Cup Spy – Day 28: America’s Cup Match – Day 2

Cup Spy – Day 28: America’s Cup Match – Day 2 – Drama and Trouble

by Richard Gladwell, Sail-World NZ Oct 13 3:06pm BST
October 14, 2024

The America’s Defender continued its tireless march to the America’s Cup title with a third victory in as many races on Sunday in Barcelona.

The Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron team survived a day that brought both drama and trouble.

While many pundits were quick to dismiss New Zealand skipper Peter Burling’s match racing abilities, he has shown a very daring approach to this regatta so far and is yet to lose a start to the Royal Yacht Squadron’s Challenger.

Emirates Team New Zealand has never made a secret of what its management described as a “brutal” post-regatta record after the 2021 America’s Cup in Auckland, where the Italian challenger took the Defender to three wins each after six races looks like the cup could have gone to Sardinia. The review attributed much of the “blame” to an initial sub-par performance by the sailing team, despite having a boat that team management believed was definitely faster than the Challenger.

The difference lay largely in the skills of starting helmsman Jimmy Spithill and coach Philippe Presti, who used the playbook they employed to devastating effect in the 2013 America’s Cup, sailing for the Golden Gate Yacht Club and their team Oracle Racing , dusted off .

In Barcelona, ​​it was only at the Challenger Final of the Louis Vuitton Cup that we saw the meeting of two of sailing’s titans, Jimmy Spithill and Ben Ainslie – who ironically sailed together on Oracle Racing in 2013, but just a decade later they entered the starting box from opposite sides . Ainslie looked to be in top form in this series and clearly got the better of his former captain.

Much of this is probably thanks to British trainer, lawyer, rules expert and seven-time match race world champion Ian Williams, who was still seething with anger when asked to describe the controversial incident before the start of today’s race.

The altercation on the start line occurred 70 seconds before takeoff (easily verified on Virtual Eye) when Emirates Team New Zealand drifted away on the starboard bow (away from the direction of the wind). The British at the harbor (the yielding boat) responded with the same maneuver, which put the boats on a collision course. As they slid sideways together, their wing arms almost touched each other, resulting in an incident that would have been very serious if the two wing wings had been locked.

Both boats protested. Williams and INEOS Britannia felt that Emirates Team New Zealand was “chasing” the British who wanted to give in, but felt that the Kiwis changed course in such a way that the British were forced to make a more serious change of course than it did otherwise the case would have been the case. As for the Kiwis, they were on the right of way and it was up to the port side boat to keep clear.

It was clear from the computer recording from the referee’s stand that there was an overlap between the virtual boats and someone had to be penalized for not staying clear – which is usually a violation of the right-of-way boat.

Williams is a man who takes his match racing seriously. One of his pieces of advice to the INEOS Britannia crew is: “Never put a decision in the hands of the referees.” A reference to the belief of many top sailors that you never really know what a referee decision will be and that the best strategy is to do so is to outwit your opponent, get a good start, get to the top and stay there.

He seemed genuinely surprised that Burling and his friends had pushed the incident to the point where the referees had to make a decision based on the relative position of two virtual boats on a computer screen.

The result of the incident was that INEOS Britannia were awarded a 75 meter penalty which they did well to fend off whilst maintaining the attack on the Kiwis. However, on a course that the British claimed favored one side, it was never going to work out – making it easy to defend the lead, and the outcome of the race was once again decided in favor of the boat that finished in Mark 1 First lay.

This one-sided regatta marked at least the 13th consecutive race, and the boat that was first around Mark 1 won the race.

After the race there was an exchange between INEOS Britannia skipper Ben Ainslie and lead commentator Steven McIvor after Ainslie made an exception to a post-race question and Ainslie then, perhaps unaware that his microphone was still active, asked McIvor called a “f**king w**ker” as he climbed out of the starboard helmsman’s cockpit at the end of the short but funny interview.

Ainslie’s reaction was perhaps unsurprising, given the tenor of some of the insensitive questions directed at losing captains at critical points in this series.

