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After two and a half years of waiting, Day 1 of the 33rd America's Cup arrived with a crescendo, and went out with a whimper. Still, there were some memorable moments despite the lack of racing, as Justin and Andy discuss with Yachting World's Matt Sheahan. The pre-dawn send-off of the wing-rigged BMW Oracle trimaran was worth getting up for....
Wing rigs are king. The 33rd America's Cup concluded, Alinghi's reign came to an end, and now Larry Ellison holds the keys to the most celebrated trophy in sailing. Andy looks back on America's Cup 33 with Matt Sheahan of Yachting World and Stuart Streuli of Sailing World magazine....
"The wing is a weapon," was Ernesto Bertarelli's honest assessment after being beaten by the winged-wonder of BMW Oracle Racing. Justin and Andy look back on a momentous race which brought drama and surprise beyond all expectation....
With little more than a couple of weeks before the 33rd America's Cup in Valencia, Andy has just done an in-depth interview with Russell Coutts for top racing magazine, Seahorse International. Justin quizzes Andy about what Russell said, as well as looking back at who won what at the 49er and 14 World Championships....
BMW Oracle has been carrying out some extensive TV trials of monohulls and multihulls in Valencia. The aim, says the Defender, is to work out which kind of boat is going to offer the biggest bang for buck in Russell Coutts’s vision of a more media-friendly and commercially-attractive America’s Cup...
Louis Vuitton has been an integral part of the America’s Cup since the luxury goods company first gave its name to the Louis Vuitton Challenger Series back in Newport 1983. That close association continued up to Valencia 2007, but following Alinghi’s successful defence of the Cup, Louis Vuitton withdrew its backing...
So now we’ve seen the power of wing rigs in action in the America’s Cup, what possibility of a trickledown of technology into other forms of sailing? What about superyachts? BMW Oracle’s design team director Mike Drummond observed, tongue in cheek: “If you go to Wings R Us.com, you can get any size you like.” Of course, this technology is anything but off the shelf, but nor is it new, as Drummond also pointed out: “Wings are not new, they’ve been used by birds for quite a long time...
So now we know. Wings trump sails. Theory has always stated that a wing rig should be faster than conventional sails. But the challenge was actually to put a wing rig into practice, to be able to build it in less than six months, and also to manage the logistics of it...
Race 2 was set to take place two days later on the Sunday. It was another long wait while Harold Bennett looked for suitable conditions in which to start the race. The cut-off time of 4pm was just minutes away when Bennett called for the start procedure to begin...
The wind was light and patchy that day, with Harold Bennett waiting for the breeze to settle. Alinghi clearly wanted to get on with it, flying a hull right past Bennett’s committee boat. BMW Oracle gave the impression of being rather more reluctant...
