- Local time
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- Joined
- Jun 12, 2012
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- Location
- NZ - just short of the South Pole
I have been a sailor all my life and raced on, pretty much, anything that floats from 1 man dinghies to offshore sleds. What has been going on for the past couple of cycles of the AC is getting too far away from "sailing". There is no more seamanship involved. The skill of the sailors to manage tacks, jibes, spinnaker sets and douses and true match racing tactics have all been removed. There is no doubt that these boat are absolutely amazing....doing 40+ knots is 10 knots of breeze is incredible and would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. However, now there is a skipper, tactician, and trimmer. The others on the boat are there just to provide the man power to pump up the hydraulics that operate all the systems.
There are a lot of rules nuances is sailing that make it difficult for the lay-person to follow, but here is what I miss most about watching AC races....the pre-start dueling:
The good old days when you virtually had a standing start followed by a tactical drag race.