Friday Night Live America's Cup Preview

[Niko Kotsatos]

Hi all,

There have been some America's Cup schedule changes due to COVID, but as I write this, the clock says 8 days and 9 hours til racing kicks off between Italy and NZ.

CBI members are encouraged to gather round the Zoom table on Friday evening to chat about it with me and others. Also, try to watch this 4-minute recap video before joining us.

One of our members Erik Wile has put together a great "reading list" of video links to get you amped up for the main event. I'm hoping he'll be able to join us for the conversation as well, as he clearly knows a lot about all of this.

If you only have 4 minutes and want to know what's going on this is an excellent recap.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkO1mGqwE9M

But the summary doesn't capture how exciting these boats are to watch. Carve out a half hour and watch this whole last round robin race between the UK and ITA if you can. It's the one with a half dozen or more lead changes. The link should cue it to a little over 2 minutes before the start just as the first boat enters the box. If it doesn't, skip to 2:17:20 or so.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8--jRxcXgM&t=8244

I suspect a lot of racers will be interested in this 8+ minute video on a port/starboard dispute at the starting line. It shows the umpire booth and the software they're using to make protest calls live during the race:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=go4HOg7O_uI

Another notable video is this one, an 8 minute step by step dissection of the US boat crash:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXLUIouASdM

If you're really hooked almost all the races are available to watch on youtube in the US now. A lot of the races are pretty mismatched, but the start and first leg is always pretty good, to see if the lead boat covers or goes their own way etc.  The "Full Race Replays" are here:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0sllUFB3RvAozp5YIaEmzTwuHbTrTKCN

One race day that is conspicuously missing from the youtube page is round robin day 3, the one where the US boat capsized catastropically. I knew it happened before I watched it, but it's still a really exciting, suspenseful race to watch them deal with being overpowered. Maybe even moreso since I knew how it turned out. The only copy of it that I've found online is not on the official page and it's just low res, boo:
https://youtu.be/2EeTR9U4F98?t=4566

Also courtesy of Erik, a more ready-type link list of really good stuff.

Sailing World actually has a pretty good non-paywalled site on the cup. https://www.sailingworld.com/americas-cup/

The best article I've read on foiling is actually from the PRIOR america's cup: https://www.sailingworld.com/tech-behind-americas-cup/ But it's still good stuff.

 

The best thing I've read on the AC75 is a little dated because it's talking about the competitors first boats and foils but it's still interesting stuff: https://www.sailingworld.com/story/racing/exploring-the-generation-1-americas-cup-75/

Oh yeah, here's another one with some stuff I didn't know: https://www.sailingworld.com/story/racing/mechatronics-in-the-americas-cup/ Hah!

If you didn't catch the zoom info at the top, here I am reposting it:

Zoom Meeting on Friday March 5 at 8pm eastern time
https://community-boating.zoom.us/j/86915590382

Meeting ID: 869 1559 0382
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--

Nicholas (Niko) Kotsatos

Junior Program Co-Director

Community Boating, Inc.

21 David Mugar Way

Boston, MA 02114

617.523.1038 ext. 22