Artikel-Schlagworte: „San Diego“

A great fight back keeps us on top of the series

 Coach Rod Davis  blogs on the last day’s racing

It was windy on the final day at San Diego. Well 17-18 knots and that is windy for San Diego.  We had two speed trials before the one winner-take-all fleet race.

In the first speed run, we opted for the code zero, but it was just a little tight and windy, so only posted the fourth fastest time.  On the second run, we changed to the jib and had the then fastest run of the day.  It comes down to having nice pull for the 40 seconds that it takes to run the course.  Translation: luck.   We ended up third.

(I should note here that after three of these America’s Cup World Series regattas, Emirates Team New Zealand is still leading the combined standings one point ahead of Oracle 4)

For the big race, deciding whether to use the code zero or the gennaker.  The gennaker is bigger and while not faster thought the water, it allows the boat to sail lower at the same speed.  So faster to a mark that is down wind.

The downside about the gennaker is that it takes a long time to pull in on a set or gybing.  The code zero sheets in quickly and the boat takes off..  Big gains to be made with the zero in the manoeuvres  even if it gives away some VMG.  The wind was right on the cross-over.  We opted to match our competition and ran with the zero..

The start was great. We led at the first two marks and then things started to go bad.We lost five boats up the next beat and rounded the top mark in 6^th maybe 7^th.  This morning the objective was to be in the top three.  Funny though, that idea leaves your head as soon as you’re leading.  Like a switch is thrown nothing but a win is good enough.

The boys battled back to finish second, a good effort.  Done by passing boats at a rate of one or two a leg.  I can’t help thinking all the what ifs of the third leg.

Pack up fever is in full swing now.  Boats and wings being taken apart and everything going in five 40 foot containers.  I had better help Daggy with the sails.

COACH

Race ready and still on top of the standings

Podium finish at San Diego

Coach Rod Davis blogs on Saturday’s race

One of the hardest things to do in yacht racing is to turn a bad day around.

Lose the first two races of the day in a match-racing regatta and you are very much at risk of falling into a flaming tail spin. So re-grouping is easier said than done. It is rarely one thing, but lots of little things that will turn it around.

Today, we did manage to come out race ready.  The boys sailed really well. There was more intensity, they were much more in tune with wind and we got a great start from Dean Barker.

That translated into a 39sec win over Artemis and a third place overall in the San Diego match racing championships. Third place was enough for us to retain our first place at the top of the ACWS match racing standing after three regattas.

Jimmy Spithill racing Oracle 4 – the match racing winner at San Diego – is second on the overall standings with 26 points.  Artemis is third on 23 and Team Korea fourth on 20.

If Grant Dalton reminded me once, he reminded me a dozen times: “This the first time we have NOT been in the finals of a regatta.”

It was his way of drilling into me that we were under-performing.  Of course you don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to know we had an off-day yesterday.  But in a strange way, Dalton made me smile. Imagine that. Emirates Team New Zealand has been in every final they have entered for the last six years.  That is a record that will stand for a while.  I just wonder how it has taken so long for us to miss out.

Tomorrow is the winner-takes-all fleet race.  We will be ready.

COACH

Through to the semis at San Diego

Interesting race course in San Diego …. here we are racing against thea clock

Emirates Team New Zealand tactician Ray Davies blogs on Day 1 of the America’s Cup World Series at San Diego.

Today’s plan was simple enough. Be consistent and make sure we were in the top three at the end of today’s fleet racing to ensure we went straight through to the match racing semi-finals.

We succeeded as it turned out, but not without some unplanned difficulty brought about by the failure of the gennaker halyard locking system.

It happened in the first race. And with the speed they turn these races around there was no time to fix it between races.

Consequently we had the halyard on a winch for the entire day. That sounds simple enough but it meant I had my head down trying to get tension on the halyard and not keeping an eye on lay lines and helping out with tactics.

