Louis Vuitton Trophy – Nice, France

No racing for Artemis today as the wind only lasted until 11:00. The first flight got their racing in with Emirates Team New Zealand beating Synergy (RUS) on a come from behind win right at the finish and Azzurra beating BMW Oracle.

The wind was fickle at best for the only race of the day. Synergy lead the whole way around the course but on the last run, as they approached the finish line, the sailed into a hole of no wind just 300 meters from the finish line. Emirates Team New Zealand who were more than 10 boat lengths behind at that point, got a private puff of wind from behind and enough speed going to coast through the windless hole and win the race. Heartbreaker for the Russians, as they had sailed well.

In the other match, Azzurra had the lead the whole race and despite the race being crazy in terms of wind direction, they managed it all well and won fairly easily. This was a bit of justice for Azzurra as on Saturday, they led the whole race against BMW Oracle only to have the time limit expire when they were just 100 meters from the finish.

We got in our boat, Mascalzone 90, and began to train before our start. But as the race committee prepared for the starting sequence the wind died completely and never returned. I was up the mast in my new position and took a couple of photos to try to give you an idea of the perspective from 100 feet up. It is like being in a helicopter. In the one looking straight down the forestay, what you see is my legs, the black flat thing are the top of the top spreaders holding up the mast. Then you see the boat way down at the bottom and those little red dots are the hats on the guys heads.

If all goes well tomorrow with the wind, we will race 3 out of the four flights. Let’s hope for wind!

For complete results and even live streaming of the races go to www.louisvuittontrophy.com and the team’s site www.artemisracing.com.