|
|
| World Of
Wetass
It’s Finally On… This week's
edition of the World of Wetass is brought to you by J/World
performance clothing. Wait a minute. Isn’t there a little thing called the Louis Vuitton Cup heating up in Valencia. Why, yes. Yes, there is. And if you are in the seeming minority of sailors who, like me, think the America’s Cup is an extraordinary and compelling sailing spectacle, fueled by ego, technology and tactical wizardry, then this is very welcome news. I’ve figured out that OLN has become Versus. I’ve located the relevant websites. And I’m tuned in. And so far, apart from being right there, I feel nicely plugged in. Reboot your broadband. So here’s the Wetass Guide to following the action online: Audio: Start with the official America’s Cup website and launch the Live Info & Radio page. That in theory gets you the live radio feed from a great team of commentators, who call the action with expertise and clarity. It also gets you an advantage line (which is useful to check in on), and a pretty lame live blog. The radio hasn’t worked for me since the first day, but happily the denizens of Sailing Anarchy’s AC Forum put up a link (grabbed it appears from the subscribers page of the America’s Cup Anywhere service) which launches the same radio commentary. So here it is, for your listening pleasure. Not sure it will continue to work, but that’s just one more reason to… Visual: …fork over the $40 for America’s Cup Anywhere. C’mon, Larry Ellison is spending a couple hundred mil. You can spare one dinner out to watch him piss it all away. Anyhow, this buys you access to a reliable radio feed, and a Virtual Spectator-like race tracker. I haven’t had enough time with the race tracker to really know how I feel about it. But it seems okay, and when you synch it with the radio you get an excellent sense of what the hell is going on… TV: Until Versus decides to scale back on bull-riding and gun porn, you have to make do with America’s Cup TV. There’s nothing live that I have found, but they put up a nice high def summary at the end of every day. So if you want to watch +39’s mast come crashing down, and see what the carnage looked like once it was ashore, this is the place to go. Sail TV has also got the video. Click on the “Sub-Channel” button for the AC Update page, and get your popcorn. Some really good interviews and images… Blogging: I was skeptical, given the decent radio commentary, but after a few days with James’ Boyd’s Daily Sail Live Race Blog, I am a convert. Wry, informed, frequently updated. What else can you ask for? There is only one flaw with this multimedia extravaganza. It’s impossible to get any real work done. But an AC addict has to do what an AC addict has to do…. Bonus YouTube
vids: Official
AC Promo, Alinghi
2004 Summary, and a journey into the AC
past… |