OUR FAVORITE BREAKDOWN 💡

Come Sail Away 🌊

Watch here → Instagram TikTok

CHARTS 🌁

It takes a village 🏘️

Chart Type - Dot + Tree Map 🌲

There’s way more to sailing competitions than what you see on TV. Sure, it looks like eight guys chilling on a yacht⛵️, making a few smooth turns—easy stuff, right?

But behind the scenes, these teams are massive. We’re talking 100+ engineers, designers, and technicians pouring over every detail, all with $150 million budgets. 💸Wild to think that one yacht could be worth more than the company I clock in at every day.

It’s just like Formula 1. Sure, the “drivers” get the spotlight, but it’s the genius designers behind the curtain who make or break the race. Just look at how big of a deal Adrian Newey’s team switch was this year—this guy’s the GOAT 🐐 of F1 design and his transition was more important than the drivers’.

In sailing, even the smallest mistake, like a one-degree tilt in the hull, can sink a team’s chances so the precision of the background players is critical.

How we rate it ✭✭✭✭✩

If you’ve been following us for a while, you’ve probably noticed dot plots like this. ⚫️ They work best when you want to convey the sheer scale of something, helping the audience feel the magnitude of the subject.

So, when I say a team has 100 designers, I want everyone to grasp how big of a crew that actually is.

Each one of those dots is a person dedicating their life to making the best boat in the world. 🌎 We did something similar when breaking down the odds of making it to the NBA—plotting 550 dots to represent all 550,000 high school hoopers, just to make it hit home.

Sure, we could have used a pie chart 🥧 to show the same thing—but who really wants that?

Schematic 👷

Chart Type - X-Ray 🩻

Ok you got me, this isn’t actually a graph.

These America’s Cup yachts are engineering wonders, totally unlike anything you’ve ever seen. They hit 60 mph 💨, float above the water on winged foils 🪽, and they’re powered by four cyclists 🚴 tucked away in the hull.

No graph in the world can capture all that. ❌📊

That’s why schematics and tutorials are so powerful. In just 15 seconds, we used zoom features and micro charts to highlight the key elements, giving viewers a glimpse of just how extraordinary these carbon fiber machines really are.

How we rate it ✭✭✩✩✩

This feels a bit like cheating, so we’re docking points. That said, the schematic didn’t just tell a story—it also served as a visual anchor ⚓️ for the entire page.

I’ve been experimenting with different page layouts, and I’ve found that including a central chart or image creates a more polished, professional look and feel.

Here’s a picture of an actual America’s Cup yacht if you want to judge my drawing skills. ⬆️

Fancy Timeline Alert 🚨

Chart Type - Time Skip Chart (Riley II) 🐸

I thought long and hard about how to portray this concept. 🤔

The America’s Cup doesn’t follow a fixed schedule. It only takes place when the reigning champion is challenged by another country’s yacht club—typically every three or four years. If the challenger wins, they become the new holder of the Cup until another challenger steps up. If they lose, the champion keeps the title. 🏆

Enter the Riley II.

This custom chart is designed to combine a dynamic timeline with the concept of challenger events. Take 2003, for example—Switzerland challenged New Zealand and won. When New Zealand challenged Switzerland again in 2007, Switzerland defended the Cup, visually leap-frogging 🐸 the challenger in the chart.

As you pan across, you can see how often countries attempt challenges, reflecting their obsession with the Cup.

So New Zealand’s story is a perfect example. They lost the title in 2003 ❌, challenged in 2007 but lost ❌, tried again in 2013 and lost again ❌, but finally reclaimed it in 2017 ✅. Now, having defended their title twice in a row, they’re facing off against Great Britain as we speak.

How we rate it ✭✭✭✭✭

I love this graph. 💙

Even ask Claire, when I finished it I held it up to her smiling like a toddler showing off a frog they caught in the yard. 🐸

It was so simple and clear in what it represented, especially when explaining a complex format like the America’s Cup challenge system. This chart type could work for any situation with a structure like this. Especially in elections across the world, this could be an interesting use case for a graphic.

OTHER STUFF WE MADE 🎥

Just one other video this week… Lots of other stuff in the works coming up though!

Do MLB players get paid overtime in the playoffs? ⚾️💰