Louis Vuitton Trophy – Auckland

Louis Vuitton Trophy – Auckland – Finals

Mar 20th 2010
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Sorry about the blank look on the home page, mothership updated the wordpress to the latest version and it looks like a piece of code is missing from the backend of the site, mothership is working with the wordpress guys to try and sort the problem. In the meantime enjoy my little collection of Louis Vuitton Trophy final.

Greetings yachties,

The Louis Vuitton Trophy has been won by Emirates Team New Zealand, below is a collection of all the best links, stories, lies and video of the Louis Vuitton Trophy Auckland New Zealand 9 – 21 March 2010

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Waitemata Harbour to host America’s Cup boats

Auckland, dubbed the City of Sails for its huge sailing fraternity, hosted two hugely popular America’s Cup Matches in 2000 and 2003. Auckland also hosted the Louis Vuitton Pacific Series in February 2009, which gave rise to the WSTA and Louis Vuitton Trophy.

Sailed in former America’s Cup boats, the Louis Vuitton Trophy Auckland is the second of five match race regattas.

Part of the Auckland Festival of Sail organized by Emirates Team New Zealand, the Louis Vuitton event will overlap with the Auckland International Boat Show. The two Cup boats will race on New Zealand’s Waitemata Harbor and dock in the heart of the Viaduct Basin on the quayside adjacent to Aucklanders’ favourite restaurants and wine bars, providing an unprecedented opportunity for spectators to view boat preparation and the departures and arrivals of the teams each day.

more here

Results

Image Gallery

Video Gallery

The Sailing Teams

Latest News here

Live Racing here

Radio Live Sport here

Louis Vuitton Trophy TV here

Virtual Eye Live Racing here on SailTV

Emirates Team New Zealand

The days racing videos here

Race Day One – Running commentary

Cup Talk on Crew.org

Chatter on Sailing Anarchy here

Emirates Team New Zealand Wins Louis Vuitton Trophy Auckland

Racing under the colours of the host Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron, Emirates Team New Zealand won the Louis Vuitton Trophy Auckland regatta Sunday.

The Kiwi boat extended on every leg of the deciding five-mile race off Auckland’s East Coast Bays against the Mascalzone Latino Audi team representing Club Nautico di Roma, which is the Challenger of Record for the 34th America’s Cup.

Emirates won the first race yesterday, and with their second victory today they went 2-0 in the Finals, which race officials shortened to a best-of-three contest due to light and uncertain winds.

Right after the finish, the normally controlled and contained Emirates skipper Dean Barker had a broad smile on his face as he soaked his veteran team with champagne from a jeroboam of Moët et Chandon, not even sparing an event photographer who had climbed aboard for the occasion.

On their way to the finals, Emirates survived by one second a heart-stopping last-minute penalty turn in their match against Azzurra, the other Italian team. Today they left no doubts with a composed and clinical performance that only saw them threatened once.

Ashore after racing it was a flashback to the glory days of the America’s Cups of 2000 and 2003, as crowds thronged the quayside in the Viaduct Basin and spectators crowded every vantage point on the moored boats and surrounding balconies.

Horns, sirens, cheers and applause greeted the Mascalzone Latino Audi boat as it docked at Market Square, its crew brandishing a giant banner that read “Thank you New Zealand.” The Emirates boat arrived to more applause, flying a gigantic New Zealand blue ensign plus smaller national flags of all the competing countries.

Before presenting the Louis Vuitton Trophy, Yves Carcelle, chairman and CEO of Louis Vuitton, congratulated Dean Barker, his team, and all the competing teams on the quality of their racing. “Now I hope the Cup will revive. In the meantime, we have seen in the last few days an amazing sport competition. The fact that the boats are equalized means that it was all up to the teams and one more time, Team New Zealand has proved its domination.”

After the strong south-westerly winds that have characterized much of the regatta and forced the postponement of some races, there was a two-hour wait for wind today as the spectator fleet built in size. Racing started at noon at the mouth of the Rangitoto Channel in a warm and shifty 10 to 12-knot westerly breeze.

Barker wanted the right side of the course before the start. Gavin Brady, the Kiwi skipper of ML Audi, wanted the left, and the pre-start was uneventful as they split away, even before they crossed the line. Brady’s tactician Morgan Larson said later that they realized in the last minutes before the gun that the right was favored but they had no option but to follow their game plan.

