America's Cup

 

Got up at 5:30 this morning.  Checked the race.  It was postponed.  Went back to sleep.  They didn’t start the contest until almost the end of the day in Valencia, so we got to watch the entire thing.

 

They built flying machines for this race.  I can’t get over how much different this is than my sailing experience.  The boats are massive.  On the U.S. entry, the mast is almost as long as a football field.  The whole thing is 90 feet long and 90 feet wide.  Two of the three hulls fly out of the water the entire time.  Only one part of the boat touches.  The rest of this sailing machine is in the sky.

 

The crew gathers on the upwind hull as ballast, maybe 50 feet in the air.  There are also motors on board to pump water into the windward hull so they can power even harder with the sails.  They raced at 30 knots!  In a sailboat!  This is not wallowing around in the water in a monohull.

 

Still pictures don’t really show it.  You have see the video.  They’re replaying the second (final) race at the America’s Cup website:

 

http://www.americascup.com/en/regate/regarder-la-course/show.php