where he was buried in the land of his property.)
