Louis Vuitton Trophy-Auckland
Light winds held the start of the first match of the day back until 1415. The first two matches were sailed in a light northwesterly wind. At the finish of that second match, the wind did a 180 degree turn and came in from the south at about 5-8 knots for the last two matches.
On Artemis, we were in the third match of the day, so the first one in the southerly wind. We were up against the home team, Emirates Team New Zealand. We wanted the left at the start and our helmsman, Terry Hutchinson did a nice job of getting it for us. The Kiwis lived to windward of us off the line, on starboard tack, but soon the current advantage that we had on the left started working for us and we forced them off to the right. We stretched a bit more to the left and tacked. The Kiwis had a private lift for the first three minutes of the port tack and that ate up our lead. Then the wind shifted 20 degrees right and they tacked and crossed us. Then when the got to our left, the wind went left 25 degrees. Pretty amazing really. Anyway, we reeled them in on the run to round the gate one boat length behind. They tacked immediately to go to the left and this time the left was good and they went on to win easily. Not a lot of fun but that is just one race.
In the other matches, All4One led Mascalzone Latino all the way around the course, Azzurra beat Team Origin after Origin led at the first mark, and in the final race, the French Team Aleph beat the Russian team of Synergy. The Russians controlled the start for 4:45 of the 5 minutes, but just at in the last 10 seconds, a mistake by the Russians in their final approach let the French cross clear ahead on port tack to take the start. Synergy kept it close until the gate when they had some problems dropping their spinnaker and the French got a very comfortable lead.
Tomorrow’s forecast is for a bit better wind, so maybe we will get underway closer to the scheduled 1000 starting time. Artemis is in the final match of the day, the 4th, and we will be racing the French team Aleph.
For complete results or for live streaming of the racing and other features go to www.louisvuittontrophy.com
