Morrelli & Melvin’s new catamaran is a beautiful example of modern efficiency in sailing technology and design. The crew tells me that with just 17 knots of breeze on an easy-going day they were easily topping 24 knots of speed. During the Three Bridge Fiasco race in 8 knots of breeze the boat was sailing at 12 knots. They finished in second place and just 48 seconds behind last year’s winning time.

This will be a serious competitor to the eXtreme 40 design and may lead to the sort of transition of an entire fleet that we saw with the Melges 32 from the Farr 40.

One of the key differentiations between the two catamaran designs is that the X40 uses stiff hulls to offset the risk from huge loads on its lightweight frame. The SL33 design uses construction emphasizing strength in the skeleton; it adds weight in the beams, but has light hulls. Another major difference is that the SL33 was designed to easily come apart and fit in a 40 foot shipping container. It basically looks to be a more fun, less expensive and more convenient alternative to the popular X40s.

The design also is huge news in terms of the upcoming America’s Cup in San Francisco. While the premiere match races will be on Morrelli & Melvin designed catamarans (AC45 and AC72) the SL33 gives club racers and sponsors an option to invest in a similar design at a far more affordable and shippable format. That makes it not only a competitor to the X40 class but potentially a conversion machine to pull even die-hards of the mono hulls into the future of sailing, or at the very least force mono hull designs to adapt and improve.

See you on the Bay!

Updated to add Emirates Team NZ – TV News clips on the SL33 and the computers used to design them:

I get chills just looking at the series of photos from a National Science Foundation photography mission and thinking about the survival gear necessary for a human.

The National Science Foundation Office of Polar Programs sponsored an underwater photography team to dive out of the US Antarctic Program’s base at McMurdo Station, on Ross Island in Antarctica. For three visits in late austral spring, photos were taken on scuba dives and field excursions at locations around McMurdo Sound: Ross Island and the Antarctic mainland. The team was led by Norbert Wu, a professional underwater photographer/cinematographer.

Here is a very small crop from my favorite photo of the entire series. You can probably guess why.

The Norbert Wu collection says it holds more than 6,000 research images and he has been awarded the “Antarctica Service Medal of the United States of America ‘for his contributions to exploration and science in the U.S. Antarctic Program.'”

A couple people have asked to see again the photos I used in my presentation last week at BayThreat. It was called “Sharpening the Axe” because I discussed how to be as efficient as possible when pentesting cloud and virtual environments. I thought I should perhaps just post the photos here for convenience. Here are the first two, showing efficiency in modern sailing with an the International A-Class Catamaran. Both are a custom Bimare XJ built by Ben Hall.

Downwind, North American Championships in Islamorada, Florida

Upwind, club race in Santa Cruz, California