OH Poop!!!! American Cup Cat Flips (video)

[Pete7]

Originally Posted by MarkJ

Maybe the next Americas cup will be a blood sport? At least we might start watching it

Oh dear, we gave up on these sorts of sports 2000 years ago in Europe. Colosseums are so expensive to build and were do you get a good regular supply of christians from? the logistics are dreadful.

Is this one of the last excesses of the US empire before its downfall? like the British and Romans before

However, as Mark points out, the crowds do love a bit of contact and a few good spills.

Pete

[SaucySailoress]

Originally Posted by avb3

Yeah, I know, controversy.

Cat flips etc.

Awesome. Did exactly that on my beachcat - the first time I took her out after buying her... but only my harness went through the mainsail, not all of me!!

[JRM]

Originally Posted by Loquat

That's a typical pitchpole. Done it 100 times on a hobie 16. When I moved to charleston I bought a hobie 17 for this exact reason. more hull in the bow.
Basically those ac45s are a bad design. There needs to be more hull towards the front of the boat. More buoyancy.
On the other hand I like the crashes, nascar on the water!

Had a 16 when I was back in High School, and it was a *big* deal when the first 17 showed up on the lake. ***It had mylar sails*** which up to that point we had only seen in magazines or on the AC boats. I was drooling over it right up until the point the guy ran into us (an early clue that being able to buy something doesn't equate to the ability to operate it).

I pitch poled it and put a friend over the front, where he drug his arm over the jib lead pin and sliced open his arm from wrist to elbow. That was both hulls at once. Worse was to cartwheel the thing by pearling one hull while flying the other (well, worse for the boat, never diced up anyone doing it). Ahh, to be young, stupid, and invincible again... Apparently if I manage to become an executive in a giant software firm I can!

JRM

[cal40john]

Originally Posted by Loquat

Basically those ac45s are a bad design. There needs to be more hull towards the front of the boat. More buoyancy.
On the other hand I like the crashes, nascar on the water!

You've missed the entire wave piercing bow revolution.

Article about Nacra's A class cat with wave piercing bows from 2004
From: | Sailing World

The bows for this
concept are typically reversed and overly full down low, quickly
tapering upward to a rounded deck profile that continues well aft to
the front beam. The "flyer" design, which has dominated class
competition in recent years, proved that this strange bow adaptation
helped a boat to keep a bow down attitude when driving to weather; with
the bows piercing through waves rather than reacting to them with
energy-absorbing pitching.

[sneuman]

Originally Posted by 44'cruisingcat

that was a rigging, not a sailing issue. They apparently loaded up the stays for heavier air and simply pancaked the boat.

[sneuman]

I think the pitch poles complete with mass crew dumps would be the best thing for the next AC. At least that would be exciting. If the last AC is any example, the actual sailing and tactics aboard multis will be a complete bore to watch on TV.

[Factor]

Yep that multi sialing is really boring

Everybody

[Factor]

Originally Posted by sneuman

that was a rigging, not a sailing issue. They apparently loaded up the stays for heavier air and simply pancaked the boat.

Rigging issue - sailing issue - whatever - I am ashamed to say that my countryman's boat sank like a stone

tied to a rock

attached to an anvil.

[sneuman]

Originally Posted by Factor

Yep that multi sialing is really boring

Speed alone isn't going to make a race interesting -- which explains why drag racing's audience is an iota of what it is for NASCAR. Speed with no other boat in the shot (as was the case for most of the last AC) is just not that exciting, IMHO.

As for the crew interactions, the most exciting thing in the last AC was watching Spithill walk gingerly from one ama to the other. Now, if he'd fallen, THAT would have been cool!

[John A]

When men were men and before Conner lost the AC they held their races off the east coast of the US. I don't recalll which yacht club but there was a rule that all challengers had to sail to the event on their boats. Which meant that they has to sail acrossed the Alantic. The US could build lighter boats and won the races.

[NCountry]

Well CRAP!..... all these sailing videos are gonna cause me some serious financial issues. I'm taking the rest of the week off and going sailing. Mono-Hull.... built like a tank. .... c ya

[roverhi]

The delivery on their own bottom probably went out with the 'J' boats. Assume the main reason that they sailed over was they were just too big to ship. The 12 meter boats were definitely not delivered on their own bottoms. They are really day sailers with too many openings in the decks to survive even moderately rough weather without humongous bilbe pumps. The coffee grinder winches were linked to bilge pumps, IIRC, because they shipped so much water even in relatively light conditions. Believe a few of the twelves were converted to cruising boats but it probably wasn't an easy transition.

The dominance of the US had more to do with hull design and competency of skipper and crew than construction weight. Seem to remember the Aussie's finally beat the US because of a wing keel design. Know that the underwater configuration of the Aussie Boats was so closely guarded they had skirts that shielded the bottom from prying eyes when they were hauled and 24 hour security.

[MarkJ]

Originally Posted by roverhi

The 12 meter boats were definitely not delivered on their own bottoms. .

A bit far to sail one from Australia. Especially when they forgot to put a galley in them.

Aussies had been taking the Americans to task from the 1950's with the Packer family... sort of always been a media thing, passed to Bond who owned a large TV channel at the time that he had bought from the Packers for $1 Billion. A few years later Packer bought the TV station back for $200 million, saying: "You only get one Alan Bond in your life".

And no matter how many hulls in the challange these days, there ain't nothing like 1983, not just because of the winged keel (that may have just been psycological) but the one yacht club the New York Yacht Club had defended it for 132 years against the best the world had to offer.

[44'cruisingcat]

Originally Posted by tsmwebb

Tom.

Great video. Shows that no matter the number of hulls, if you put enough (too much) power on them stuff can go wrong.

I believe I even saw a few "proper monohulls" (whatever that is) pitchpoling in fairly smooth water.

[Factor]

Originally Posted by roverhi

Seem to remember the Aussie's finally beat the US because of a wing keel design. Know that the underwater configuration of the Aussie Boats was so closely guarded they had skirts that shielded the bottom from prying eyes when they were hauled and 24 hour security.

Sort of but not quite. The winged keel was a factor - but not a boat performance one, the part it played was in the pyschological warfare game that the Australia II crew waged.

And the reason that the NYYC held the trophy for so many years was that they simply changed the rules from minute to minute to defeat challengers. There were some extraordinary behaviours like requiring the challenger to nominate sail and rig patterns days out from a race where the NYYC boat would be able to change sail wardrobes up until the start time, outrageous abuse of power. Its why Aus II win was so wonderful, not because it was Australia but because someone finally stood up to the bullies.