Yachting World has been asking top sailors and marine industry gurus to choose the coolest and most innovative yachts of our times, and Kiwi America’s Cup legend Ray Davies nominated the AC72. Here’s the report:

“I think one of the coolest boats was the AC72,” says Davies who nominates the wingsail catamarans sailed in the 34th America’s Cup in San Francisco. “Building one of those now would be terrifying – the speeds you could get!

“It was at the infancy of foiling and a very radical stage because no one had done any foiling on a race boat. There’d been some straight line foiling boats, but nothing that tried to go around a windward/leeward course. So that was a very special campaign where we were basically inventing foiling at scale. The innovation in that campaign probably hasn’t been rivaled yet.

“The AC75s are very, very cool, but we know a lot about foiling now. Back then, it was a bit of a cowboy show doing it for the first time. Early in that campaign we were down on lakes, towing craft around and capsizing and nose diving, pitch poling and all sorts of things, but then to commit to foiling at an early stage was very exciting.”

AC72 stats rating
Top speed: 44.15 knots
LOA: 22m/72.2ft
Launched: 2012
Berths: 0
Price: $8-10million
Adrenalin factor: 98%

For Yachting World’s list of cool boats, click here.