Racing Against the Equipment

Today's racing was not fully completed, again. Gusts from an incoming storm delayed the start of flight 4 of racing. But that was not all. Various teams suffered breakage during the flight 3 races - racing was conducted very near the 19 knot limit and it appears that boat design followed the parameters really closely...

LR, after a bad choice of course at the start, gradually pulled away from Le Défi, although the French team looks much more competitive windward. ML improved somewhat against Alinghi, but in no manner to worry the swiss-come-kiwi team. The same applies to Wight Lightning facing oneWorld.

The Swedish entry, boat 2 called Örm, had a good day. They were superior to Stars&Stripes and survived the breakage of the snap-hook for the free spinnaker halyard on the last leeward leg. They also unsurprisingly beat ML in the only Flight 4 race held.

S&S's plight is nasty. They called for damage assessment as their race against Oracle was to start, thus pushing the departure past the 16:00 limit start time. Probably an astute mechanism for buying time. But the plight also aided LR and Le Défi who had earlier announced damage (LR almost immediately after their race declared winch damage).

We were expecting that both LR and LeDéfi would see their opponent race alone, but the race was simply postponed. More double racing tomorrow with Alinghi being LR's big challenge.