MikeAqua:

 

 

 

Seriously though ... I'd love to see it sailed in tougher conditions.  It's starting to look like fair-weather drag racing.  While the speeds are spectacular (for yachts) the racing itself is not that great from a match racing and technical perspective.

 

The races, although spectacular, were mostly boring. And I'm a sailor. I have years of fleet racing experience from Optis to Young 88s. But I don't like seeing match racing at this level with an occasional cross with no tacking duels or other head-to-head competition. Also, the races are far too short- over in 20 minutes. I know that's probably because that's all the sailors (and cyclors) can give before they pop their fufu valves and die from exhaustion but c'mon! But where's the epic battle? I want to see blood in the water! It's not a Friday night rum race!

I don't mind if we stay in cats or go back to monohulls, but we need to stay on the foils and probably need to keep the cyclors. Nobody will want to see speeds drop from near-50 knots to 15. But we need to attract a much larger competition fleet. Unfortunately, the anticipated changes to the nationality rules will cause problems, as if (say) 51% of the boat needs to be of the nationality of the team country, then there will be a dearth of talent from several of the challengers. Having said that of course, there are only really about three serious contenders to win the Louis Vuitton and get to the AC match anyway.

The racing should be easily visible from land as well. Not everyone has (or can charter) a boat to sit alongside the race course. To get the public involved they need to be able to see, hear and smell the races, with big screens dotted around televising the Virtual Spectator data in real time. When I went out to watch the last races in Akl, I had a portable TV on board. That worked well- most of the time the boats were too far away to see properly anyway and the TV kept us up with the nuances of the racing. Unfortunately, I won't have a boat this time around :-(

I'm sure all this will come out in the wash over the next few weeks. Dalts has this all planned in expectation of winning anyway, so it's just a matter of him and Bertelli settling a few finer points then telling everyone.

Can't wait.