Sailing on America's cup yacht
John Stanford and I went sailing on the former America's cup yacht in the bay.
Beautiful day, great weather. The trip is about 2 hours, you get to man the winches (toughest part is hoisting the sail up) and skipper for a little bit.
A good description of this trip is here
We sailed around the bay, then under the harbour bridge. That part was trippy, the boat is about 2 meters shorter than bridge so it felt like we'd get caught. In addition, the bridge is home to a bungy-jumping station, so the whole time we were sailing someone kept falling off the bridge.
There were about 30+ people on the boat so it was a bit crowded. We didn't do any particularly hard maneuvers, so i didn't get the full "racing" experience, but it was defintely nice enough to just be on the bay and haull ass. That boat can really move!
The mechanices of the boat controls are pretty awesome too. There are 2 sets of cranks, with 2 people manning each one. They are tied to a set of winches, and there is a complex gearing system so that you can go from a 1-1 to 32-1 rotation ratio. Apparently, the "real crew" can hoist a guy up to the top of the mast using a winch just in a few seconds.
Then agian, these things are at least $7mil to just build, with about $60mil you have to pour into research.
Beautiful day, great weather. The trip is about 2 hours, you get to man the winches (toughest part is hoisting the sail up) and skipper for a little bit.
A good description of this trip is here
We sailed around the bay, then under the harbour bridge. That part was trippy, the boat is about 2 meters shorter than bridge so it felt like we'd get caught. In addition, the bridge is home to a bungy-jumping station, so the whole time we were sailing someone kept falling off the bridge.
There were about 30+ people on the boat so it was a bit crowded. We didn't do any particularly hard maneuvers, so i didn't get the full "racing" experience, but it was defintely nice enough to just be on the bay and haull ass. That boat can really move!
The mechanices of the boat controls are pretty awesome too. There are 2 sets of cranks, with 2 people manning each one. They are tied to a set of winches, and there is a complex gearing system so that you can go from a 1-1 to 32-1 rotation ratio. Apparently, the "real crew" can hoist a guy up to the top of the mast using a winch just in a few seconds.
Then agian, these things are at least $7mil to just build, with about $60mil you have to pour into research.
Labels: New Zealand
posted by toli at 4:11 AM
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