Hoists and dropping the zero were really interesting…. but we battled through and finishing one point off the lead overall was a good result.

Today we had three fleet races, scoring a second and a third in the first and second races and a come-from-behind fifth in the third. We had a really bad start in race 3, when Oracle 4 failed to keep clear.

Oracle 4 copped a penalty but we were last off the line and had to fight all the way for a respectable result.

So no racing for us tomorrow. We’ll be out on the water as usual. There’s still A lot of racing in this regatta.

Results and news from today’s racing.

So far so good or maybe too good

So far, so good.  May be too good.

The first two days of the Port Cities Challenge, in San Diego are done and dusted.  A practice regatta for the big show, as the points don’t carry forward to the rest of the America’s Cup World Series.

Rod Davis…not normally a superstitious man

Superstition has it that winning the practice regatta is bad luck.  Let’s hope not, at least this time.

A win for Emirates Team New Zealand should not have been in the cards. The sailing team got to San Diego the evening before the first race, after a 12-hour flight and three-hour drive to, and then down the west coast of California.

It was not an ideal build up, especially as the other teams had been sailing for quite a few days.  The game plan was to knock the rust off and be “good to go” by Wednesday when the real racing starts.  But there you go, sailboat racing is unpredictable.  Expect the un-expected.

Why did we win? By and large we started well, had decent speed, and a few breaks fall our way.  We realise and acknowledge the teams that did the training, have improved noticeably from Plymouth, and that would be all the other teams.

Still, if we improve with each day, we should be able to neutralise the lack of time sailing on the Bay.   Still winning the practice regatta…… all my years with the Italians has made be superstitious

On a personal note it a good feeling to see your children succeed.  Hannah works for the race management of ACWS.  Many of the boys say the race management works for her.  Certainly her organisational and people skills are working well for her (something Hannah got from her mother!) What is the bit disconcerting is the power shift.  America’s Cup is my world, Hannah has only been in it tiny fraction of time, yet Hannah is no longer my daughter….I am her Dad…..  The power shift is complete.

ROD

The never-ending quest for better-performing sails

Burns Fallow, head of the sail programme, blogs from the design office

Burtns Fallow

Although there are still nearly two years until the America’s Cup, there is plenty happening in the design department’s “sail world”.

On recent days, we have worked on four different programmes (Volvo, AC45, SL33 and America’s Cup). We are one of the few departments that “touches” all the different activities going on in the team at the moment.

In the Volvo we are working on the first replacement sails to be delivered to Cape Town. The Volvo rule is very restrictive on the number of sails that can be used in the race, but in some instances we are on to our fourth generation of a particular sail type (starting from when we launched the boat in April).  We are still learning flat out, and one of the tricks in the Volvo is continuing to improve performance.  We are looking forward to seeing the guys come home to Auckland in March.

The AC45 guys headed out to San Diego over the weekend for the third build-up event.  We have had to build only one new sail for this event, as the others are still in pretty good condition, and we are expecting pretty light conditions in San Diego – although from what I can remember from 1995, it can be pretty cold in November.

Our SL33s are test boats for the larger AC72. The SL33s have their own sail programme and it is a delight to work with such “sensible” sized sails.  I have just completed a couple of designs for these boats today and emailed the design to the 3DL plant in Nevada.  These will be on the water in early December.

That of course leaves the AC72 boat, which will not sail until the middle of next year.  However one thing I have noticed in this campaign is how integrated and inter-dependant every area of design is.  As we learn a bit about one area of design, it may affect work we have already done.  Therefore although we will not sail the AC72 for several months yet, we are well advanced in our sail and wing design program.

Just one point separates the top four boats, with Emirates Team New Zealand on top of the fleet after the first day of racing. Artemis Racing is on equal points with the Kiwis, with China Team and ORACLE Racing Coutts just one point back. The Chinese won race two – their first win in the AC World Series.

