It's a taste of things to come. At least, what you can see of it in this video of Emirates Team New Zealand lining up against Luna Rossa. 

Nice gallery here.

And ETNZ tactician Ray Davies talking about it, and saying little, here (though the footage is excellent):

The America's Cup teams have been in the desisgn phase, and will no doubt stay that way through September. But eventually they will have to race against other boats, which is why you see the teams going head-to-head

Swimmers, surfers, and sailors worry about them. But science knows surprisingly little about where they go and what they do. That's why a research group called Ocearch is out putting sophisticated tracking tags on great white sharks.

Here's the latest tagging operation:

As you can see, the tagging procedure is a big deal, and not an easy experience for the shark. But the team

There are many perks to being a billionaire. One of them, apparently, is that if you get a crazy-ass idea to build a replica of the Titanic you can, well, go ahead and build a replica of the Titanic. And that's exactly what Australian mining magnate Clive Palmer is doing (with launch slated for 2016):

The ship will largely recreate the design and decor of the fabled original, with some modifications to keep it in line with current safety rules and shipbuilding practices, and the addition of some modern comforts such as air conditioning, Palmer said at a press conference in New York.

The three passenger classes, however, will be prevented from mingling, as in 1912, Palmer said.

“I’m not too superstitious,” Palmer said when asked whether recreating a ship best known for sinking was tempting fate.

Palmer will not claim that Titanic 2 will be unsinkable, but he does say it will have adequate lifeboats. Ironically, however, the first plans for Titanic 2, and its lifeboats, didn't quite hit that mark:

No discussion of the Titanic II is complete without a mention of the lifeboats. The lack of adequate lifeboats on the original Titanic was a major contributor to the deaths of over 1,500 passengers. Unfortunately, as reported in the press, it appears that the new ship will not have adequate lifeboat capacity to meet the current Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) rules. Frankly, we think that  this  is  carrying  authenticity  a bit too far. 

As reported by the Daily Mail and elsewhere:

There will be capacity for 2,435 passengers and 900 crew. There will also be lifeboats that can carry 2,700 and a life rafts with an additional capacity of 800. The original Titanic had just 16 wooden lifeboats that accommodated 1,178 people, one third of the total capacity. Some 1,502 people died when it sank on April 15 1912.

So here is how the math works out. 2,435 passengers + 900 crew = 3,335 people.  The advertised lifeboat and raft capacity is 2,700 + 800 = 3,500.  The problem is that SOLAS regulations require that there are sufficient lifeboats and life rafts to accommodate 125% of the total number of people on board, which in this case would be 3,335 *1.25 = 4,169.  So based on the press reports, the new ship would be 669 lifeboat/liferaft spaces short.

Oops. Well, that shortcoming is being rapidly rectified. And one presumes that the new Titanic will be able to avoid hitting any icebergs. That leaves us with a very cool project, that will give the modern public a taste of the extraordinary romance and appeal of the original ship. 

The Daily Mail gets into it by comparing a series of artist renderings of the new ship with photographs from the original:

If Palmer is to be believed, lots of potential passengers are very excited. he claims that so far 40,000 people

SpeedDream is a very cool, yet far from certain, attempt to create the world's fastest sailboat (well, monohull sailboat if they are being realistic).

Cool enough, in fact, for designer Vlad Murnikov to present the project to the hippest of the hip dreamers at TED. Here's the talk:

SpeedDream is definitely worth following. But I wonder if there is a path to superfast that goes through foiling instead of the slim, wave-piercing, swing keel approach SpeedDream is chasing. Because this foiling business

Frostbite sailing is a cherished institution wherever there is winter weather, a body of water, and diehard sailors. So cherished, apparently, that a film-maker called Thurston Smith (why, oh why, couldn't his last name be Howell?) saw fit to make a documentary about it.

Sure, it's a limited audience. But for anyone who is part of that audience it looks like a pretty cool project. Here's the trailer:

Scuttlebutt has published more from the surprisingly informative interview with Artemis honcho Paul Cayard (scroll down to find Part 2 if you have already read Part 1), and he digs even deeper into foiling, and the tradeoffs between losing displacemnt downwind and adding drag to your boards upwind.

This is the classic sort of America's Cup discussion, which could easily involve more than a few head fakes, so it's hard to know whether to take it all as gospel. But it's still pretty interesting, in a Kremlin-ology sort of way.

Here's a taste (but read the whole thing): 

With the focus on full foiling, it is important to recognize there are wind crossovers that impact the equation. If the winds are too light to fully foil, then the excessive drag caused by the foiling blades will be a big problem. While July and August are windy months on the Bay, September can offer a wider range of wind strength. The foiling package that works in the Louis Vuitton Cup (July 7 - Aug 31) may not work in the America's Cup (Sept 7-23).

So far no team has been able to fully foil upwind. We see it when reaching and running, but not closed hauled, and I don't think we will see it in this America's Cup. But remember, even if the boats are not fully foiling upwind, they are still foiling to a less degree. A good estimation is that about half of the boat's displacement is getting lifted when sailing upwind.

Meanwhile, here's Team New Zealand showing what it all means out on the water, and showing how the whole foiling thing is done, in a video shot by some non-spies (i.e, a couple of guys out for a fun day on the water). Note: the breeze was 12 knots.

Wow. In the world of Americas Cup racing you hardly ever hear straight talk about what's happening, especially after major setbacks. So kudos to Paul Cayard for giving Scuttlebutt's Craig Leweck an EXTREMELY (at least in AC terms) candid update on how wrong Artemis got the foiling issue, how much catching up Artemis has to do, and how they are going about it. 

Here's a taste:

Sailing against Oracle was a full-scale verification that we needed to make some pretty big changes, and that's what we are doing. We are taking it on. The good news is that we learned this in February and not in July. So we have some time to react. But we need to commit more to foiling.

When discussing foiling, it is important to understand that it is not black and white. It is a spectrum, and what we are really saying when we say 'foiling' is that we are reducing displacement of the boat. The lifting occurs through the foils on the rudder and the daggerboard design. On a spectrum between zero and the full weight of the boat, a fully foiling boat is lifting the full weight of the boat.

Our boat had J boards, and while they lift a percentage of our displacement, they do not lift all of it. The game of foiling is trading off the drag associated with the boards. The fully foiling boats use L boards, but both the surface area of these boards, and the tightness of the L board angle, create more drag than the J board. However, they also cause more lift.

So each team's design tools predicted what the cost of the drag would be, and what the benefit of the lift would be, and it is fair to say that we got it wrong. So now we are reacting. Our team has come together, and is fully committed to tackling this issue full on. 

There's lots more, and you can read the full thing here. It's a must-read on how the teams have been thinking

Sometimes you are not just sharing the lineup with other humans. Would you stay so cool, when you look a bit like the seals the orcas are chasing?

The internet age just keeps getting better. One of the hottest trends in the wired world is Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), which allow anyone, anywhere with an internet connection to learn from the world's greatest professors.

Happily, that trend has (sort of) come to the world of sailboat racing, in the form of a series of tactics videos produced by Steve Hunt, a capable sailor and professional coach. The series uses the SailX online racing platform to work through key racing tactics (more about SailX here). 

They are especially useful if you are a SailX addict (and why aren't you?). But there are lots of insights that can help any racer on the course.

Here's the first one:

And here is number 2: 

If you are on Facebook, and want a steady stream of, well, epic, or funny, or cool, sailing images, then navigate your way over to the Epic Sailing Images Of The Week page.

Cuz you'll find pics like this:

This:

And this: