America's Cup (r.i.p.)

[Phil Deakins]

The title of this thread is tongue-in-cheek and not to be taken seriously. I'm very surprised that we didn't have thread on the America's Cup while it was still being contested so I thought I'd start one now.

First, congratulations to the team on the American boat. I can't say "to the Americans", because there was only one American on it (I think).

I have a Kiwi friend in SL, who, when NZ were running away with it at 7-1, said that it's very exciting. I said it was but added that it would be really exciting if the American boat caught up a bit. I did not expect what followed. I thought there was no chance that the NZ boat wouldn't win.

They were extremely unfortunate though. Two races were stopped when the Kiwis were in front because the wind just went over the limit. And another was stopped, when the score was 8-1, with the Kiwis only needing a couple of minutes to reach the finish line, and the American boat was over a kilometre behind, when the 40 minute time limit ran out. If the Kiwis had made the line before the 40 minutes was up, they would have won the cup. For me, the Kiwis morally won the America's Cup this time :)

There were a couple of races that astonished me, to the extent that I'm inclined to think that the Kiwis actually threw them. The most glaring one was when the American boat was in front  but the Kiwis had caught up, moving is a similar direction to the American boat, and got to almost touching distance. Then they tacked more than 90 degrees to the left and, instead of sailing diagonally down the course, as was usual, they went straight along the cross line to the boundary and made no progress whatsoever down the course. They may even have gone slightly backwards. When they tacked again, the American boat was 300m ahead of them and won easily. I'm not a sailor, and I don't understand all that they need to do, but I couldn't believe they'd done that. When the Kiwis tacked, the American boat continued in the direction it was going (diagonally) and the Kiwis could have done the same or similar, instead of turning more than 90 degrees and sailing at 90 degrees across the course.

The other race came soon afterwards and the Kiwis did something very similar but not as dramatic as what I described above. If it hadn't been for what the Kiwis did in the one above, the idea that they were throwing races wouldn't have entered my head. I actually wondered if they'd been asked to throw a few races to make the contest better, because the American boat was taking a real pasting.

[Drongle McMahon]

If you looked at the crew list on the official Oracle team site, the figures were New Zealand = 8, Australia = 7, USA = 2 (plus one multiple nationality), Netherland = 2, others = 5. As far as the crews are concerned, it would be best described as NZ1 vs NZ2!  However, that just goes to show, it's not about sailors or sailing, it's about MONEY.

[Orca Flotta]

I'm very surprised that we didn't have thread on the America's Cup while it was still being contested so I thought I'd start one now.

I guess I mentioned it before: most sailors are far too busy to participate in this lame-o landlubbers forum, most aren't even writing in the SL Sailing community's own forums. Even the SL Boatporn Tumblr is only used by a handful of contributors.

That doesn't mean the AC went unnoticed. Orca, Noodle and Jane are the 3 best-known sailbloggers and they wrote about the AC once in a while. And corry Kamachi of WildWind Yachts even made an AC72 for use in SL.

But, as it so happens, the America's Cup was never of great appeal for the masses of sailors. Not even  the few interested in racing didn't think much of it. There are many many regattas on this planet who deliver bettter sport, better boats, more skillfull sailing. We  care about those.

And after the the cheap drama of the soap opera that was the AC 2013 it sunk even lower on the scale.

 

"Hey, you own a car, dontcha? So you must be a big fan of Formula 1/Nascar! Not?"

[Storm Clarence]

---

Drongle McMahon wrote:

If you looked at the crew list on the official Oracle team site, the figures were New Zealand = 8, Australia = 7, USA = 2 (plus one multiple nationality), Netherland = 2, others = 5. As far as the crews are concerned, it would be best described as NZ1 vs NZ2!  However, that just goes to show, it's not about sailors or sailing, it's about MONEY.

