A day for Ellison

Anne Hinton reports on today's proceedings at Act 1 of the 32nd America's Cup in Marseille

The huge spectator fleet, reminiscent of America’s Cups in Auckland, was absent on the second day of racing in Act One of the 2007 America’s Cup on the waters of the Rade Sud off Marseille, France. A number of super yachts and smaller craft did, however, follow the racing.

It was the intention to hold two races today. Winds started out lighter than on day one, but increased from 12-15 knots to gust up to 25 knots during the first race.

On the first day, the race was composed of three windward-leeward legs with a view to holding two races. This was reduced to two windward-leeward legs today. However, the wind, again from the southeast, increased steadily and meant that only one race was able to be held in relative safety for the boats.

BMW Oracle Racing were raring to go and avenge their third place on day one - so much so that they were over the line at the start. Indeed, it was only Alinghi, Emirates Team New Zealand and K-Challenge that started cleanly and on time. Le Defi was also over the line and Shosholoza was held out at the committee boat end and struggled to get under way and into the race to begin with.

“It’s tough out there”, said Gavin Brady, BMW Oracle Racing’s helmsman. “You get behind one of the older boats and they’re not going to let you past.”

Brady suggested that BMW Oracle Racing’s training in Valencia meant that they had come to Marseille with more used sails and equipment than some of the other crews. “It’s 2004 and we’re not going to blow our budget on our sails now”, he said.

Talking about other developments, Brady said: “Everyone’s zeroing in now on the new version 5 rule. The last America’s Cup was raced under version 4 and now we’re under version 5 [until after the 2007 America’s Cup]. New Zealand have still got the hula on because they can, but next year they have to take it off.”

In terms of sailing in the stronger wind conditions at Marseille, Brady commented that
“when you get them a little bit out of wack, an America’s Cup boat becomes incredibly unbalanced. It’s like driving a car with a flat tyre. The main starts flapping, heel angles start coming up. At one point [yesterday] we had 42 degrees of heel going upwind, which is unheard of in an America’s Cup boat.” Inverting the mainsail once, Brady claimed, had lost BMW Oracle Racing about 20m of height going upwind on day one. They also had a deeper Code 3 genoa up on the first day than the flatter Code 4 sails on
other boats.

“This is the first time in a year we’ve stopped racing because of wind speed”, Brady said, commenting on the conditions in Marseille, but agreed that it had been right to call a halt given likely damage to the boats. “We want to see all six boats out there on the start line”, he said. “It’s good that the whole fleet’s out there racing.”

“In Auckland there would have been choppier waves, so [the conditions] would have been worse. It’s probably unique that we’ve got this flat water in 30 knots of wind. It’s fine upwind, but pretty hard when downwind because we can’t get the boats going. Although the boats are going very fast, as soon as we unload the boat they stop and the load goes up. So what we’ve tried to do in Auckland and other areas we’ve tried to catch on a wave and in that way the boat surfs through the manoeuvre - it sort of artificially keeps the boat going fast. Out here what happens is that as soon as we pull the main in to gybe the boat picks up to 16 knots and all of a sudden the [apparent] wind speed goes up another 6 knots, so everything loads up 6 knots more and it just gets worse and worse and worse until something breaks.”

In terms of the start of the race today, Brady said that the team was “happy where we were on the fleet - we wanted the left hand side on that one. The wind went further right than we had predicted in the last 30 seconds. That contributed to the fact that we were over [the line at the start], plus it let the guys be a bit more comfortable to weather of us
than maybe we thought they would have been under normal circumstances, but because the wind went right it was still going to be a long starboard. We were in a great position in a sense in that we could do what we wanted [at the start]”, Brady said, even with being over the line.

Up the first beat “we got too focussed on the boat that was just behind us [ Emirates Team New Zealand]”, said Brad Butterworth. “ Oracle was so far back that I really didn’t pay too much attention to them”, he admitted. This enabled BMW Oracle Racing to catch up to round the windward mark for the first time in third place, just behind Alinghi. “There are big shifts out there, though”, he said. Commenting on Team Alinghi’s form, he said that “We have been going well since we got here”.

Today, in the race, “we wanted middle left”, said Dalton, from the advice of the weather team. "Then Le Defi flapping head to wind after the start from being over dropped us into Alinghi, and popped us to the right. They went with us, so we were locked in jail. I looked back and just could read the numbers on Oracle, so I didn’t think we’d see anything of them, and then there they were. So that’s just the game. Must do better!”

K-Challenge, benefitting from the years of experience of Marseille conditions of Thierry Peponnet from knowing what the wind was likely to do, reached the top mark first.
Both Alinghi and BMW Oracle Racing got past K-Challenge downwind and BMW Oracle Racing levelled up with Alinghi on the first run, with the boats rounding opposite gate buoys at the bottom. Emirates Team New Zealand also passed K-Challenge on the second beat, and these remained the first four finishing places at the end of the second run.

At the back of the fleet there was a duel between Le Defi and Shosholoza. This became really tight at the end of the race, after a few gybes. Shosholoza hotted up the angles up rather more and steamed through within metres of the finish to take fifth place by three seconds from Le Defi.