Saturday, July 6, 2013

America's Cup; What! Already!

I haven't been paying the America's Cup too much attention, other than the disasters, the pitchpole of Oracle and the recent tragic breakup of Artemis. This week I came to realize the challenger trials start tomorrow, Sunday July 7, so I'll add my two cents in before the series starts. (I'm a terrible prognosticator, I remember telling a friend of mine back in ancient history - 1987- that no one would want to go to Western Australia to challenge for the America's Cup; I think they ended up with around 10 to 12 different challenging syndicates in Western Australia.)

Though I applauded Oracle's decision to go with the catamaran (one can see here, my previous posts about the America's Cup), I now think the AC72 is too big, too powerful, too fast, too scary, and too expensive.

It seems the AC72 in the America's Cup may be in a Catch 22. On one hand, if the boats and crews can handle the conditions, we may have what I call the "human flying squirrel" phenomena; we'll watch the videos once or twice, say "Those guys are crazy" and move on. On the other hand, given the small field competing, if we have two catastrophic failures we may not have enough catamarans left to race the cup. (I also think the race track is much too small for the speeds of these beasts.)

But as I said, with the America's Cup my opinion is usually wrong. I hope it is. I would like to see some great racing in very unique racing machines.

A very good video of Team Oracle; interviews, AC72's in action (and in pieces) :

"We essentially sail in a hurricane all day....."


America's Cup (No Second Place) from RAPIDLIGHT on Vimeo.



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3 comments:

  1. TillermanJuly 6, 2013 at 1:27 PM

    No. Not already. Sounds like there will be no racing Sunday because they are still bickering about the rules for the sticky-out bits on the rudders.

    Ridonculous!

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  2. TweezermanJuly 7, 2013 at 7:18 AM

    Tillerman,

    Thanks for the heads up on the postponement. Just read about it in the Sunday paper.


    I see that you are using a linguistic mash-up of which I'm not aware - ridonculous - ridiculous + what other word? For example the video uses the linguistic mashup, ginorumous (gi[ant]+[e]normous) which has entered mainstream English seamlessly. Thanks for any information of your interesting word.

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  3. TillermanJuly 7, 2013 at 10:52 AM

    It's not really a mashup. Just a more emphatic way of saying ridiculous. I think I picked it up from one of my daughters-in-law who is fond of saying it.

    Often assumed to be a modern day slang word but was used (with slightly different spelling) in The BFG by Roald Dahl 30 years ago...

    "Redunculous!" said the BFG. "If everyone is making whizzpoppeis, then why not talk about it? We is now having a swiggle of this delicious frobscottle and you will see the happy result. "

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