2007 32nd America's Cup

And The America's Cup Goes To????

ETNZ92 VS SUI100

Off the start the ETNZ started marginally ahead of the Swiss boat on their was towards the first mark. The Swiss took the right hand side and the Kiwis the left. The duel was on upwind with both boats on startboard tack, then suddenly they splitways. The first cross resulted in Alinghi gaining the advantage followed by another cross and a third, trying to force each other to the laylines. Te race to the mark 1 was exciting both boats slowed to 0 knots to see who could pass who to the first mark. ETNZ slammed into a wave and then stalled as a result. The Alinghi ran away and rounded.

Mark 1: The Alinghi rounded and were 7 seconds ahead, still very close. Even though the ETNZ were behind, they set spinnaker perfectly and followed. The Swiss were the first to gybe away. The ETNZ then moved on top of the clear air of Alinghi forcing them to slow and amazingly the Kiwis taook back the lead towards the Leeward mark (Mark 2).

Mark 2: They rounded the 2nd mark and then made an advantage of 14 seconds and almost immediately, she switched tack, just to make sure the wind was guaranteed. Several gybes and tacks resulted in gains to the Alinghi and then right on the doorstep of mark Three, the biggest and worst monster appeared out of the water for team NZ. A penalty was given to them because in the Umpire's mind they moved too close acoss Alinghi's bow.

Mark 3: With the lead now changed again, Alinghi powered away around the final buoy 12 seconds ahead. With the penalty ensured for the ETNZ and being behind by some 100M it surely was death to them. Just when everyone thought the Race totally and comfortably was gone to Alinghi. Then the wind unexpectedly fell away due to a 120 degree windshift. The boats slowed down. With the unexpected shift in the wind, the carbon spinnaker pole became disattached from the mast of Alinghi and left them in a near stalled situation. ETNZ saw some chance and dropped thieir spinnaker way out and raised the jib because they had to complete the penalty. The ETNZ nearly took back the race but they were very slow from the penalty turn and resulted in the Alinghi amazingly able to come back and beat them by 1 or 2 seconds.

What does this mean? The Alinghi are now 5 and ETNZ 2 and gives the America's Cup to Alinghi once more. Once more, here is a summary of the Delta times for the last time.

START :0 seconds
MARK 1 :+7 seconds to Alinghi
MARK 2 :+14 seconds to ETNZ
MARK 3 :+12 seconds to Alinghi
FINISH :+2 seconds to Alinghi

Hey thanks alot Hawk, it is kind of sad for me, I will miss the having to get up early to report on the races, not that I had to get up and report like if anyone told me to but I thought that it would be a nice addition to the site and maybe in the wings so to speak, draw some of the lurkers out there to the site. It was a thrill to me and I learnt tremendously from the races. Previous to this I never really knew anything about the America's Cup racing and the intracacies about the boats. I learnt about it in full detail just prior to my first reporting from the Semis. Even then I had some of the terms wrong such as Gybe which I spelt "Jive", lol, corrected by Kevin. I learnt tremendously and the sport actually sucked me in and now I am a fan of it in such a short period of time.

Thanks for the encouragement by everyone...

I agree with you on that.

Welcome to YF gigaflopper. I am going to bed now....

Looks like America's Cup racing will be held in Valencia, Spain once again in 2009.