---

The famed Manchester United Football Club:

Player - Country

Ryan Giggs              Wales

Rio Ferdinand          England

Darren Fletcher       Scotland

Wayne Rooney        England

Patrice Evra             France

Nemanja Vidić          Serbia

Michael Carrick        England

Nani                         Portugal

Anderson                 Brazil  

Jonny Evans            Ireland 

Dimitar Berbatov     Bulgaria

Rafael                      Brazil 

Antonio Valencia     Ecuador

Javier Hernández    Mexico  

Danny Welbeck       England

 

[Drongle McMahon]

"Manchester United Football Club:"

Yes. Same thing really, except that we don't call them "The English" as far as I am aware (and not forgetting Alex Furguson, Scottish, without whom they are looking rather average, so far).  To be consistent, I suppose we should call them "The Americans", if we are to go by the owners, as for the Oracle team, although in this case, there are none at all in the team! Chelsea = "The Russians", etc. ?

PS. Someone should make one of those boats for SL.

[Vania Chaplin]

---

Drongle McMahon wrote:

"Manchester United Football Club:"

Yes. Same thing really, except that we don't call them "The English" as far as I am aware (and not forgetting Alex Furguson, Scottish, without whom they are looking rather average, so far).  To be consistent, I suppose we should call them "The Americans", if we are to go by the owners, as for the Oracle team, although in this case, there are none at all in the team! Chelsea = "The Russians", etc. ?

PS. Someone should make one of those boats for SL.

---

Corry's Wildwind AC72

 

Tronth's AC72

[Phil Deakins]

---

Storm Clarence wrote:

---

Drongle McMahon wrote:

If you looked at the crew list on the official Oracle team site, the figures were New Zealand = 8, Australia = 7, USA = 2 (plus one multiple nationality), Netherland = 2, others = 5. As far as the crews are concerned, it would be best described as NZ1 vs NZ2!  However, that just goes to show, it's not about sailors or sailing, it's about MONEY.

---

The famed Manchester United Football Club:

Player - Country

Ryan Giggs              Wales

Rio Ferdinand        

  England

Darren Fletcher       Scotland

Wayne Rooney       

England

Patrice Evra             France

Nemanja Vidić          Serbia

Michael Carrick       

England

Nani                         Portugal

Anderson                 Brazil  

Jonny Evans            Ireland 

Dimitar Berbatov     Bulgaria

Rafael                      Brazil 

Antonio Valencia     Ecuador

Javier Hernández    Mexico  

Danny Welbeck      

England

 

---

Although you're list od players for ManU is wrong (maybe out of date (Berbatov hasn't been a ManU player for some time) football lost its appeal for me for European games a very long time ago. They aren't 'our' players any more so it's not possible for my heart to be in supporting English club teams in Europe like it used to be.

You didn't go low enough, anyway. You could have gone down to locality level and point out that team's that represent towns and cities aren't filled with players from their towns and cites.

[Pie Serendipity]

The "American" entrant was 8-1 down when they replaced their American tactician (the most important single guy in the competition, if you exclude the fanatics who finance the teams) with Englishman Sir Ben Ainslie, probably the best yachtsman in the world for the last 20 years. The result was not really in doubt thereafter.

ETA Arsenal are considering renaming themselves l'Arsenal, having named a completely non-English squad for a Premier League game for the first time in 2005, although Chelsea fielded a team of eleven foreigners as far back as 1999. Their team against Southampton, on Boxing Day (the English players probably had hangovers) was:

Ed de Gooey - The Netherlands

Albert Ferrer - Spain

Celestine Babayaro - Nigeria

Emerson Thome - Brazil

Franck LeBoeuf - France

Dan Petrescu - Romania

Didier Deschamps - France

Gus Poyet - Uruguay

Roberto di Matteo - Italy (Actually he was born in Switzerland)

Gabrielle Ambrosetti - Italy

Tore Andre Flo - Norway.

The Chelsea Manager, by the way, was Gianluca Vialla, another Italian.

[Drongle McMahon]

"Corry's Wildwind AC72; Tronth's AC72"

Those look good. Do they have races? Can they be sailed single-handed, or do they need the whole crew?

[Vania Chaplin]

Corry is still finishing the AC72, but her WW60 is used in the big boats races, surely the 72 will be too. I don't know if Tronth's has a script compatible with racing (WWC receiver - the wind generator used in races in SL)

And yes, they [eta] *can* be sailed solo

[Maryanne Solo]

We (Australians) are very happy to win for our friends the American peeps anytime.

You just have to pay for it that's all.

:smileyhappy: