VIDEO: The moment we've been waiting for

Clocking the BMW Oracle trimaran in Valencia and seeing it hitting four times the wind speed!

Genuinely we will look back at this as one of the highlights in our career - finally, after failing to make it to see them in San Diego, we have got to watch the BMW Oracle Racing trimaran go yachting.

Firstly our RIB driver Grant Davidson kindly gave us a circle of the big black and white beast on its mooring off the BMW Oracle Racing 'boatyard' in Valencia's commercial port. Then it went yachting in apparently no wind - and yet: 17 knots heading out of the commercial port, and once at sea with its genniker raised we reckon she hit 25-26 knots in around 6-7 knots of breeze and, as you can see from the video, flat water. So getting on for four times wind speed, which we don't think we have ever seen before - not even on C-Classes. According to our fellow anorak colleague Matt Sheahan at Yachting World, this is getting into ice yachting territory where they can achieve a 5x wind speed ratio.

The video concludes with what in retrospect was a very fast tack - an area of the sailing performance of the American tri where they may hold an advantage over the Swiss cat since they are able to go through a tack with the wing stalled for a considerably shorter period than a soft sail set-up would find itself.

The tragedies of this whole thing - as much as the legal bitching - is firstly that we may only see Alinghi 5 and the BMW tri line up for two races, if one proves dominant, otherwise three max. And secondly it is hard to see what will happen to them after the 33rd America's Cup is over. The general feeling we glean in the America's Cup community is that it is not ready for these incredible state of the art boats and unfortunately two or three races may not be enough to convert people. It seems a shame that the future is here with us now, but we may have to wait another 20 years before boats such as this become the norm in the stayed world of match racing.