I was looking at some photos of BMW Oracle’s 90′ trimaran. Holy crap it’s a big boat. Pardon the limey understatement.
It’s 90′ long, with a 158′ mast and 5000 sq ft main. It’s frickin’ broad. This picture puts that in context. The crew of 14 look tiny.
Actually, the boat is longer than 90 feet. LWL is 90 feet. Length of the amas are about 115 feet.
Well, in the photographs of the old classic J yachts, the crew of dozens also looked tiny.
But, yeah, I get the point. These things are monstrosities. They don’t have the gracefulness that truly great sailing yachts should have.
The problem is that I don’t really know how to solve the problem. Should there be a split, so there are two different races, one for the purists who want the grace of the old ways, and one for the billionaires who want to make the fastest boat no matter what? And if there is such a split, which side is the true America’s Cup?
But then, who in America cares, except for a few strange birds who follow sailboat racing?
Actually I am kind of in awe of this boat. It’s unreal. It’s as wide as it’s long and the crew wear crash helmets.
Tillerman summed it up a while back when he said that AC has always been about one rich old coot building and racing the biggest boat they can against another rich old coot doing the same.
I loved the Valencia AC. The current situation is tragic.
The thing that amazes me is that if the photo actually included the entire sail / mast, the crew would look even *smaller*. My God.
I was sailing up in Anacortes over the weekend and we cruised past this boat. There was a guy doing some work up on the mast – really gives a great sense as to how big the boat is. You can check out my shots here – http://www.flickr.com/photos/walkaboutwolf/sets/72157607170228997/