First outing for second Kiwi AC72, 18 footers, Vendee and SW toolbar

by Rob Kothe and the Sail-World Team on 13 Feb 2013 Another big start to the week as Sail-World’s Richard Gladwell was on the water for the first sail of Emirates Team NZ's second generation AC72. We have lots of pix and a full report from RG.

Features in these images include the non-appearance of the centre pod around the main load strut, designed to put an endplate on the wing sail and tidy up airflow beneath the platform.

The bows look narrower than in the first AC72 - reducing drag, but also meaning that the team is more confident of the foils doing the work in a bear way or pressured downwind situation to avoid a pitch pole.

Drama for one of the strongest 18 foot skiff World Champion crews, just a week before the JJ Giltinan 2013, their Gotta Love it 7, was just about totalled in a very hard weekend capsize. The class builder Brett Van Munster, who is also a skipper in the 18s fleet, was immediately on hand to survey the damage with Seve Jarvin and his team are working round the clock to have 7 on the startline next weekend.

The new Sail-World.com browser toolbar is proving even more popular than we expected, with a raft of downloads every day.

The key feature is the fast fast access to the largest sailing marine news network in the world has an extra-ordinary amount of sailing content, currently 106,000 stories, with images and result stretching back 16 years. This is easily the largest sailing database in the world. For serious sailors there is an Australian customized Sail-World toolbar that you can use now.

It provides Breaking news tickers from across all its sites world-wide, localised Twitter feed (our follower list is increasing at almost 20% per month world-wide, so we must be doing something right )and Facebook links and has a handy drop down for a whole range of Sail-world key elements,, access to all the latest Sail-World feature articles, content submit, full site search across those 106,000 stories, access to the complete newsletter archives and of course newsletter subscribe.

Tail gunners close on Vendee finish. Tanguy De LaMotte (Initiatives Cœur) is forecast to arrive on the weekend and the last man, Alessandro Di Benedetto (Team Plastique), now saying he will be back on Thursday, February 21. This is the most compact spread in the race’s 24-year history.

In 2008-9 there was a 42 day spread to winner to last boat home. In the 2003-2004 it’s was 38 days; in 2000-01, 64 days; in 1996-97 34 days; in 1992-93, 43 days; and in 1989-90 53 days. This time it looks like the gap is just 25 days.

And now to the news.. you need to check the www.sail-world.com for some breaking news, just being posted as we send this newsletter out.