The light conditions only permitted two of the three scheduled races to be sailed, but both featured plenty of drama, despite the slower speeds. In fact, the fickle winds provided countless opportunities for heroic shifts up the leaderboard in race one, as the race course became a minefield for the tacticians.

Two teams to benefit late in Saturday’s first race were Artemis Racing and Emirates Team New Zealand, who both shot up the race course in the final moments, coming back from deep in the fleet. The Swedish Artemis Racing won the race with the Kiwis in second place, ahead of ORACLE Racing Spithill – who had led much of the race – and ORACLE Racing Coutts, with new skipper Darren Bundock at the helm.

“It was tough,” said Kiwi skipper Dean Barker. “The first race we were pretty fortunate to hook into a nice pressure line of wind at the end. It’s swings and roundabouts, but if you get the last one right it’s a good feeling. In the second one we sailed a much better race.”

After waiting for the wind to build, the second race was sailed on a shorter race course. ORACLE Racing Spithill and Team Korea jumped the start line and were penalized, while China Team sailed a flawless race to earn the win – their best finish to date in the America’s Cup World Series.

“That’s our first win,” confirmed China Team skipper Charlie Ogletree. “It’s a great feeling. We’ve been working hard and I think the whole team deserves it, from shore team to management, to everyone. It’s huge. Everyone has been doing double duty, working really hard, so it’s a very positive thing for us.”

Despite the weather conditions, local fans braved the rain to gather at the end of Broadway Pier where the race boats ventured in just a few yards from the dock to make their turn around one of the marks of the course. The racing was up close and very personal for spectators on the dock.

The Port Cities Challenge continues on Sunday with three additional fleet races scheduled. Representatives from the member cities will be aboard the race boats on Sunday. The event culminates with a public prize-giving ceremony at the AC Village following racing.

ORACLE Racing proved to be the masters of Lake Traunsee winning the 2011 RC44 Austria Cup.

Their score line said it all, three firsts, three seconds out of the nine races sailed, and only one race outside of the top five. Steve Howe (USA) is currently campaigning on the Melges 32 circuit, but has enjoyed his first outing with the RC44’s. “It feels really good to win, great place, great venue, the team did a nice job and Russell (Coutts) did a great job of getting us around the course. It’s the first time I’ve sailed on the boat, there are a few guys on the team I’ve sailed with before on other boats but not like this, it was a lot of fun.”

Team Aqua (GBR) took second place, one place better than in San Diego two months ago in their old boat, Chris Bake was the first owner to come onto RC44 circuit in 2007 and was pleased with their weeks work in Austria. “I think getting out there and sailing a new boat and having the consistency that we had was great. There were a few missed opportunities and that probably cost us first place but ORACLE Racing sailed unbelievably and they deserve the position they got. We got a good second and so I’m really happy, the team has done a phenomenal job pulling the boat together, the boat felt good, so now it’s just a matter of improving on that.”

From last place in San Diego, to a podium place in Austria, the Dutch team, No Way Back, finished the only race of the day in fourth place with their main competition, CEEREF (SLO), four places behind to hand them third place. Guest tactician for the event was 27-year-old Tom Slingsby (AUS). “Third overall is a great result, the team has got loads of talent on board and I’m sure they will get better at every event from now on. Hopefully I will get asked back at some point in the future, but for now I have an Olympic Laser campaign going on so that’s my main priority and I want to do well in London next year.”

Hugues Lepic and his French Aleph Sailing Team, placed second in the final race of the event. It took the team up to fifth overall, an excellent start to their new RC44 campaign. “We are very pleased with the results and have really enjoyed the event. It wasn’t perfect and there is plenty more we can do, but we think this is just one event and we will see what happens in the other events to come.”

The Tour now heads to Cagliari in Sardinia (29 June – 3 July). Michele Ivaldi (ITA), tactician on CEEREF will be the local and is expecting some excellent sailing conditions. “Cagliari has great sea breeze’s all the time and when the mistral comes its game on!”

