And Larry Ellison seems to agree with us also. I watched an interview with him where he said perhaps the AC45's with some mods (foils?) would have been a better choice.

In defense of the AC72 choice, when those boats were designed and built, no one imagined they could foil, the designers never had that in their plans, and code 0's were thought to be necessary so a lot of design effort went to that. The size went large and with a wing because they wanted an extreme boat.

When the Kiwi's discovered how to tweek about within the rules and learn to foil the boats, the AC72 went from an extreme boat to an out of control monster that no sane person would step foot on. Remember, this foiling business all happened in the past 2-3 months! Notice that giant prodder on the bow? That isn't even used now! There are several original design components of the boats that became vestigial once those crazy Kiwi's jumped out of the box.

So the boats you are seeing now were never originally envisaged. Until just a couple of months ago, these boats WERE sane choices.

I didn't question your recollection of past good AC racing - I only meant to point out that you will find you only have a select few of those recollections gained from a much larger number of races that you yawned through. The historical fact is that very few ACC series, or even individual races, have ever been close or exciting. Those that are, are remembered. Most of them have simply been slow drag races won by the slightly faster boat, or the boat with the best start.

Just like in this current series.

BTW, these things are ALWAYS sailing "upwind"

Mark