“They say money doesn’t buy happiness. Yeah, but it buys a wave-runner,” comedian extraordinaire Daniel Tosh taught us.
He’s right; you’ll never see an unhappy person on a wave-runner even if you live a 1,000 lifetimes. As much fun as a wave-runner is, an M-32 catamaran, the types of sailing vessels utilized in America’s Cup racing, are even more thrilling.
It was announced yesterday that Chicago will host an America’s Cup qualifier next June, and this will mark the first time that a race in the 164 year history of the event will be held in fresh water.
The course is Lake Michigan; from Navy Pier to Northerly Island. At the press conference announcing the event, media were granted the opportunity to board and ride an America’s Cup catamaran, and feel the same kind of addictive adrenaline rush these sailors do.
The real fun happens when the vessel “gets up on two wheels” so to speak. Although I was soon told that 98% of the boat will actually be out of the water when this boat really cooks. Indeed it truly glides along the crests of the waves, giving an illusion that you’re proceeding with more velocity than you actually are. These boats are about 1,200 pounds without gear or people weighing them down, so they can flat out fly when the winds are strong enough.
As you would expect, the America’s Cup is a sport and event that’s inter-twined with big money. It’s sailing, a past-time that’s always had a “1 %er” vibe to it.
And this specific America’s Cup is indeed interconnected with Wall Street.
I was aboard The Convexity, a vessel decorated with financial investing equations (see photo below) that I quasi-recognized from MBA school. To be honest, I could never stay awake during classes where I had to learn the options or derivatives trading formulae. Sigma, rho, beta, R squared etc.
It’s all gobbedly-gook to me and I have absolutely no clue how I ever passed these courses.
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Chicago’s selection as a host for the Louis Vuitton (“The Louis Vuitton Don is signing off” –Kanye West) America’s Cup World Series is due in large part to Don Wilson, a passionate sailor, longtime Chicagoan and CEO of DRW, a Chicago-based principal trading firm. He founded the Chicago Match Race Center (CMRC) in 2009 with the goal to bring world-class match racing to the shores of Lake Michigan. CMRC is the host management company for the event.
Additionally, organizers announced that Chicago-based CME Group, the world’s leading and most diverse derivatives marketplace, will be the first Foundation Partner of the Chicago event.
This all came together because people with “big paper like pancakes stacking ’em up” as Ludacris would say, are behind it.
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The America’s Cup trophy (the oldest trophy in all of international team sport) itself was handled with white gloves as it emerged from a Louis Vuitton case.
In order to sail on the catamaran, they told us to leave all our valuables behind because one could easily lose them to the lake. I didn’t, because you need first person perspective photos. Otherwise there’s no story. Especially on a perfect weather day like this.
And this intrepid reporter took that risk in order to obtain a lot of amazing photos which you can view at our Instagram feed here and/or our Twitter feed here.
https://twitter.com/PaulMBanks/status/643845110166327296
Unfortunately, they did scare me enough (it’s not really scaring, just covering themselves from any liability) enough that I left my video camera behind; which was a mistake.
Luckily there’s video from the event, and the media sailing expedition linked here and embedded below via WGN-TV’s Amy Rutledge (@AmyRutledgeWGN)
All in all, you can see why an America’s Cup catamaran is such an expensive toy- it’s a helluva lot of fun.
Paul M. Banks owns, operates and writes The Sports Bank.net, which is part of the FOX Sports Engage Network. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, currently contributes to the Chicago Tribune RedEye edition. He also appears regularly on numerous talk radio stations all across the country. Catch him Tuesdays on KOZN 1620 the Zone.
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