Portsmouth-America's Cup with Oracle Team USA Training Day
The Cruising Godfather · Trials · Portsmouth and the Solent
Declassified Racing FileRocket Science on the Solent
A 500HP Zodiac chases the fastest sailors in the world—and discovers that once the foils lift, sailing becomes aviation with salt water underneath.
Took a bit of video and some great photos of Oracle’s rig, Emirates Team New Zealand, SoftBank Team Japan, and Artemis out in the windy Solent.
Out at historic Portsmouth Naval Dockyard, I met two-time America’s Cup champion skipper Jimmy Spithill from Oracle Team USA, then went looking for the machinery behind the spectacle.
The boats were not simply sailing. They were lifting, balancing, accelerating, and turning a narrow strip of rough water into a live laboratory for aerodynamics, hydraulics, and control.
The Code Phrase
“Keep your friends close…”
And keep the foiling catamarans close enough to photograph—without pretending your chase boat controls the sea.
Ed Reif 3.0 Translation
I managed to hitch a ride on Charles and Annie’s ballistic inflatable Zodiac. Five hundred horsepower sounded decisive on the dock. Out on the Solent, it was merely the admission price.
Mother Nature and the Land Rover BAR crew still controlled the gap. The chase became a lesson in relative speed: power is impressive until it meets a system designed to remove resistance.
Last July, aboard the Queen Mary 2, 22 nautical miles per hour felt fast enough to nearly blow us off the deck. These crews could push toward 50 in the narrow working space of a 20-metre trampoline.
The Sea Trial
It Is Not Brain Surgery. It Is Rocket Science.
The moment the foils clear the hull from the water, everything becomes faster, lighter, and less forgiving.
Even though it was a sea trial, the boat’s foils were out of the water and things became very fast, very quickly. There was remarkably little boat left in the sea.
That is the transformation: less wetted surface, less drag, more speed—and a much smaller margin for sloppy control. The visible sail is only part of the story. Underneath it sits a network of aerodynamics, hydraulic systems, sensors, and decisions happening at racing speed.
It is not brain surgery. It is rocket science.Field note from the Solent
The resemblance to open-wheel racing was immediate. Both disciplines hide their greatest complexity beneath the spectacle. What looks like raw speed is actually disciplined systems integration.
Why the Foils Matter
The foils reduce the hull’s contact with the water. Less contact means less drag, which unlocks speed—but also increases the importance of stable control, precise load management, and rapid correction.
The Control-System Lesson
The fastest platform is not simply the one with the most power. It is the one that can sense, decide, and adjust quickly enough to keep power usable.
The Asymmetrical Lesson
The breakthrough does not come from adding more boat to the water. It comes from removing contact, reducing drag, and allowing a smaller surface to carry a much larger result.
Motion Evidence
The Solent Video Files
Four supplied field videos, preserved as responsive evidence from the chase.
America’s Cup on the Solent
The original moving record from the windy racecourse.
The Foiling Sea Trial
Speed, lift, and the rapidly disappearing relationship between hull and water.
Chasing Land Rover BAR
The Zodiac closes the distance while the racing platform turns wind into separation.
More Speed from Portsmouth
Another angle on the teams, technology, and waterborne acceleration.
Evidence Locker
The Teams in the Frame
The supplied photographs document the international field assembled around Portsmouth and the Solent.
Oracle Team USA
The American campaign—and the reason Jimmy Spithill was part of the Portsmouth file.
SoftBank Team Japan
Another foiling platform in a field defined by international engineering and precise execution.
Emirates Team New Zealand
A New Zealand presence in a race where national identity arrived through technology.
Solent Race File
The supplied source did not identify this frame by team, so it remains accurately labelled as race-course evidence.
Portsmouth Racing Archive
Preserved without adding a team identity the source did not provide.
Companion Intelligence
Where Racing Meets Doctrine
The Solent file connects sailing technology to the wider archive of speed, systems, and human performance.
Capturing the Spirit of Racing
The Portsmouth companion story continues the Land Rover BAR chase and the attempt to photograph the spirit—not merely the equipment—of high-performance sailing.
Life in the Fast Lane
The Indy 500 companion reveals the same underlying fascination: visible speed powered by invisible systems, disciplined teams, and extremely small margins.
Book Connection
Living an Asymmetrical Life
The foiling catamaran offers a clean metaphor: remove drag, preserve control, and let a smaller contact surface produce a larger return.
The Operating Law
The breakthrough was not more displacement. It was less. The boat became faster by reducing the part of itself that remained trapped in the water.
The same logic appears in an asymmetrical life. Remove unnecessary drag. Protect the systems that stabilize you. Increase the quality of feedback. Then allow speed to emerge from design rather than force.
The 500HP chase boat had power. The foiling yachts had leverage.
On the Solent, the future did not arrive quietly. It lifted out of the water, accelerated past the chase boat, and left a clean lesson in its wake: speed is what happens when power finally learns how to stop fighting resistance.