Americas Cup - GO ORACLE! (pics)

[Daniel Nenni]

The America's Cup Series started this weekend in San Francisco. This was a great race to watch in person and then on TV. Oracle also rescued the Sun Microprocessor (SPARC) group which will be shipping TSMC 28nm silicon in their servers in October and SemiWiki uses Oracle software so I'm a big big fan of Oracle. Check out the official website HERE. The "History of" page is very good.



That is Alcatraz in the background. On a stupid bet I swam from Alcatraz to where this picture was taken (1.5 miles). I survived it so the prisoners that escaped in 1962 certainly could have too.



These boat got VERY close to each other. It was like bumper cars.



Oracle won this race and ended up wining the event in a very close finish! Very strategic race with wind, currents, and other boats to calculate.



These were the teams racing. Interesting note, not one of the crew on the Korean boat were Korean. I did not see the China crew but I would expect the same. And the New Zealand boat was sponsored by Emirates. The Italian boat was sponsored by Prada!



Good view of Alcatraz and Prada.



A shot of the GG bridge over Fort Mason.



We took a pedi cab home. This guy rode all 4 of us with no problem!



A fun time was had for all!

D.A.N.

[daniel_payne]

I recall that the rudder designs are so secretive that they shroud them during transport so that competitors cannot see and copy the exotic shapes.

[Daniel Nenni]

I recall that the rudder designs are so secretive that they shroud them during transport so that competitors cannot see and copy the exotic shapes.

I think that was back when they used sail boats. These cats were on one pontoon quite a bit and I saw nothing special. In fact, the boats look identical which makes it a captains race versus who has the most money/technology.

These boats are 45 foot. The finals are done on 70ft boats. Exciting stuff!