Sailing rocks because our sport includes high tech adventures, pushing the port and expanding the limits. Because these sailors are contributing to our sport the sport as a whole benefits. For example America's Cup and Volvo Ocean Race teams developed laminate sail cloth and this technology lead to laminates for cruising use that last longer and hold their shape better than Dacron.
http://youtu.be/jKwV6F3_Hl4
What will the recently completed 34th America's Cup bring to the sport?
Other high tech projects are contributing technology to our sport in there pursuit of speed records over courses ranging from 1 nautical mile to cercomnavigations. These include:
The outright sail powered speed record is held by Sail rocket
The Jules Vern trophy is held by Bank Populaire for the fastest cercumnavigation of the planet under sail. This record has no restrictions on the boat or the crew.
Team Hydroptere, a french group run by Alain Thébault are developing two very specialized craft to beat both of these records. There speed record boat is similar to Sail Rocket, but bigger and hopefully tougher and their round the world boat is a development of there foiling trimaran that can change between displacement mode for storms and foiling mode to go freaking fast. Check them out here:
http://hydroptere.com/en/the-sailing-boats/hydroptere-2/
All of these teams advance all areas of our sport as they develop their specialized craft.
