Greetings yachties,

The hard wing sail on BMWOracle generated more height and speed than the soft sailed Alingh1 5. As we build up to the 2nd race in just a few hours below is a collection of stories, video, comments and links to this outstanding display of sailing technology,

Enjoy

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Following a pattern established the past two race days, tomorrow’s scheduled Race 2 of the 33rd America’s Cup will be postponed shore side for two hours in the morning. That means no start will be held before 12:00. Alinghi heads into the contest looking to even the best-of-three series against Challenger BMW Oracle Racing at one race apiece.

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Tasker: Oracle makes stunning statement

The biggest problem with the 33rd America’s Cup has been trying to find words to describe sights that have rendered you speechless and the first race was no exception .

It was jaw-dropping, gobsmackingly amazing and ran contrary to all predictions.

Heading into the regatta there was a big list of firsts and unknowns; the first America’s Cup contested by multihulls, the first trimaran in BMWOracle Racing, and the first time either of these boats had actually raced.

The unknowns centred on how they would approach a match race, how maneuverable they would be, how aggressive Jimmy “Spitfire” Spithill would be at the helm of BMWOR and, of course, how comparatively fast they would be.

Race one provided all the answers with Spithill sailing to type in the start box. It was suggested he lined up Alinghi in the cross-hairs of the heads-up display on his glasses leaving owner-driver Ernesto Bertarelli with nowhere to go and a penalty next to the Swiss flag.

That BMWRO then fell into irons and allowed Alinghi to escape merely helped prolong the speed question and gave the answer added drama as Spithill climbed into the attack. After finally crossing the start line 1’27″ and 660 metres behind, the American boat ate up the discrepancy in little more than 12 minutes.

Higher and faster is every racing sailor’s desire and the margin of difference between the two boats induced more gobsmacked gasps. Pre-race banter had suggested the wingsail would work best into the wind with Alinghi’s configuration giving the Swiss boat the downwind advantage. That theory was knocked on its head after the top mark with Spithill able to drive the tri lower and faster. Game conclusively over.

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Harold Bennett (NZL) Race Director and Principal Race Officer: “ It was good to get the race away (yesterday) and at long last see the two giant multis battle it out. It was great.
On the start entry set up
“ Maybe it could have been modified a little different but it won’t be any different tomorrow because what we start with is what we’ll finish with. But not having had these boats before you don’t really know what the best formula would have been to do that. Now we have had one race we have actually had one pre-start with these boats, maybe it could have been a little different, but I am afraid it won’t be any different. So that’s that.”
On setting up the triangle course:
“ The triangle course, being only 13 miles to windward, is a little easier. You don’t have to look for the 20 miles of beautiful breeze coming down.”
“But the indicators are at the moment that we are going to see an offshore breeze overnight. It is going to die in the morning and flatten out the seas and eventually come in off the SE, and if that is the case. It will be light 6-8 knots. If that is the case we will be quite close to home here. We might be off Sagunto (12 miles north of Valencia) and so there should be the opportunity to see these boats off the shore. I hope that if the weather comes that way then we will do it that as much as practical.”

Mike Drummond (NZL) design director BMW ORACLE Racing:
“ I was a little surprised at our performance downwind, but not totally surprised. I have to say I was uncertain. I did not know how we would rank against them. I felt quite confident in stronger breezes and less confident in lighter breezes and honestly did not know the boundary between those. Yesterday was a very difficult sailing day with short puffs of wind strength and changes of wind direction. It certainly made sailing the boat quite difficult. The strength was obviously enough for us to gain a lead upwind and we probably got a little lucky downwind from the top mark, and carrying the breeze inshore and that probably exaggerated it somewhat.”
“ Even though we had tried to sort of crudely measure the performance of Alinghi, but we did not know it, and that is why I say there was some uncertainty. We had reasonable confidence we would be faster upwind.”

Rolf Vrolijk (NED) Chief Designer Alinghi (SUI):

“I think if we get conditions we would like to have, we probably can be competitive. We’re for sure hoping to see another race maybe in different conditions and anther setup of our boat and hopefully be competitive.”

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Paul Cayard

Well, we finally got some racing and it was completely different than all of us thought. At least upwind.

The start was exciting…we had a dial up and a penalty! We had it all! I have to say that was worth waiting for. These boats are spectacular!

After dial up and skillfully controlling much of the prestart, BMW Oracle looked like they got stuck head to wind with 30 seconds to go while Alinghi did a nice job to escape and win the start by more than a minute.

From there the two boats stayed on the port tack and were much more similar in speed than predicted. It looked to me like BMW Oracle had a bit of both….closer and faster…. upwind.

The Americans rounded the top mark in what looked like 8 knots of wind with a 3:21 lead. I think everyone was waiting for Alinghi to come roaring up from behind but the opposite happened and BMW stretched out to a comfortable win for race 1.

Alinghi’s back is against the wall now. They are slower in “their” conditions and on the windward leeward course. On Sunday, the boats will race the triangle course which will be more to the Americans liking than today’s course.

So it could be a pretty sweet Valentines Day for Mr. Ellison. But as they say, it is never over ’til it’s over and these boats are at the cutting edge of technology. Reliability is something the Americans will be increasing anyway they can in the next 40 hours.

I am off to Dubai for some RC 44 sailing with Artemis and Katusha and my Eurosport buddies are off to Vancouver. Two big Sundays in a row this February…Super Bowl the America’s Cup.

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Brad is not worrying about yesterday.

He gave that up yesterday, after tea.

