Want to know what $100 million will buy you? A sail boat so fast and sleek that its technology is more like an aircraft than a watercraft.
"We have the fastest sailors in the world and they are sailing arguably the fastest boats in the world," said America's Cup CEO Stephen Barclay. "Designers are pushing things to the limit."
As San Francisco prepares for its first America's Cup competition, the sailing world is waiting to see how far designers will go.
The Cup's U.S. defender, Larry Ellison's Oracle Team USA, set the bar high for the mega race which kicks off this week with the Louis Vuitton Cup. That competition will determine which challenger will race against the US in the America's Cup in September. Ellison successfully pushed for rules mandating entrants race newly designed 72-foot hydrofoiling catamarans. The boats can reach speeds of over 40 miles an hour.
"Suddenly the San Francisco Bay seems incredibly small," said Mickey Ickert, a race veteran who is designing sails for Oracle. "The first question the guys have is, 'Where's Alcatraz?' They are afraid of running into it at 40 miles an hour."
(Read More: America's Cup May Not Be a San Francisco Treat Financially)