AC World Series Venice-Day 1

Venezia

Sunny but chilly day here on the Adriatic of the coast of Lido. It snowed in the mountains just north of here Tuesday night and the white hills are a beautiful backdrop to the racing here. Over 100 spectator boats ringed the race track to watch the fleet of 9 do battle in the 8-12 knot breeze.

On a personal note has been a lot of fun for me to return to Venezia where I lived and worked for a while in 1990 while preparing the Ill Moro di Venezia challenge. Venezia is a jewel of a city….maybe there is none more unique in the world. The city certainly has turned it on for this America’s Cup event!

Two fleet races were held to seed the fleet for Match racing. Artemis had a very good first race finishing second to Korea but a tough second race finishing 7th. The fleet is very competitive so nothing is easy out there.

Artemis were up against Team New Zealand for a 2 out of 3 1/4 match race series. In the first race, after a dial up by Team New Zealand, our buys did a lap around the committee boat to shake the Kiwi’s. Both boats were over early, but we managed to lead at the first mark and stretch from there to win by a large margin. The 2nd race was close at the start but we rolled the Kiwi’s again and that was about it for a 2-0 win for Artemis Racing.

The Artemis boys looked sharp on the boat handling and quite fast as well. Lots of hard work by the whole team went into that. Very nice to see!

Tomorrow will start out with two Fleet Races then the Match Race semi finals which will see Artemis pitted against Energy of France..

I am off to California tomorrow to attend my daughter Allie