Horn Rock

I think you're way wrong. They got hit with a cycle of crappy weather soon after launch and spent weeks out of the water, before they finally shipped the boat south. ETNZ have had the most time in the water by a large margin.

They're not wrong when they say these boats are complex. Gee there's some gear in there. F-nos what that cylindrical thing under the boom does? Maybe a hydraulic ram for the outhauls? Still looks to be a single piece boom and not that pivoting setup the Kiwis have. Even without the wing, these things are at a level of complexity beyond what the cats were.

^^^^ Seriously? How embarrassing....

AM have got their decksweeper. Looks to be the same boom.

They are pretty deep in their cockpits though Hoggy, which will be protective from another boats foils, falling out, etc.

Some great stuff in there.

It's not without risk, but I think they're doing a pretty good job of managing that risk. I think the AC75 is much safer than the AC72, and probably safer than the AC50.

Even though I hated seeing NZ lose to her, SUI-100 was a nice boat. Slightly fuller forward, she was almost fish form rather than canoe.

I disagree. There's more initial buoyancy in Te Aihe's bustle than LR's keel and V shaped hull, which should produce quicker lift off. LR may be able to trim better once up, but even that's debatable. As far as bow down trim, ETNZ have more hours doing and refining this than all the other teams - they should be pretty adept at it. Anyway I'm picking ETNZ/LR being the top two - simply from what we've seen - but because we haven't had any confirmed speed data we really don't know. AM look like they sail their boat well - we just don't know how fast it is. They may yet surprise people. Ben will be heading off to Sydney to sail Larry's beach cat when he probably should be in Sardinia sorting his boat out. Maybe he's just delegating, but I get the impression he has issues with his attention span, and the day to day grind of a long campaign. He always seems to be doing something other than being with his team. He made the long trip to Auckland to check out the Kiwis - surely a task worthy of a subordinate?

For a pussy may be.

Yeah he's not in the event. Maybe you mean Burling Not sure with the smallest foils in the fleet whether they'll get up before ETNZ - especially if it's light.

Is that the name of a sailor or an Italian sports car?

With their resources they'd be crazy not to have a backup helm - heck he might even be an American? Hutch and Deano have sailed a lot together so AM are probably comfortable with that setup. A poor performance in the ACWS might see that change.

It's easy to follow the position of cars/bikes on a track - they all go around the same course, sometimes within inches of one another. You can't do that with boats, and splitting tacks they look to be going off in different directions, which can be confusing for the uninitiated. As we saw in the first year the separation between the boats can get large, somewhat negating the drama. There are lots of other areas where the comparisons falls over. The cars aren't one design, and not all owned by one guy. Also you don't hear F1 proclaiming these are the fastest cars on the planet, because they know it means shit all. The closet thing to F1 on the water is probably power boat racing both off shore and inshore. That's been around for years but never grown a global audience and is still a niche sport. I can't see how sailing is going to be any different.

ETNZ/LR had deck sweepers from day one. Ben didn't have one straight away but fitted one pretty quick albeit a bit bodgy. ETNZ's test boat had a deck sweeper from the get go. Yeah I wouldn't be worried, they look to be doing things a bit different - nothing wrong with that. As Jimmy said, they look good in their manoeuvers. They seem to be using B1 to get comfortable with sailing the new concept, and will fit B2 with all their go fast tweaks and features.