...that I tend to forget, that these boats were not originally designed to be foiling... That's one of the reasons why I feel the Kiwis might 'deserve' to win this time around, they were the first ones to figure that out. We see this sort of thing from time to time in motor racing, Jenson Button winning the World Championship in F1 a few years back, was largely the result of his team making the best use of design rule change with an aerodynamic rear diffuser than had the rest of the field scrambling to play catch-up for most of the season...

OK, Mark, you've just about convinced me, I'm really coming around on this (grin) However, I'm still keeping my fingers crossed bigtime, for the safety of these crews for the rest of the series... That one race, where Spithill was right on the tail of the Kiwis at the first mark was momentarily terrifying, to me... If, in such a situation, perhaps likely at a bottom mark rounding with one boat right behind the other, if the lead boat happened to come down hard off their foils, or stuff their bows as the Kiwis did in the first LV race, a collision would be totally unavoidable, and could easily kill someone... So, in that regard, I'll breathe a big sigh of relief when this is over, and hopefully we never see the consequences of such a miscue...

Here's a very good interactive site about these boats, courtesy of the New York TIMES:

http://www.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2013/09/07/americas-cup-boat/