As for the RC44 Championship Tour standings – after two events ORACLE Racing take the lead, Team Aqua move up to second with Katusha (RUS) falling two places to third. The biggest mover is No Way Back, up from eleventh to fifth – we will wait to see who they will bring out as their secret weapon in Cagliari with Tom Slingsby away focusing on his Olympic campaign.

Article source: http://www.rc44.com/news/view/oracle_racing_victorious_at_the_rc44_austria_cup

On a day that started with blue skies and light winds, and ended with the fleet of RC44’s sheltering in a corner of Lake Traunsee on storm moorings, it was a day for calm nerves. With a light 6-8 knot breeze blowing along the lake, shifts of 40 degrees were not uncommon. Some new names won races, but it was all about consistency – something ORACLE Racing proved masters of.

With owner Larry Ellison absent fellow American Steve Howe stepped onto the helm today for the start of four days of fleet racing at the RC44 Austria Cup. With Russell Coutts calling the shots, ORACLE Racing finished the day with a six point lead over second placed Katusha.

Paul Cayard, tactician on the Russian Katusha was not expecting an easy ride today. “It requires a different strategy and tactics to an ocean course that will be the test for me, to keep calm and realise that when we’re ahead and go in to a spot with no wind, that happens, and you need to keep fighting.”  They kept fighting today, with a consistent 3, 4, 6 score line.

It was a day for new faces to be pushing onto the podium. The Dutch team, No Way Back, had a tough first regatta in San Diego, finishing last. A change of tactician to a young sailor, better known for his performances in a dinghy, Australian Laser sailor Tom Slingsby, has helped the team climb the leaderboard. They finished the day in third overall, winning the first race of the day, leading the second at the final mark, only to drop back to third after being caught on the wrong side of a big wind shift, and finishing the day with a disappointing 12th place.

No Way Back’s owner Pieter Heerema is full of praise for his new tactician.  “We had a great day, it’s a bit of a shame to end on our worst race but the feeling on the boat is good, the speed is good, the communication and co-ordination of the crew is great! We came from a difficult situation in San Diego where we were last and everyone was looking at each over thinking what went wrong, so we changed our tactician to Tom, very young guy, super talented but also such a nice person and were having fun on the water.”

Another race winner was Chris Bake at the helm of his brand new Team Aqua.”The team has set the boat up really well and it feels right, it seems to have good boat speed, when I sailed it well, but that was hard today with lots of shifty wind it took me a while to get in the zone, but when we did it right we did well and when we did it badly we ended up eighth.” With a score-line of 8, 1, 8 Team Aqua are in fifth overall, tied on points with Peninsula Petroleum.

New boy Vladimir Prosikhin (RUS) surprised even himself with a race win in the third and final race of the day with his team aboard Team Nika. “I run a successful company in Russia, I am used to being the boss and giving the orders, today I kept very quiet and listened to the team onboard and we won the race! Really great day for us as a novice team, we are very happy.”

With the storm due to blow through, racing in the RC44 Austria Cup will resume tomorrow through to Sunday 15th May.

Watch the racing unfold through live streaming – Click here

Article source: http://www.rc44.com/news/view/keep_calm_and_keep_fighting

The Oracle RC44 Cup San Diego ended with a fabulous victory by the Russian team Katusha, after five days of feverishly competitive sailing off Broadway Pier.

Bob Little was on the wheel, with Paul Cayard calling the shots to almost close out the overall win in the first two races of the day. It left them sailing defensively for the final race, watching others wrestle it out for the remaining places on the podium.

Paul Cayard and Russell Coutts celebrate with the customary champagne spraying

Things didn’t look too good first thing this morning with heavy and ominous cloud over San Diego Bay, but the sun quickly broke through and the crews were sent out on time. The westerly built in the warm sunshine to around ten knots. Paul Cayard had said earlier in the week that it was all about getting in a position to win the regatta on the final day. A strong performance yesterday maintained a two-point lead over Team Aqua into the home straight. Now they just had to close the deal.

