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It was a big boat: 90' LWL, 90' beam.

As far as I can tell, despite the legend, the bottom is solid, since every winner drinks out if it. Maybe a plug was made somewhere along the line. The picture below of the Kiwis shows the standard drill. You can see why you might be concerned about knocking your teeth out, especially when...

They had two on-base parties that night, as I recall. Upstairs, with the Cup, was pretty much Oracle team members only,  downstairs was a larger gathering of semi-invited guests of every stripe: journos, jury, race committee, measurers, public figures, etc.  It was very loud, and involved a lot...

Yes, indeed, and I was there. Drank champagne from the Cup that night, and ended up getting seriously hammered out of relief that it was all over.

And it has winglets of a sort.

Just because you can doesn't mean you should. The problem with setting limits in any rule is that those limits become the target. This does not always produce the best result. The IACC rule, for example, had a max beam limit of 5.000 m or thereabouts. NZL 32 had a beam of about 3.5 m.

Woulda, coulda, shoulda. Didn't, however.

I can't disagree with you on that one.

They could have selected another material, like other teams did.

The last time I checked, the one-eyed taniwha that lived in the swamp and threatened to block the highway expansion was still in his lair. Of course, there are others...

The mast breakage on NZL-82 resulted from an aluminum tip cup failure at a spreader end, as I recall.

I suspect not. The Protocol says "at any scale", so if you can derive useful data from that testing that you could thereafter use in the design of AC 75 foils, you would in all likelihood have breached the Protocol. I suspect that is how the arbitration panel would look at it, if it became...

That is entirely  possible. I apologize to Jethrow. The irony is I have heard supposedly knowledgeable people make similar arguments in all seriousness for things that are equally improbable. The response to them is always "don't be a wanker."

Don't be daft. Only the testing itself can be done in open air and on open water, and consistent with all the requirements of article 24.  Try reading rather than being a smartass.

The only "grey area" is trying to circumvent the rule. The truth will always come out eventually There is not much wiggle room in the wording of the Protocol: 24.4      Testing limitations No Competitor shall carry out fluid dynamic testing of designs, at any scale, in any controlled ...

There is also this key qualifier: 30.2      Nationality criteria For the purposes of Article 30.1, a crew member shall be deemed to be a “national” of a country if  they satisfy any one (or more) of the following criteria: (a)      such crew member held a valid passport (or other valid proof...

I think he's referring to Nick Holroyd.

The initial 1 million USD Entry Fee is the down payment on a series of fees and costs payable to the event organisers as a condition of entry. Those are outlined in Articles 15 through 21 the Protocol. When you sign up, you commit to all those other fees and costs as well, independent of the...

Two wins in three events. That's quite a record to bring to the table. I would expect to see some familiar names show up there, as well as a lot of new ones. Fully funded and a winning record. Hmmm.... "A force to be reckoned with" is the term that comes to mind.

Remember that the fees and costs in the Protocol are in USD. For the New Zealand Herald audience, he is  translating those numbers into NZD. Right now the NZD is worth about .68 USD. The initial $1 million USD entry fee translates into 1.47 million NZD. Not all dollars are created equal.