Sailing-Feeling the force aboard an America's Cup flying 'beast'

BARCELONA : There is barely a sound as its sails fill and the 'sister ship' to New Zealand's America's Cup race boat takes off, its huge hull seemingly defying gravity as it lifts eerily above the sea.

Squeezed into a pod on the port side of the French team's 75 foot boat, the sensation one sailor described as "go karting on a flying carpet", feels like being airborne, with occasional dips and lurches resembling mild turbulence on a plane.

Hunched over handle bars in the pod behind, sweat dripping into the bilges, a "power sailor" is pedalling furiously to pump the oil needed for the hydraulics used to trim the wing-like sails.

Other than occasional exchanges between the crew, the only sounds are the whirring of the cyclors and the whistling of wind over the sleek white decks and black carbon sails as the boat reaches 35 knots, four or five times the speed of the breeze but well below its 55 knots potential.

While the British and New Zealand boats practised nearby last week before the final, the French team, whose tilt at the America's Cup ended in the qualifying stages, were putting the sleek AC75 through its paces and giving a member of their youth team his first go at the wheel.

"Taking off with the 75 is something unreal. You are used to sailing boats with a lot of noise from the water and the wind. As soon as you take off it's just pure silence and you double or triple the speed," said French skipper Quentin Delapierre.

Other than their crews, only a handful of people have been aboard the futuristic AC75s, let alone sailed on one, such is the secrecy surrounding their designs.

New Zealand have for months been jealously guarding the internal workings of "Taihoro", in which the holders of the America's Cup hope to defeat