AC35/36: Cup half empty

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Well, that was quick! The 35th America’s Cup was over in a heartbeat. It took barely a month for Emirates Team New Zealand to buzzsaw through a fleet of four challengers before shellacking the U.S. defender, Oracle Team USA, 7-1, to snatch yachting’s oldest prize. This was not your father’s America’s Cup—the boats were 50-foot dragonflies skeeting across the water on hydrofoils at nearly 50 mph and the sailors wore armor, not Izod Lacoste. Now what? As a proud senior member of SINS, the Society of International Nautical Scribes, a group that historically holds just one beer-infused meeting every three or four years on the first lay day of the America’s Cup match, wherever it is, I think I deserve a say, even if I did miss the last meeting. I say let’s Make America’s Cup Great Again. –Angus Phillips writing for today's The Weekly Standard. As the Washington Post's outdoor reporter for 30 years, "Anguish" as he is affectionately known among long-time friends and the Cup community, covered every Cup from Dennis Conner’s successful defense in Newport, R.I., in 1980 to Larry Ellison’s weird win in Valencia, Spain, in 2010. He has penned pointed observations about AC35 and gives his prescription for re-filling the Cup for AC36. It's a must read for AC fans. Full story.

It rained on Wednesday's parade in Auckland, but it did not dampen the spirits of the 80,000 who turned out to welcome home the victors valiant. Photo: Lawrence Smith / stuff.co.nz