Watch The Fastest Sailboats on the Water!

This is an amazing video from America’s Cup – on YouTube. Watch it and remember to breathe!

ACWS 2 Update:

Racing at the America’s Cup World Series San Francisco got underway yesterday with seven races in the qualifying round of the match racing championship.

With the wind gusting over 20 knots and creating a nasty chop on San Francisco Bay, Artemis Racing – Red (Nathan Outteridge), Emirates Team New Zealand (Dean Barker), Energy Team (Loïck Peyron), J.P. Morgan BAR (Ben Ainslie) and Team Korea (Peter Burling) all advanced to the quarterfinal round, with matches scheduled for Thursday and Friday.

China Team with Phil Robertson, won their first match race of the AC World Series and stood on the brink of advancing to the quarterfinal round, but didn’t start his final match against Artemis Racing – Red due to broken frames in the wingsail.

Full report to come. Visit the America’s Cup website for more information.

Results
Team Korea bt. Luna Rossa Piranha, +:02
Energy Team bt. China Team, +:56
Emirates Team New Zealand bt. Artemis Racing – Red, +:50.8
J.P. Morgan BAR bt. Luna Rossa Swordfish, +1:15
China Team bt. Luna Rossa Piranha, +:06
Artemis Racing – Red bt. Luna Rossa Swordfish, +:33
Artemis Racing – Red bt. China Team (DNS)

Quarterfinal Pairings
Thursday (12:25 pm PDT): Team Korea vs. Artemis Racing – White
Thursday (12:42 pm PDT): Energy Team vs. Emirates Team New Zealand
Friday (4:05 pm PDT): Artemis Racing – Red vs. ORACLE TEAM USA COUTTS
Friday (4:22 pm PDT): J.P. Morgan BAR vs. ORACLE TEAM USA SPITHILL

Go to AC World Series San Francisco Results

America’s Cup on NBC Bay Area!

Be sure to catch all the action with the America’s Cup regional media partner NBC Bay Area, who plan to broadcast three days of live coverage around the AC World Series (Oct. 4-7).

Beginning today, Thursday, NBC Bay Area will broadcast the racing live on its digital channel California NonStop (channel 186 on Comcast and 11.2 on over-the-air digital). It will also broadcast live racing on tomorrow, Oct. 5, and Saturday, Oct. 6.

The “Super Sunday” final day of racing on Oct. 7 will be carried live by NBC Network, beginning at 1:30 pm PDT.

NBC Bay Area will produce and broadcast “Countdown to the Cup,” a half-hour program featuring the latest AC World Series races and activities surrounding the events. The show is scheduled to air on Oct. 6 at 8:30 pm PDT, and rebroadcast on Oct. 7 at 3:00 pm PDT.

NBC Bay Area also will air “America’s Cup Discovered” on Sunday, Oct. 7, at 9:30 pm PDT.

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Worth the wait! NBC to show America’s Cup racing starting July 1st.

Soon all sailboat racing enthusiasts will see their wishes come true

as the America’s Cup will finally be broadcast on network television for the first time since 1992. It all happens next year when NBC broadcasts the first two races of sailing’s top prize on San Francisco Bay in September 2013.

17/02/2012 - Sedro Wooley (USA) - ORACLE Racing - Training. © Americascupmedia.com.

In an AP article, it was reported that:

Officials told the Associated Press that the deal with the NBC Sports Group also includes three broadcasts on NBC this year from the America’s Cup World Series. The remaining races in the America’s Cup match will be on cable, on NBC Sports Network.

The deal is big for regatta organizers, who hope to showcase the modernized America’s Cup racing to mainstream fans. Racing will be on a short course close to shore rather than miles out to sea, and in fast, wing-sail catamarans rather than plodding sloops.

The NBC Sports Group also acquired rights to the Louis Vuitton Cup in the summer of 2013 in San Francisco, which will determine which foreign syndicate meets Oracle Racing, owned by Silicon Valley maverick Larry Ellison, for the oldest trophy in international sports.

Richard Worth, chairman of the America’s Cup Event Authority, said NBC will televise the final day of racing from three stops on the America’s Cup World Series this summer, as well as the opening two races of the 34th America’s Cup match on Sept. 7 and 8, 2013.

NBC Sports Group is not paying a rights fee. Worth said America’s Cup officials will acquire airtime and offer commercial time first to their own sponsors.

18/02/2012 – San Francisco (USA) – ORACLE Racing – Training.
© Americascupmedia.com.

A Fair Race?

Of course there’s plenty of folks out there who feel that the race isn’t like it used to be before the big cats came on board. But organizers believe they’ve largely avoided the potential problem of weather-related delays that could easily mess up broadcast schedules by switching to catamarans that can sail in a wide range of conditions. Races have been shortened to better fit into TV time slots and will be sailed close to shore.

The ACWS is being contested in 45-foot catamarans with high-tech wings as mainsails. The Louis Vuitton Cup and America’s Cup match will be sailed in 72-foot cats.

The first NBC broadcast is scheduled for July 1, the final day of the America’s Cup World Series in Newport, R.I. The other dates on NBC are Aug. 26 and Oct. 7, so America’s Cup organizers will fit events to those slots. Organizers are exploring having an ACWS stop on the Hudson River in New York, which would end on Aug. 26. If that’s not possible, there would be ACWS stops in San Francisco ending with televised races on Aug. 26 and Oct. 7.

Whether it’s in New York or San Francisco, the regatta ending on Aug. 26 will feature Ben Ainslie’s debut with Oracle Racing. The star British sailor, who will be trying for a fourth straight gold medal in the London Olympics, will join Oracle Racing to gain experience for what he hopes will be a title challenge with his own team in the future.

Each boat will carry an HD camera and 14 microphones. America’s Cup officials have developed a system called LiveLine that will insert graphics into live shots from helicopters. Lines similar to the yellow first-down line used in football broadcasts will be used to show which boat is ahead, distance to the marks and course boundaries.

(Originally published March 1, 2012)

By The Associated Press  BERNIE WILSON (AP Sports Writer)

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Bocas del Toro Murderer “Wild Bill” featured on NBC’s Dateline Tonight!

(From Cruising-Network-Online)

If you read one of my previous posts regarding Bocas del Toro resident and friend to many cruisers, William “Wild Bill” Holbert, then you’ll probably want to watch Dateline NBC tonight, as they will be airing a one hour special on the confessed serial killer and his partner Laura Michelle Reese.

William Adolfo Cortez Reese aka "Wild Bill."

The program airs tonight, Friday, 22 October 2010, starting at 9:00 pm Eastern Standard Time. Dateline is a two-hour program that runs from 9:00 pm EST until 11:00 pm. The “Wild Bill” segment will be the second hour of the program, from 10:00 pm EST (or starting at 9:00 pm local here in Panama).

Local cruisers can join us in the VIP area of the Superbook Sports Club in Panama City, just across the street from the casino in the Marriott Hotel, to watch the program. The NBC Dateline program normally gets about 6.5 million viewers, so this will be by far the greatest amount of national level exposure this story has received to date.

By Don Winner for Panama-Guide.com (Copyright 2010).

“There are lots of Panama Cruisers who actually knew “Wild Bill”, and are now thanking their lucky stars they didn’t become one of his victims.”
Glenn & Eddie Tuttle
M/V Tothill
Ft Lauderdale, FL

 

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