Louis Vuitton Trophy – Nice, France

One win and one loss for Artemis again today. The bad news is that Synergy beat Azzurra so that ended our hopes of being in the top four and going onto the semi finals.

Artemis beat French Spirit PagesJaune in our first race of the day. There was a 6 tack tacking duel up the first windward leg and an interesting obstacle in the form of Azzurra and Synergy coming downwind on starboard tack. All four boats got very close at one moment and we lost the tight grip we had on the French while keeping clear of the starboard tack boats coming downwind. But we managed to maintain control and lead around the top mark and stretched from there. Synergy locked that match with Azzurra, when the Italians spinnaker exploded on the final run to the finish.

In our final match of the second Round Robin, we faced BMW Oracle. We got the right side of the course that we wanted off the start. This gave us starboard tack right of way at each intersection as the boats come together about 10 times up the first 1.5 mile beat. On the last one, BMW Oracle was able to live to windward of us on port tack and pin us out to the starboard tack lay line. We had to follow them into the windward mark and we never got a chance to take back the lead.

So, we ended the two round robins (shortened round robin 2) with a 5-6 record and finished in 5th place, BMW Oracle 6th, All4One 7th and French Spirit PagesJaune 8th. The four of us will race a knockout series later in the week to determine our final placings.

There is still one more match to be raced in round robin 2 which will take place tomorrow and pits Synergy against Team New Zealand.

Wednesday will be a maintenance day and starting Thursday the top four will race there best of three semi finals series.

For complete results go to www.louisvuittontrophy.com.

Also please visit the Artemis team site www.artemisracing.com.