Race two for ACC boats

Ed Gorman was there for GBR Challenge's second foray into the competitive area this afternoon

Walker was delighted and relieved afterwards. It had been his team's first chance to check in on some serious competition and they had discovered that they are more or less on the pace, allbeit in the old generation of boats. "It was quite nerve-wracking I must say when we first went out, but the nerves went with a good start to the first race," he said.

Reflecting on the second contest he said he felt Prada held a slight speed edge, both upwind and down. He and Stead agreed that the prediction by David Barnes, the GBR Challenge General Manager, that the Italians would have an advantage of around two metres-a-minute both upwind and down, was proved about right. "On the second beat in the second race, Prada took two boatlengths out of us and on the first beat about one-and-a-half," said Stead. "I wouldn't say we are going through the water quicker than them but that's what we expected. What we are trying to do is keep the game as level as possible, minimise the losses and try to outsmart them," he added.

Behind the two 2000 boats, Beadsworth saw for himself the blistering downwind pace of NZL 32 which under Barker's expert guidance on the helm, recovered from going back at the start to overwhelm GBR 41, beating her by nearly half a minute to take third place. A minute behind GBR 41, came the first of the two immaculately turned-out Bill Koch-owned boats, USA 23 (America3) which was almost 30 seconds ahead of her 1992 rival Il Moro de Venezia.

There are nominally nine boats in the ACC fleet but the two 1994-generation French boats, FRA 33 and FRA 37 which have been heavily doctored for chartering, are not in the same ballpark as the others. Also struggling to play in this company was John Caulcutt and his crew on the 1992-vintage, High Voltage. They had a major pole-management crisis at the bottom of the first run in the second race when the outboard end of the pole was, at one stage, dragging in the water at right angles to the boat and they then blew their headsail on the next beat - an expensive day out for Caulcutt who was seen conducting a thorough crew debrief between races.