He’s moved well beyond that.

Since there’s nothing Brad Butterworth (NZL) can do about BMWOracle Racing’s high-performance wing what he will be thinking about is how to pull a rabbit out of a hat.

And because Brad is thinking like Brad, everyone on USA (USA) should beware.

Brad will be thinking about competitive tactics, creating a dust up, and getting a great start.

He will be thinking about best side of the race course and pulling puff out of thin air, just like he always does.

He will be thinking about whatever gave his two-hulled boat the power to eat up two-hundred-plus meters on USA halfway up the outbound leg yesterday.

He will rethink sails.

He will, in the nicest possible way, be looking for a steady hand on the helm so sail trimmers can do their best.

He will, cannily, and typically, seek out every opportunity to get an edge.

If Brad can, Brad will force any issue on the water to cause frustration in the opponent’s camp.

He will not give up without a fight.

That is one thing we can be certain about.

Brad did not come here to lose.

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“We never had a chance to cross them, so it was just one of those things. We tried to get across them but couldn’t. When we realised that was the case we came up and tacked over and got a penalty. That was a bit surprising, but it didn’t have an impact on the race in the end,” said Butterworth.

Alinghi 5, with team president Ernesto Bertarelli at the helm, circled around the pin end and onto the race course for an early 1m27s lead, or approximately 660m. The catamaran held pace with the trimaran early, but eventually was overtaken. Alinghi was behind by 3m21s at the windward mark and 15m28s at the finish after performing a penalty turn for the pre-start infraction.

Looking forward to Sunday, Butterworth said: “As long as you’ve got a life you’ve got a chance. We will regroup and think about race two. Sunday’s race will be a different sort of race. We’ll see what conditions lend themselves. They looked pretty awesome upwind, and it was hard for us to hold them back. We’ll have our work cut out.”

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About that wing sail

The wing sail was a big part of the story yesterday, and in the days and weeks leading up to race one, the team had been briefing media about the USA and its unique sail. Team Communications Director Tim Jeffery contributed the following, about one of those briefings…

Members of the Swiss media pack got an unexpected treat earlier this week when they interviewed Russell Coutts at the team’s boatyard. Having asked their questions, which ranged from the AC33 race schedule to what USA is really like when she is let off the leash, they asked about trimaran’s 68m high wingsail.

Instead of a crisp answer, BMW ORACLE Racing’s chief executive ended up giving a thorough briefing about on the aerodynamic theory of the wingsail. Borrowing a notebook and a pen, Russell started sketching the cross section shape of the wingsail elements and flaps. He showed that by adjusting the aerofoil shapes and keeping the flow attached to the wingsail, it can be trimmed to literally ‘bend the wind’.

Leaning on his engineering education, Russell not only explained the fundamentals of aerodynamics, but did so with great clarity.  The enthusiasm he showed in his fascination with the science of sailboat gave Thomas Drayer (Le Matin), Walter Ruesegger (Neue Zurcher Zeitung) and Peter Herzog (Tages Anziger) an unexpected insight into one of the many reasons that’s enabled  Russell to win more America’s Cup races as skipper than anyone else.

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Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6 The Heat Is On

Part 7 The Final Count Down

Part 8 Just 2 More Sleeps

Part 9 The Dog Race

Part 10 1st Day After

Part 11 1st Race Take 2

Part 12 3rd Time Lucky

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Americas Cup_Deed_of_Gift

The first race of The Cup

Windfinder.com forecasts for Valencia here

wind directions

wave heights

The bloggers at Sailing Anarchy have a few more weather links to play with here

Sailing Anarchy Americas Cup Forums here

Valencia Sailing

Alinghi blog here

Alinghi TV here

Alinghi Friends here

Alinghi iphone app

Alinghi images here

Americas Cup TV here

BMWOracle blog here

BMWOracle Live Streaming here

33rd Americas Cup on twitter

33rd Americas Cup on facebook

33rd Americas Cup on RSS feed

33rd Americas Cup Photo Gallery

33rd Americas Cup Videos

There are many ways to keep up with all the action from the America’s Cup Match, whether you’re here with us in Valencia, or half a world away on your computer or mobile phone.

AMERICA’S CUP PARK – BIG SCREEN TELEVISION

The big screen television in the America’s Cup Park will be showing live-action from the race course, along with features, packaged programmes, and highlights.

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ON TELEVISION

Through the agreements with the European Broadcasting Union, which reaches 56 territories and has an audience of over 650 million and, globally, with Sports News TV spanning 160 territories, broadcasting to over 1.4 billion people and also with Transworld Sport with a global audience of over 302 million, the America’s Cup News packages are assured of a massive international audience of over 2 billion viewers.

Among the broadcasters are Great Britain’s BSkyB, TVE/Teledeporte and Canal 9 in Spain, French based Eurosport and Showtime in the Middle East. Broadcasters will take all of the America’s Cup output, including the 26 minutes race day Highlights package, Race News package as well as the 52 minutes summary wrap up programme at the end of the event.

A full listing will be available soon.

ON-LINE

WWW.AMERICASCUP.COM

The official America’s Cup website keeps you posted with news reports, feature stories, videos and pictures and all the official information of the 33rd America’s Cup in English, Spanish and French

LIVE VIDEO STREAMING

For the first time in the history of the America’s Cup, races will be broadcast live free of charge on www.americascup.com. Video feed will be supplemented (in French and Spanish) with a Live Ticker animated by the best sailing experts

Amended Sailing Instructions

Published 6th February 2010

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