Louis Vuitton Trophy – Nice, France

Today was the first day of racing for the Louis Vuitton Trophy-Nice. The concept is very simple really and that is why it works so well. Four America’s Cup Class yachts are used and eight teams are racing. The format is match racing. So the teams rotate through the boats and their opponents, until they have raced each competitor twice, in Round Robins 1 and 2. Then the top four boats go onto a semi final and the top two from there go onto the final. There are other consolation series for those eliminated, so that keeps everyone racing pretty much until the end, which is Saturday November 22.

Today the winds were light and only two flights were completed. In the first flight, Emirates Team New Zealand beat French Spirit – Pages Jaunes and in the second Team Origin beat Synergy. On Artemis, were slated to race All4One in the fourth match but the wind did not allow us to get that far. The other two teams are Azzurra and BMW Oracle. The latter pair were nearly finished when the time limit ran out as the wind died during their race. Azzurra was leading comfortably.

Tomorrow the racing continues and we are the second match of the day so we should get one in.

I will fill you in with more information as the two weeks go on about where the boats came from and the other teams. I just flew in this morning, so going to keep this one short.

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

A demain.