AC45s at Plymouth: TNZ, All Blacks minus One

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Glenn Ashby is member of the Aussie multihull sailing elite along with Bundock, Booth, Brewin and many others. In fact I still don´t get how Australia can´t put together an AC45 team with all these talents, needless to say they would have won the Cup at SF on a AC45 or AC72 just on cat experience. Why? well just read what a truly expert says about +20knots conditions:
“Things start to get pretty exciting in anything more than 25 knots,”
Ashby says. “The boats are great, they handle well, but once you get
near 30 knots, it becomes survival modes. We’ve sailed in 26-27 knots
training in New Zealand and that was about the top end for us.

“You
can get around in more than that, but it’s quite hairy. If you do
everything right, the boats are no problem. The boat handling side
becomes more important when it gets really, really windy and the guys
who do that smoothly and accurately will end up at the top of the
fleet.”
More at https://www.americascup.com/en/Latest/Blog/2011/9/Kiwis-take-to-the-Sound/
Photos: Ricardo Pinto / www.americascup.com

The key to this affirmation is that San Francisco will have similar weather conditions and no matter how good you were helming or at tactics on Laser, Star, 49er, Soto 40, J24, 12 meters, TP52 or any other tractor, you’d better start gathering multihull hours on +20knots days….

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2 Responses

  1. Andrew says:
    September 9, 2011 at 7:54 am

    This is a good point. Where is the Aussie team?

    It's so true about collecting up windy Multihull sailing days. It was always funny to watch the Extreme 40's without cat helms on the windy days….. It was very obvious.

  2. Anonymous says:
    September 13, 2011 at 12:11 am

    …no matter how good you were helming or at tactics on Laser … or any other tractor, you'd better start gathering multihull hours on +20 knots days…

    From Plymouth day 2 (jump to 1:10:15):

    Vasco: Let's come up! [Vasco pushes helm down with conviction…]
    Crew #1: Vasco… Vasco, be very careful here…
    Crew #2: Lose camber! LOSE CAMBER!
    Vasco: Aww… #%@&!!! [Game over.]

    We've all been there, of course. But this would be slightly less fun without the Laser medallists driving these around in 20+.