AC has become NASCAR. We wait for the crash. After a while, zooming around semi-airborne on foils gets boring. The AC has been hijacked. Every day sailors can no longer relate.
Tried to do this exact race on the same boat (Northern Child) in 2002. We had steady 45 knots gusting 55-60 thought the Needles and probably 4-5 metre sees with extremely short interval between them. A back stay snapped which we had to jury rig very rapidly and as we started to realise it was going to be a terrible slog 130 miles to St Malo in 40-60 knots and 5-6m seas we decided to quit. We hit the pub in Bournemouth.
I saw a crash recently where both boats seemed unaware of each other, port tack boat was t-boned by starboard boat, but both crews missed the danger. No one hurt, fortunately and the skippers are still friends…
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def not deliberate, they're racing so they're gonna cross as close as possible to try and not give up any more ground than they have to. if audi's mainsheet got fouled it would have been very hard to bare away. its racing, shit happens... helm just misjudged the crossing.
My one collision was caused by that, I was single handing and missed the boat coming up on starboard, tried to duck but didn’t ease the sheet. Minor dent, gave the guy my number but he never got back to me…
The frantic shift in images is annoying. It is unfortunate that such good images are edited in this way. Why not leave an image any longer, so that it can be appreciated? If the editor thinks that quantity of images is quality, let him know: impossible to watch. Irritating!
