Just yachting

There's a lot of it about in the Solent just now. These are x-boats competing in the late afternoon after we'd watched the Panerai classics in the morning from the comfort of a Fairline 60 ft motor yacht, then headed over to the America's Cup racing just off Portsmouth, passing Larry Ellison's 88m Feadship Musashi on the way. Ellison's yacht, Oracle is the defending America's Cup holder. The actual two-yacht race will not take place until 2017 in Bermuda but the preliminaries started today with an opportunity to see some of the contenders, including Ben Ainslie's British challenger.  The classic yacht here is Eleonora, a modern exact copy of the 1910 schooner, Westward, one of the fastest yachts of its era. Contrast this with the light foiling catamarans whose hulls sail free of the water. Sailing has changed a bit.