They got a big helping hand early on – Team Aqua picked up two penalties in the first race and could only recover to a seventh. Meanwhile, Katusha were battling Larry Ellison’s ORACLE Racing for the race win. Katusha had to settle for second, but it was still enough to move out to a six point lead, as ORACLE Racing’s win leap-frogged them over Team Aqua to take second overall by a single point. Artemis had been fourth going into the day, but they also struggled, scoring a sixth and dropping eight points behind Team Aqua.

The second race of the day saw Artemis come back strong and a fine win put them back into the game. But the Katusha juggernaut was still rolling, and another second place gave them an almost unassailable lead of eight points, as ORACLE Racing and Team Aqua were left fighting for fourth place. It was settled at the last cross before the finish, when Team Aqua went left, ORACLE Racing went right… the right paid, and ORACLE Racing consolidated a three point lead for second place, as Synergy also slipped in between them and Team Aqua.

The wind then made the racers and the big crowd on Broadway Pier wait for the grand finale. The delay lasted just over half an hour and when it got going it was in the lightest conditions of the week. Katusha made sure they were in the same piece of water as the only boat that could beat them overall – ORACLE Racing.

Katusha’s helmsman Bob Little commented, ‘We just sailed real conservative and didn’t push anything, just got the job done. That was it. Getting the two seconds [places] helped us out a lot, [we stayed consistent by] not pushing the line too hard, and not getting ourselves too separated from the boats we were close on points with… just sailing smart.’

Katusha may have had their worst race of the week, but they did what they had to do and followed in behind ORACLE Racing, who finished seventh. Both Team Aqua and Artemis came desperately close to taking advantage of ORACLE Racing’s result – Artemis finished third and Team Aqua fifth, both just one place short of forcing a tie-break that they would have won.

It was a particularly satisfying win for Katusha’s tactician, Paul Cayard. ‘I lived here in San Diego for 12 years and it’s been fun to be here this week. It means a lot to win this regatta in a town that I spent so much of my life in, and it’s been fun seeing all of my friends from some time past. Congratulations to all the teams, these races are extremely tough and it’s a lot of fun.’

Team Katusha win the Oracle RC44 Cup San Diego

The man behind it all, Russell Coutts – the ‘RC’ in RC 44 – was also happy with his week. ‘We are happy with second place, it was a tough regatta for us, lots of difficult conditions, but we’re very happy. This regatta in San Diego is one of our best for sure, it was just a great venue, lots of variables on the race course, lots of people here and lots of interest, it’s been fantastic. We are hoping to be back here again.’

It was great news for SEA San Diego’s President John Laun, as he reflected on their first event, ‘This is the first event for the Sailing Events Association (SEA) of San Diego. We’re a non-profit association formed to bring exactly this sort of event to San Diego, to get the local people excited about sailing and to stimulate our local economy for travel and tourism.

‘It’s really has been fantastic… we’ve had great sailing, the conditions have been exactly perfect, the venue has been great, and we’ve had spectators on the shore all week, all along Harbour Island and San Diego Bay. We’ve exceeded our expectations for delivering a really good spectator friendly event. We would hope to have the RC44s back every year, we’ve had a great time with them.’

Article source: http://www.rc44.com/news/view/katusha_closes

It was dig deep and don’t panic on day four of the Oracle RC44 Cup San Diego, with the top boats all trailing badly at one time or another, but managing to recover to mid-fleet and salvage crucial points. The net result was an almost completely neutral day, with the leaders Katusha and second placed Aqua both scoring ten points in three races, while third and fourth placed ORACLE Racing and Artemis both scored eleven points. Remarkably, after a lot of tough boat racing they are just standing still in the rankings.

