After the first half of the race (blogged
yesterday) and having come back down towards the start the Extreme 40s fleet of 9 yachts had to do a couple of loops of the marks guestimated below on Google Earth:
It was basically round M1 to either M2 or M3, back to M1 and then either M2 or M3 again, back to M1 and a snappy dash to M5 before a handbrake turn in front of the quayside to zap back across the line.
If you look at the scale you can see that these speed machines were doing the legs in about 30 seconds, and there'd be some going up and others going down and a lot of OMG-ing and shit-ing as the skippers changed course and decided at the last second that M3 might be a safer bet than M2:
I must admit I did keep looking out for an almighty prang but the skippers kept their cool well.
The rewards of getting their first were even greater than normal as the boats could turn at speed, as shown perfectly here by Ernesto Bertarelli on
Alinghi:
Later boats had to be more cautious and slow down, something that Extreme 40s don't like doing. In fact
SAP stalled just above the mark and was really close to drifting back onto it:
After this it was time for a sprint to the final mark:
Then the line, points and in under 10 minutes do it all over again.
Very exciting to watch and must it be a total adrenaline rush blast to sail.
2 comments:
Speed is always fun, but I see these boats as awkward and cumbersome. It's no secret that I miss the traditional monohull racing from Americas Cup competitions of yore. In this man's humble opinion, we've become way too used to on-board transom-cams and real-time GPS tracking and helmet-wearing, hired-gun skippers from countries that don't match the origin of the yachts they're skippering. Harumph I say. I can't say I'll tune in to any of this. Catamarans?
Yup, catamarans.
Interesting comment so I've given this man's humble opinion in reply - I sort of agree but also sort of disagree.
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