The collective groans from the coach boat of the New York YC’s American Magic were likely audible across the Med as they were starting their first race of the Louis Vuitton Cup Challenger Series Round Robins. But those moans were likely nowhere near those of Emirates Team New Zealand’s shore team when its multimillion dollar Cup yacht came crashing down into its cradle during a lift-out crane failure after racing. We’ll get to that, but first the match ups.
While the American stars on Patriot lacked luster on the opening day, it was the Frenchmen of Orient Express Racing Team, widely panned as the squad most likely to be first sent packing from the Challenger fleet, that shone brightest. The scrappy new team won the first race of the Round Robin Series in their match against Alinghi Red Bull Racing and give Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli a good battle in the last match of the day.
Dogged by mis-timed starts in the Louis Vuitton Preliminary Series last week, the French had their time-and-distance woes sorted once the first entry after several light-wind postponements. With the wind hovering below 10 knots, the helms and trimmers of Orient Express kept the boat in flight as they loosely engaged with Alinghi Red Bull Racing in the start box.
Alinghi led back inside 1 minute and OE went for the hook, pushed Alinghi further down the line toward the pin and once they knew they were compromised, they tacked away with a split start. The French went left and Alinghi took the right. By the time they came back together for the first cross, the French had a tasty 150-meter lead that they would not relinquish.
Eyebrows were raised across the Challenger field as those who’d been giving the French lip service as a dark-horse threat were now singing their praises.
“In this breeze, when you fall behind, it’s hard to catch up,” said Alinghi Red Bull Racing’s trimmer Nicolas Rolaz. “The boat needs a lot of adjustments, and we also need to keep our eyes out to look for the best pressure and best wind. Obviously, our strategy wasn’t the best today. We believed the right side was pretty strong, and our forecast supported that. In the end, we got smashed by the left. The guys we’re up against also know how to read the wind and how to defend, so it was almost over from the beginning.”
Juan Vila, the America’s Cup Hall of Famer and top-shelf strategist for the Swiss team said after racing, “When you’re behind, it’s difficult to catch up, but overall, I think the guys did a great job of minimizing the distance and taking every opportunity, every shift, to catch up.”
Simply catching up doesn’t earn a point in the series, however, and so the elimination table was set after the first course, with the French sitting on 1 point and Alinghi none.
The next pairing was Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli and Emirates Team New Zealand, the defender who wrote the rules allowing them to play with the challenger fleet in these early round-robin races. The defender’s points essentially don’t count, so this match was a chance for the Italians to once again check in with their AC36 rivals and hone their craft.
Again, in the marginal foiling conditions, the pre-start sparring was safe as the Italian’s pushed the Kiwis toward the pin end. Both boats crossed the line dead even on time and speed, with plenty of space between them as they sprinted to the left boundary. The Kiwis were first to tack and the Italians went to the boundary. The first cross was a sight to behold for Jimmy Spithill, watching from his starboard cockpit as they crossed with 70-meter lead.
Keeping their distance with an easy cover, Luna Rossa had the first gate by 11 seconds and the two teams split down the run. There was barely 40 meters between them on the first downwind cross and 5 seconds through the leeward gate. The Italians split right, the Kiwis left, and when they met the middle minutes later the Italians had them by 80 meters.
At the next meeting in the middle of the course, the racing finally got spicy. The Italians stuck a leebow tack a fraction too late, Burling called for a “high mode,” the New Zealand boat rocked to weather and bit into one lane higher, turning a bad position into a strong one in a matter of seconds.
Virtually side by side, they tacked simultaneously and Italian port helmsman Francesco Bruni could be heard warning about the Kiwi’s “high-mode after the tack.” Burling confirmed as much with his call for the same move, and just at the wrong time, the Italian boat’s rudder lost its grip, the boat got a bit of a wobble and in an instant the Kiwi’s stern was visible over the Italian’s front hood.
Once again, the Kiwis rarely lose once ahead, and once again, the defenders cruised across the finish with another win in hand.
“We stuck with them when we needed to and took a few opportunities to split and get back into the race,” ETNZ trimmer Andy Maloney told AC Media. “Then, on that final tack, they tacked in a position that we thought we could just live with on their hip long enough to hold them to the layline and then did a pretty nice tack out of there as well and just managed to squeeze them off it.”
One point for the Italians and they were on the board, one step away from the elimination cliff.
The meeting between American Magic and INEOS Britannia followed with the wind slightly up from the morning, and this should have been a telling match for a British team that struggled to find its footing and pace in the Preliminary Regatta. It had been a rough start to the regatta for helmsman Ben Ainslie who’d also been reportedly mugged at knifepoint in Barcelona over the weekend and robbed of his Rolex.
He wouldn’t have needed the timepiece in the team’s start against American Magic. The Americans were off the foil before they even entered the start box from the starboard entry. “Go ugly early,” is the saying.
With Patriot unable to start properly or get on the foil, INEOS was off and running with a gift of a point. Over the course of the six-leg race the Americans were able to take significant bites out of the British lead, but again, close doesn’t count—no win, no points.
“American Magic had a few issues at the start so we had a big old gap there and we didn’t feel like we sailed a particularly great race in terms of either defending the lead or finding the right balance and the groove in the boat,” said Ainslie to AC Media after racing. “So, we spent a bit of time after racing just trying to figure that out, particularly on the maneuvers which we know are so key in these conditions. I think it’s a positive result but there’s plenty to work on.”
From the American camp, Port helmsman Paul Goodison attributed the team’s race woes to a wrong jib selection before the race start. “When we came across to the starboard end of the line for the start, we saw 5 to 6 knots wind speed and it was too light to maneuver,” he told AC Media. “So, we shot ourselves in the foot there but after that it was impressive how we pulled ourselves back together and kept on chasing, chasing, chasing.
“We are bitterly disappointed. We wanted a win today and we are going to have to take a good hard look at what went wrong in the start box. But there is plenty positive to take away from how we sailed the boat and how we managed to keep clawing it back in conditions that were hard to come back in.”
The fourth and final race of the day had the Italians back on the racecourse with the French for their second races of the day, and once again the green crew of Orient Racing Express held their own in the pre-start, but the Italian’s are sailing at a much higher level, and Spithill and Bruni bossed them from the first cross onward.
Thus, the day ended with Kiwis atop the leaderboard, but soon after, word spread quickly around Barcelona’s Port Vell that the crane handling the team’s AC75 Taihoro had a malfunction and dropped the boat into its cradle from a height of several meters. A team statement issued late Thursday, August 29, said they would not be racing until “a full plan for the repair of Taihoro is in place.”
Observers in the area noted damage to one of the boat’s foils, as well possible damage to the boat’s bow area.
“Clearly this is a setback for the team at such an important time of the campaign,” said CEO Grant Dalton. “These are the moments that can define an America’s Cup campaign, and we have an amazing group of dedicated and talented people who will be working around the clock on getting the boat repaired. We will not be sailing tomorrow at least, and will provide further updates on the outlook in due course.”
With the Kiwis out, INEOS and Orient Express lose opportunities to race tomorrow, leaving the remaining two races: starting the day with American Magic and Alinghi and Luna Rossa against American Magic, which will have the American tapping their entire cyclor team.
