The Forty Knot Sailboat wins the America's Cup

Years ago I read "The Forty Knot Sailboat".  The author  described a large sailboat equipped with hydrofoils.  These underwater wings would lift the entire boat out of the water, vastly reducing drag and enabling ice boat like speeds.  Ice boats can do 100 miles an hour because the friction of the runners is zip, and doesn't rise with speed.  Whereas the friction and wave drag on a hull in the water is high, and goes up by the square of the speed.  But  once a boat is up on hydrofoils, planing,  friction drag drops off, form drag goes away and fantastic speeds become possible.  The author foresaw sailing yachts fast enough to outrun bad weather.  It all seemed like science fiction at the time.  In those days sailboats were made of wood, lines were manila fiber, dacron sails were just coming in. 
   Fast forward to the 21st century, 2013.  The America's cup, currently in possession of the Americans (again) is facing a challenge from New Zealand.   Larry Ellison of Oracle is defending the cup in San Francisco bay.  The cup defender is a huge catamaran, all carbon fiber, 72 feet long and carrying a 131 foot mast (that's better than twelve stories tall).  It's got hydrofoils, and with the right wind, it's been clocked at 55 miles per hour (48 knots) .  That's freeway speed, and it's done under sail. 
   Trouble is, hot as the Oracle boat was, the Kiwis kept beating it.  This year it takes winning nine races, match races, just two boats.  The Kiwis had won eight straight and one more win would give them the cup.  Up to this point, the Oracle crew had been sailing in accordance with computer simulations.  Oracle being a software house, I dare say every single programmer in the company  was working on America's Cup programs.  And, all the software had favored a strategy of pointing.  This is one strategy for going to windward.  You point the boat up into the wind as high as she will go, until the sail begins to luff  (flap).  This is the closest to a straight line course, and the boat gets to the windward mark by covering the shortest distance on the water. 
   The other strategy is footing.  You bear off a touch and get the sails really full of wind.  You go faster thru the water, but you have to cover more distance since you aren't going as directly to the windward mark.  For the crucial ninth race, the Oracle team decided upon footing instead of the pointing recommended by all the computers.  All, wonder of wonders, the extra speed footing gives was enough to get the boat up on foils, vastly increasing its speed.  The Oracle team came from behind, won the next nine races and kept the America's Cup in America.