Iced A
The Florida Keys are more like the Aleutian Islands at the moment, with a bitter North wind leading the assembled A-Cat sailors in Islamorada to don their entire traveling wardrobes to drive to the Whisle Stop for a beer or six. But they’ll be racing tomorrow in 20+ knots and flat water, and god help them if all they have is a shorty.
We’ll be recording video and stills of the racing from an open boat and posting it on SA in the afternoon, and if we’re not taking solid sheets of spray on our heads, we’ll update you with text and twitter shots from the course. This is our first time covering A-Cats, and we’re definitely excited – there’s something undeniably exciting about these sculpted and dangerous looking weapongs, even more so now that they have so much in common with the America’s Cup monsters we’ve been studying so hard for months.
Below you’ll see US A-Cat President Bob Hodges rigging his boat in the cold and dark and listen to Ben Hall and Ben Moon talk about the new designs and their similarity to the Cup boats. "We call it ‘trickle-up’ technology," they said. We’ll post out updates, pictures, videos, and scores here on the On-The-Water Anarchy forum, brought to you by the US A-Class Catamaran Association and Coconut Grove Sails and Canvas. And while we’re talking beach cats, have a look at this previously lost footage that we just posted to YouTube from the 2009 Tybee 500 – this is some Leg 1 finish carnage and a cool Leg 2 Le Mans start, shot from 40 feet off the beach.