It took a little longer to get racing going today. The westerly sea breeze must have been out late after last night’s fabulous RC44 Class party on the USS Midway, because it was reluctant to show on an otherwise beautiful weekend morning – and it wasn’t the only one, with Artemis’ tactician Morgan Larson celebrating his fortieth birthday yesterday. But when it did turn up, it came on strong at 8 to 14 knots for most of the day… and so did Artemis. Fourth overnight, they sailed a brilliant first race. They were launched at the committee boat end of the line and led all the way round until the final top mark.

Artemis’ owner, Torbjorn Tornqvist couldn’t escape work to get to this regatta and Sarah Gundersen has been standing in for him at the wheel. She takes up the story at the final turning mark, ‘We rounded the top mark and on the first gybe we noticed there was a little rip [in the spinnaker]. We had to nurse it all the way down [the run], we had the other spare chute [spinnaker] up on the deck. The guys were ready with a plan if we had to do a change, but luckily enough Fongo [trimmer Daniel Fong] nursed it through the gybes and we got to the finish.’ Artemis had a slightly less fabulous start in the next race, and had to duck behind the whole fleet off the line, but they fought back to finish fourth.

Team Aqua had already got themselves out of deep trouble in the first race of the day, tactician Cameron Appleton explained what happened, ‘This game is a matter of feet and inches and we were missing the inches on quite an important cross early on in the first race. We couldn’t get to the right-hand side of the group, and we paid by… taking a foul for tacking too close… And then we had to chip back into the fleet, and managed to salvage a sixth.’

The star performer for the next race (second of the day) was Islas Canarias Puerto Calero. They led most of the way round, fending off challenges from both ORACLE Racing and Team Aqua. The owner and helmsman Daniel Calero explained how it all came down to one call at the finish. ‘It was a really good race, we were enjoying the fight with Team Aqua and ORACLE Racing, and finally Team Aqua beat us on the last gybe as the buoy [end of the finish line] was closer. We didn’t calculate the layline [approach angle] well, that cost us the win.’

Despite the disappointment, Calero had only good things to say about his experience here. ‘It’s been really nice sailing in San Diego. It’s like playing football with all the crowds behind you, screaming and clapping – the Bay is amazing, great atmosphere. Tricky, shifty conditions, good and bad for everyone – our tactician [Jose Ponce] is crazy after the last couple of days!’ They finished the day in sixth place on 67 points, the only team to gain a place overall.

While Team Aqua were winning, it was their rivals for the overall lead that had to come up with the miracle recovery in race two. Katusha’s helmsman Bob Little explained, ‘We had a really bad start in the second race then made a couple mistakes more and found ourselves really deep in the fleet. We didn’t panic, we hung together and tried to find our opportunity and at the end of the last run we got a good shift and some good pressure. We sailed the boat really well and managed to pass about three or four boats right at the finish.’

The third and final race of the day belonged to Ceeref. Owned and steered by Igor Lah, they sailed beautifully to win their first race of the 2011 season. He explained, ‘It was an extraordinary race, it was so shifty, coming from behind to first place, and back down, and then back to first place. The second upwind we kept to the right hand side, and that was the key… to get back to first place. Somehow we got the right wind and some really nice shifts, and got ourselves in a powerful position and no one could cross us.

‘Being first, second or third is good, and it’s not a huge difference getting one or three points, but it’s very important to win as it gives you a lot of confidence. Fifth [overall] is a little bit below our expectations, but we have changed the team and we are still getting used to each other… We are aiming to be in the top three.’

It won’t happen here, the top four have a 13 point buffer to Ceeref – but amongst that group it’s all to play for going into the final day. The bases are loaded – who’s going to hit the winning home run?
Three races are planned on the final day of racing at the Oracle RC44 Cup San Diego, follow the racing via the live blog and the tracker at; www.rc44.com.

Article source: http://www.rc44.com/news/view/loading_the_bases