Most people bit their lip, but not on this occasion.

During the crews’ debriefing, on several occasions the breeze failed to reach the minimum required strength and appeared to die down as predicted, and after several delayed start times, the race was canceled for the day. In the on-camera debriefing, Briton, double Olympic gold medalist and now sailing director, Giles Scott said: “We were told the breeze would drop off a cliff at around 3.30pm.” And that’s exactly what happened.

On Monday there will be an attempt to sail a race starting at 2:10 p.m. CET.

The overnight break and a day off on Tuesday will deepen INEOS Britannia’s thinking about how they can reverse the Kiwis’ advance up the leaderboard. Giles Scott says there needs to be a “momentum shift” and his gut feeling was that the gap the British needed to close was not that big. Given that we’ve only seen four races so far and one in the round-robin phase of the Louis Vuitton Cup, there are some issues with how the performance data is presented. Firstly, INEOS Britannia appears to be slower than the Kiwis at the end of a turnaround. In the round robin race this was a significant amount in light winds and from the reviewed data from Saturday’s race it now appears to be much closer to the Kiwis, but the trend was still there.

Looking at “Speed ​​over the Ground” once again showed that the Kiwis have the advantage. However, by combining a few graphs – speed over ground and actual wind speed and direction, measured with the AC75s – it seemed obvious that the British were superior at detecting wind shifts and pressure increases or jumping into puddles as they moved along the course. The conclusion was that the British experienced an increase in wind speed when they had a speed difference that was not reflected in the ETNZ data. This can also be picked up in the onboard conversations on the British boat – especially in the final series against Luna Rossa.

Race 3: INEOS Britannia (GBR) (port start box entry) vs Emirates Team New Zealand (NZL) (starboard start box entry) Start: 2.10pm CET Start:

Grade 1: 05 min. 17 sec. NZL leads GBR by 19 sec
Grade 2: 09 min. 33 sec. NZL leads GBR by 27 seconds
Grade 3: 15 minutes 16 seconds. NZL led GBR by 32 seconds. Grade 4: 19 minutes 15 seconds. NZL led GBR by 33 seconds
Grade 5: 24 min. 00 sec. NZL leads GBR by 43 sec
Goal: 27 minutes and 06 seconds. NZL led GBR by 52 seconds

INEOS Britannia Dockwalk

“Clouds” in today’s weather forecast – what he tells Emirates Team NZ: www.facebook.com/EmiratesTeamNZ/videos/856692886587974

Course location:

Weather forecast:

America’s Cup weather partner PredictWind has launched a dedicated Race Weather Center, giving fans access to detailed daily weather reports, live webcams and historical weather data, as well as daily weather reports written by meteorologists.

Current forecast for race day 28:

Predictions for Sunday from Arnaud Monges, former meteorologist for the America’s Cup team

Sunday, October 13th

Winds of 5 to 10 knots are expected from the east in the afternoon, along with calm seas. The sky, which was still overcast in the morning, should partially clear in the afternoon and temperatures will rise to up to 24 degrees Celsius.

America’s Cup Race Schedule – Races 3 and 4: Sunday, October 13, 2024

• Race 3: INEOS Britannia (GBR) (port start box entry) vs Emirates Team New Zealand (NZL) (starboard start box entry) Start: 2.10pm CET
• Race 4: Emirates Team New Zealand (port start box entry) vs. INEOS Britannia (GBR) (starboard start box entry) Start: 15:15 CET

Virtual eye

After the race, you can replay key points or the entire race using ARL’s Virtual Eye. This is the tool that Inside Tack uses to demonstrate various points – using the actual routes of the AC75.

You can go directly to Virtual Eye’s America’s Cup coverage by clicking here, clicking “Watch Previous” and then selecting the race you want to watch. Virtual Eye is a 3D viewer that allows you to zoom in and out, around, and up and down like you would in a helicopter.

Crew lists –

Additional images:

Live coverage of the race – Louis Vuitton America’s Cup – Day 2 of Match 37 – October 13, 2024.