Day 4 of Match Sailing Provides Confirmations

Oracle whipped Stars&Stripes (01:58). Alinghi did much the same to LR (01:32). Dennis Conner's boat is a good notch behind, and since it beat LR...

Luna Rossa must face the facts. The are consistent and bad. It is simply slower windward. Some leeward advantage, maybe, but you cannot use it is the gap is so great at the first marker. The only remaining hope is that some serious work is going on on the second boat.

The other worrying factor for Luna Rossa are Doug Peterson's comments after being fired. He stated that a strategic choice was made to arrive later in Auckland; they wanted to spend more time on design. This is rather different than in 99-2000 when the Prada crew spent a lot of advance time in Hauraki Bay - and we know what results they achieved then.

Le Défi had a winning match race against Wight Lightning (whose name certainly does not refelct its relative speed, given the comparison to the French boat), but had a penalty to execute. The strategy was to execute it around the finish line marker - and it almost paid off. The Brits cut the line barely 3 seconds in front.

Finally Örn won its race against Mascalzone Latino. But not in decisive manner as one expected. In fact, leeward the rascals showed some signs of superiority. Only an execution error on the final marker, leading to the main sail's scanting its own spinnaker, did not allow a reduction of the final 00:35 gap.

If Mascalzone can raise its level a notch and beat LR in its next race, the Tsunami over Luna Rossa will be complete.