Americas’s Cup 2017: Slingby on Oracle changes: “..unstable but Faster..”
Video by Oracle Team USA – Check comments by Slingby matching what we saw yesterday: They have better speed but the boat is more “unstable and hard to sail”.
The problem being every time they hit ‘grond’ on a failed gybe or tack they lose any knot gained in straight line. In the wind conditions raced till now in the Final, Emirates Team New Zealand continues to be a superior solution overall.
Burling covering head to head yesterday in the second race would have resulted in a win for TNZ. Kiwis foils are giving them the needed speed combined with almost 100% airtime in their gybes & tacks, which in a flying boat will make all the difference vs a boat with newly found speed but unable to sustain TNZ AC50 rhythm on maneuvers.
Try to watch yesterday’s races, and count how many times the hard / unstable comments from Slingby were a reality on them failing to foil gybe/tack.
With more wind Oracle might have a chance, but we knew that one from the start of this Final.
In lights to mid range, I no chance but Burling leaving them without implementing a classic tight coverage as we saw in Saturday’s second race.
I just heard that my great sailing friend and former CEO of Hobiecat Europe has passed. May The endless oceans…
...Report was sent by an F18 Sailor, if you want Hobies reported send your own, we'll publish as usual. Cheers.
Looks like in your report the Hobies are not really present. Suggest to rewrite the article.
Thanks for the great report Wik. Great battle.
If I correctly read the results the overall winner this year is a Hobie16