Gear: F One Furtives / FS Souls for speed, Airush Ultra's for freeride foiling , Chrono UL for freerace foiling, Parks, Bandit and Union for all round, JShapes / Levitaz / Spitfire XLW foil, F One AC21 Speed boards, Groove Skate
One of the real positives to emerge is when the AC75s capsize it doesn’t wreck the boat or especially the rig. They just come back upright and off you sail. Whereas the cats with the wing sails , if they go over and wreck the wing sail that could end the regatta for a team. Which is bad for the competitive aspect of the event. Personally I am super impressed with how well the teams have gotten to grips with these machines, they are so fast and the turns are now looking super smooth.
It also looks like they are safer if a crew member falls off the boat they won’t usually get hit by a foil because of where they are located. At full speed getting hit by a knife like foil - there was that one guy that almost lost a foot after getting hit by a foil in another AC series.
Are they using cyclist on these too, or is that against the rules.
These look better than the catamaran on the water, I think they might be slightly saver too. The smaller training boat that torpedoed the other day just kept going.
No cycles this year, since NZ won the last one with cycles they knew what an advantage that could be to powering their hydraulic systems and wrote that out of the rules for this cup cycle.
My guess is that they're in the harbor because these boats are going to be limited in their upper wind range...I saw a video of American Magic out in some heavy breeze and it looked like they had an uncontrolled bear-away at 40+ knots, cutting off their chase boats as they headed down to prevent from exploding. I remember thinking it was weaksauce when they were limited at 25knots in San Fran, I wonder if this boat is going to be overpowered much earlier...???
Now here's a real foiling monster. This boat and Sodebo will attempt to break the 41 day record for the Jules Verne Trophy this season (window for start opens middle of next month).
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