Tuesday, February 2, 2010

America's Cup Sails Into Uncharted Waters

Here's a feature I did for NPR on the America's Cup:

America's Cup Sails Into (and Over) Uncharted Seas: NPR

A few more interesting comments from Coutts and Simmer that didn't make it into the story:

RUSSELL COUTTS (BMW/ORACLE SKIPPER):
"I'm a purist myself and was brought up sailing the more conventional monohulls. Having said that, I think this multihull competition could be exciting for a much broader range of people because of the technology interests and also the 'wow' factor of these boats."

"Having said that, though, we've got to draw the line somewhere and putting engines on the boat is a step too far. There are many sports – Formula 1 motoracing, for example – had the opportunity to have a lot of their systems computerized rather than relying on the driver's intuition and skill. And they chose not to do that because they recognized that the fans wanted to see the skill of the drivers and I think the same applies and certainly sailing could learn lessons from that."

"Where the grinders on board are tremendous athletes in their own rite – many of them are Olympic Gold medalists and world champions and so forth – they are tremendous athletes and it's a real shame to lose that aspect of the racing."

GRANT SIMMER (ALINGHI DESIGN TEAM COORDINATOR:
"In different parts of the course or in different weather conditions, there'll be substantial performance differences between the boats. It may be that when we're beating into the wind, one boat is a lot faster but then when we come downwind, the other boat's faster."

"The boats are so different that we have to expect there will be big differences on the course but it's quite difficult to predict the net result."

Does he worry about a catastrophic failure on the race course?
"Yeah, very much so."

"We do that because we obviously don't want to damage our boat but also, almost any failure of the main platform of the boat could be incredibly dangerous for the crew."

About BMW/Oracles hard wing:
"We're quite comfortable with the sail plan we've got, with the wing mast and the soft sails. There's certain restrictions of racing with the wing and there's certain advantages. So, we're going to balance that out."

"I think we have the ability to carry a wider range of headsails than they do. Mainsail alone, their wing is more efficient than just our mainsail. But, you need to look at the forces in the overall sail plan and not just the wing."

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