I've participated in everything from skydiving and hang gliding to even helicopters, although none of which produces the magic-carpet feel you experience as the windward hull of a multihull sail boat lifts you off the water.
The world will experience a bit of that magic today as the largest and fastest racing yachts ever built join together off Valencia, Spain for the highly anticipated opening of the 2010 America's Cup -- god winds providing that is.

Just to give you an idea of how fast these multihulls actually are, the on-the-water umpires who call fouls throughout the race have announced their concerns of not being able to keep up with the racing yachts. The umpire sail boats offer a maximum speed of just 50 m.p.h., and can't undergo the beating in 3-foot seas that the large multihulls will barely even notice. However, as the top speed impresses spectators, what impresses sailors is their overall performance in light wind conditions -- meaning they can actually achieve 2 1/2 -3 times the wind speed. Multihulls do that by cutting through it like a cruise ship.

The huge difference between a multihull and a cruise ship is that a much smaller portion of the sail boat is in the water, particularly when they fly a hull, reducing the hydrodynamic drag significantly. And because they are so wide, multihulls carry a much greater sail area in comparison to similar-sized monohulls. Combine the greater horsepower along with the wide stance and lighter weight and the end result is a vessel with a massive power-to-weight ratio and speed potential. Although, it increases the risk of potential capsizing or pitch poling. Its has been over 2 1/2 years since Larry Ellison, the billionaire owner of the BMW Oracle team and Ernesto Bertarelli, the billionaire owner of the Alinghi team began their eternal bickering legal battle over who would race in the 2010 America's Cup, it's venue and sail rules.

The New York State Supreme Court, the trustee for the race, finally told them to go race and settle their legal battle later, so now the sail teams are meeting off Valencia in a best-of-three race series. It was originally scheduled for Monday, however the first race was postponed for lack of wind, which is ironic due to the fact that the Alinghi sail team objected to Valencia on the grounds that it wasn't sate enough to sail such boats during winter season in the Mediterranean. All previous America's Cups with the exception of one monohull boats has averaged 10-15 m.p.h. and topped out at about 18 m.p.h.

That exception was the 1988 farce between a 130-foot monohull from New Zealand and Dennis Conner's 60-foot American catamaran. And during that race spectators were unable to catch a glimpse of the cat's speed potential due to Conner deliberately holding the speed down to help American arguments in the unavoidable court case following the race event. However, hats will be off when USA 17 meets Alinghi 5, because both rivals are well aware that this is nothing more than a speed test, with little of the jibing and tacking of previous races. Each vessel will rely on a speed potential of 30-50 m.p.h. in winds of 10-18 m.p.h. Alinghi 5 is the more radical of the two sail boats, much lighter at 115 feet than many 35-foot, deep-keel monohulls, and the load on the hull from the giant sails are reported to exceed anything ever seen before on a racing yacht. The Swiss sail boat reportedly has been refined to achieve peak performance in winds of 5-10 m.p.h.

The American trimaran is more traditionall, with a slender hull called an ama on both sides of a slightly fatter central hull. This enables the sail boat to maneuver a bit quicker than a cat, although when USA 17 is cranked up to racing speed, the windward ama and central hull are lifted high into the air as the sail boat rides on the hull away from the wind. And instead of a traditional soft sail, USA 17 boasts a wing sail the size  of a jumbo jet set on end.