Gadgetory

when I think of sailing I think of boat shoes and Hemingway's macho protagonists who toil under harsh conditions and so I was blown away when I saw the America's Cup race take over the Hudson River this is the elite technological competition in the sport of sailing where boats are literally flying the original challenge for the America's Cup that went over to England was from the New York Yacht Club this bunch of guys who got this boat that they thought was pretty good and they took it over to England for this race of the British it advertised they gave 13 of the best British yachts at Perot thrashing that story is sort of what the America's Cup is today the Queen asked and whose second and her footman said ma'am there is no second the boat is very very powerful but their actual weight the actual weight of the boats very low into the great power-to-weight ratio that's what allows them to slide in the olden days our previous cups we'd be lucky to make a 1% game which was about 10% a year maybe 20% between the cups it's a incredible change and that's because we're in this new whole way of selling the books you can go fast enough without creating so much drag that they can actually have enough power to lift the boat up out of the water once they start flying they go much faster sort of 15 20 % faster because they've lifted the hulls out of the water the innovation is due to the use of hydro foils in 2013 team Oracle USA - coil designed to the next level in its 72 foot catamaran and it is the current defending champion boats are going twice as fast than they were just a decade ago and have broken the famed 50 knot barrier the boats are essentially gliding above the water on the foils which are called dagger boards as the foils cut through the water fluid forming over the upper surface of the foil moves faster than the fluid on the bottom creating the pressure difference needed for lift at a certain speed the lift produced by the hydrofoils equals the weight of the boat and the hull comes out of the water yachts use manual power and the challenge is to make the right tactical decisions grinding drives hydraulic pumps which deliver high pressure oil that has to be managed carefully for maneuvers I think it's possible we could see the boats never touching down in the right wind conditions they could sell the whole race above the water it's been a technical arms race since 1850 really just starting you know we've gone from a 2,000 5,000 year old way of making boats to something that's brand new not even 10 years old so in ten years from now we could be on a whole new thing