The America’s cup is essentially an engineering and design competition. And Oracle Team USA will win this competition because it has assembled an extraordinary group of technical sponsors to help them develop their boat. Each of the companies listed below is contributing major engineering expertise to Oracle ‘s campaign. The other team’s sponsors simply are not able to bring comparable technical expertise to bear.

There are a lot of things hidden inside America’s Cup boats to allow them to fly:

• 100,000+ lines of code to program the foil control systems (Artemis Racing)
• Between 300 (Groupama) and 450 sensors (Oracle Team USA) analyzing 3000 variables ten times per second
• 144 electronic commands (Groupama) to operate the wings and foils
• 360 m of electrical wiring (Groupama)
• 200 m of hydraulic pipes (Groupama)

A spectacular crash between Gladiator and Sled in the first race of this year’s 52 Super Series Miami Royal Cup.

The CEPIM – (the European Centre for the Prevention of Incidents at Sea ) based in Crac’h in Brittany has produced a video about recovering a man overboard . Being able to locate the person in the water is key to an effective rescue and they have some good tips about how to increase the visibilty of the person whose fallen overboard. In their test rescues, they encountered various problems using a life sling which are described below .

Joshua Burks is building a Glen-l Zip, a classic 30’s Chris Craft style run about. As well as being deeply impressed by the quality of his build – I love the way he is keeping track of how much money and time he is spending on the build. Here is a recap of his method.

A great video showing a catapult broach on a Pacer 27 in Table Bay, South Africa. The boat is flying it’s asymetric spinnaker in a high wind and goes from blasting downwind at nearly 20 knots to a dead stop. The crew is sent tumbling by the huge g-force and the skipper is flung overboard.