World
Of Wetass

America’s Cup:
We Hardly Knew Ye

“Grab the defibrillator! Bertie just had a heart attack!”

It
came (for four years), and went (in just over a week). I loved every
minute, because it was flat-out the best AC I’ve ever watched (I
was drunk, and either face-down in a gutter or chasing coeds, during
the epic 1983 loss). The hell with all the moaners and whiners who have
so little imagination, so little appreciation for the subtleties, the
nuances, the psychology and the utter, brutal ruthlessness of boat on
boat match racing, that the only comment their slow-firing brain cells
can offer up is: “Why don’t the boats go faster?” Go
watch NASCAR, I say, and be gone Stop vexing the true AC aficionados
with your tiresome refrain. I don’t give a damn about building
a bigger TV audience, or whether the rest of humanity has any clue as
to what is going on out there in a shifty sea breeze. I care only about
tight, unpredictable, knife-edge, sailboat racing. Where every winning
delta is under 35 seconds. Where the final race came down to a single
second after more than 12 miles of racing (suddenly all those guys crouching
down don’t seem so silly). Where the fate of a team, and of the
Kiwi nation, can hang on a split spinnaker or a 5 degree windshift.