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THE RED BULLETIN
Sailing at the Edge of Control
By Andreas Tzortzis
Photo: © ORACLE TEAM USA / Guilain Grenier
The San Francisco Bay was typically
frosty on a blustery weekday last October. A wind of up to 30 mph had
whipped the 50-degree water into whitecaps, across which crisscrossed a
fighter-jet-looking sailboat helmed by the America’s Cup champ and
wunderkind Australian skipper Jimmy Spithill.
Measuring 72 feet long with a
carbon-fiber “wing sail” 131 feet high, the boat has a racecar’s
unbridled speed and crash potential. In the gilded history of the
America’s Cup series in which it will be raced next summer, there has
never been anything quite like it.
Continue reading in the December issue of The Red Bulletin.
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