As we countdown to the 35th America’s Cup,The Royal Gazette will bring you one fun fact a day about the boats, the sailors, the crew, or the history of this illustrious competition. There are now 49 days until the month-long sporting spectacle gets under way.

The new America’s Cup Class boats are 49-feet in length, four feet longer than the AC45s that the teams raced in during the Louis Vuitton America’s Cup World Series.

That’s smaller than the AC62 versions that had been suggested at the start of the present Cup cycle, and smaller again than the AC72s that the teams used during the 34th America’s Cup in San Francisco in 2013.

However, Jimmy Spithill, the Oracle Team USA skipper, believes the foiling catamarans are going to “blow people’s minds”.

“The main thing is they are going to be a lot faster and they are really the Formula One on the water,” Spithill said. “The boat will look quite similar to a lot of people but the difference will be it’s incredibly powered up.”

That power was highlighted during a practice run that Oracle Team USA took last month, when they made the most of some fantastic conditions to reach nearly 50 knots on the Great Sound.

After the morning practice, Oracle Team USA did a series of upwind and downwind speed runs and practising foiling tacks and gybes, keeping the boat up on foils as they crossed the eye of the wind. After each manoeuvre they stopped for a debrief with a technical crew one of their three chase boats.

Measured by the GPS speedometer in a powerboat running even with Oracle Team USA, the flying cat hit some 48 kts blasting downwind in 18-20kts of southwesterly breeze, slicing through the two-foot chop and powerboat wake like a hot knife through butter.