The left finally paid off in the closing stages of the first leg, pulling the visitors back into the game. As they closed, Emirates chose to tack short of the port tack ML Audi, only to be carried out beyond the starboard tack layline by the aggressive Italians.

Brady had his opportunity to level the score and the boats were bow to stern as Emirates led around the weather mark. The Kiwi spinnaker blossomed instantaneously in a slick set the Italians couldn’t match. Just as swiftly, Emirates gybed over into the favoring left shift, catching the Italians flat-footed. Within seconds the home team enjoyed a four-boat length lead, one they never relinquished. The finish margin was 53 seconds.

“On the first beat, it didn’t look as though the right was going to come in early enough for us and it was amazing how the pressure came in and we had enough to be strong,” Barker said. “The guys did an amazing job. The first downwind was the key moment for us . . . to get the early gybe away and make a little gain there.”

Noting that his team had lost two races in the two weeks, Barker added: “It’s always satisfying when you feel that you’re sailing your best on the last day, and today we were sailing really well.”

Morgan Larson acknowledged the flawless performance of the New Zealand team. “We got a little bit of a miscommunciation in the back of the boat at the weather mark and I’ll hold my hand up for that one,” he said. “If we’d gybed with them, we’d have been right on their tail.”

The overall results are:

1. Emirates Team New Zealand, New Zealand

2. Mascalzone Latino Audi, Italy

3. Azzurra, Italy

4. Artemis, Sweden

5. All4One, Germany/France

6. TEAMORIGIN, Great Britain

7. ALEPH Sailing Team, France

8. Synergy Russian Sailing Team, Russia

more here

Louis Vuitton Trophy home page here

Home team wins first race in Louis Vuitton Trophy finals

Emirates Team New Zealand pulled off two key victories today, first winning match point in a Semi-Final race and then prevailing in the first Finals race of the Louis Vuitton Trophy Auckland regatta.

The host team will continue its best-of-five match in the Finals tomorrow, racing against the Mascalzone Latino Audi team representing Club Nautico di Roma, which is the Challenger of Record for the America’s Cup.

Racing started in the approaches to the Rangitoto Channel off Auckland’s East Coast beaches in the early afternoon, after a long wait for an uncertain sou-west breeze to fill-in and settle. The shifty breeze was moderate all day, ranging between 10 and 14 knots.

Emirates and Azzurra were 1-1, after the Kiwi’s nail-biter one second win on Friday. There was plenty at stake. The Italian team won the Louis Vuitton Trophy Nice last November, beating Emirates. The host Kiwi team had won the Louis Vuitton Pacific Series event in Auckland last year and they were aiming for a repeat victory.

Emirate’s skipper Dean Barker wanted the right side of the course and, with the starboard entry, he wielded the advantage with clinical detachment.

“It wasn’t easy that’s for sure,” Barker said. “Conditions aren’t exactly even or stable, it keeps you on the edge of your toes all the time. But it felt very controlled from our guys. The nice thing is the composure of our guys, which we’ve really been working hard on. Even though things got tight at times, the guys kept doing their job well.”

With their Finals berth safe, the Emirates team enjoyed a break until they returned to race Mascalzone Latino Audi. It proved to be a nail-biter for their Kiwi fans.

Barker pulled off a come-from-behind victory after conceding the lead at the second mark. In the pre-start, the New Zealanders came within centimetres of a penalty as they tacked away from ML Audi’s Gavin Brady but the incident was green-flagged by the umpires. Brady took the lead at the second leeward mark only to concede it when Barker split away on the windward leg and got back ahead.

Emirates Team New Zealand Managing Director Grant Dalton, who also sails on the boat, summed up the day. “I think the bottom line is that we can still sail a lot better. We have to just keep working at it. It tends to click eventually,” Dalton said. “Brady is a bit more aggressive, he came close to copping a couple of penalties today on the start, one I thought was pretty close on the edge. But that’s up to Dean, he deals with it all the time. The whole thing is a bit disjointed because you’re not flowing, week on week on week. So you can’t expect to be going at the normal rate of incremental improvement every day. But we’ve got to be reasonably happy at the moment, going one-up in the final.”

more here