fuuuuuudge. It appeared to just drive straight under. I thought the 45s were pretty tender, those are some of the best skippers around driving these things.

It will be interesting to see if they or the other boats incorporate any design changes. These boats will be driven hard in racing and this isn't likely the last crash and burn we'll see.

What I'm actually saying is if they keep this up, there won't be enough carbon fiber around for them, the Dreamliner and us.

Edit: Well, that was a two million dollar oopsy.

http://www.examiner.com/article/oracle-s-america-s-cup-ac72

Edit II: The designer wishes he'd gone smaller

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/sport/news/article.cfm?c_id=4&objectid=10838714

In an interview with the Weekend Herald at Oracle's base on the outskirts of San Francisco, Coutts conceded if he had his time again he would have gone with a less ambitious design.

"In hindsight, I think there were two errors. One was I thought the boats needed to be quite large-scale to be grand enough for the America's Cup. Clearly the world series has proven this wrong - the AC45s look pretty damn good on TV," he said.

"The other thing is, we possibly should have looked at making more of the components one-design."

I think that the optimistic assumption was that they'd be riding on the foils above the water, lowering the risk of submarining.

The old America's Cup rules that required the vessel be able to sail to the venue. How'd you like (to try) to cross an ocean in a AC72?

For $9,000,000 you would thing it would come with the $100 anti pitchpole plates like Hobie used to sell.