37th America’s Cup

INEOS Britannia is back in the America’s Cup final, scoring its first two wins against the Kiwis! The score is now 4-2 in this first to seven series.

It was a warm day in Barcelona with light winds, yet choppy seas. The mishap happened two minutes before the start of Race 5 when NZ fell off its foils. The reality is you have to capitalize on your advantage. “The gas off these boats is so big, particularly in the light airs,” says Britannia skipper Ben Ainslie. “If you can affect the other team in bad air, you’ve got to do it.”

Uncontested, INEOS Britannia shot out into a lead of over 1,700 meters before the Kiwis could get back up and flying. From that point on, for the British, the race was all about staying on the foils. And they took the win by 1 minute, 18 seconds!

In the second race of the day, as the clock ticked down to the start, Britannia aimed for a high-speed pin end start and Emirates Team New Zealand elected to tack off onto port and get to the right of the course, according to AmericasCup.com. Starting with 10 knots extra boat speed, the British sailors grabbed an early positional advantage that they were able to capitalize on to maintain their lead over the next eight legs.

The British fans who packed the Race Village and the beachfront Fanzones at Plaça del Mar and Bogatell nervously watched the final run to the finish. Emirates Team New Zealand were closing fast from behind. but the British made the cross of their bow on port gybe, sailed low and brought INEOS Britannia across the line to record a hard-fought seven-second victory.

“There is still a long way to go, but the comeback is on,” Britannia skipper Ben Ainslie said from his cockpit. “It’s a massive day for our team to really believe we can get back in this, and now the trick is to ride that momentum all the way.” (It has been since 1934 since the British won an America’s Cup race during the series.

Racing starts at 14:00 Friday, October 18. Stay tuned!

Photos/RIcardo Pinto, America’s Cup

A tough day for INEOS Britannia. Today they made sure they were positioned clear of the Kiwis at the pre-start and then looked strong from the start. It was a tense and tight race with both boats rounding  opposite windward marks at precisely the same time. But then the Kiwis gybed before reaching the left boundary with the narrowest of crossings. INEOS protested, but it was dismissed. Then the Kiwis worked on getting the lead and holding onto it.

On this six-lap course,  according to americascup.com, with the wind hovering around 10 knots and a dull cloud cover, Emirates Team New Zealand put on a masterclass of front-running, taking metres of leverage at every opportunity and defending the right side of the course upwind tenaciously.

The Brits had no choice but stay in the middle or to the left. By the final windward gate the Kiwis had a 24 second lead and by the finish, took the win by 23 seconds.

Dylan Fletcher, port helm on INEOS Britannia, reflected on the small margins saying: “We just focused on getting a good start. It was really nice, we squeezed them off and got the first proper cross, but couldn’t quite keep them behind – which was frustrating.”

Fletcher continued to answer the question how he felt about going forward, “I think that people have been doubting us from the start, but we’ve proved people wrong all along the way and we feel like we can take this to them, and we’ll just see how it goes on Wednesday. It’s disappointing but there’s a lot of belief and it’s not over yet.”

Stay tuned. Kiwis 4. Brits 0 in this first to 7 series known as the 37th Louis Vuitton America’s Cup..

Race Day 2 starts out with a wind in and above the 7.5 limit and Team NZ in the lead with 2 wins and INEOS with 0 wins. Both teams brought high-energy aggression to the Mediterranean waters as tens of thousands of spectators throughout the beachfront were treated to a dramatic pre-start of race 3.

Pre-start aggression for not steering clear of Team NZ penalizes INEOS and NZ gets the lead right at the start. From there the Kiwi team kept a tight cover on the British all the way around the six-leg racetrack, gaining another very hard-earned point with a win by 52 seconds.

It was to be the only race of the day as the wind kept dropping below the minimum wind limit. The Race Committee postponed Race 4  and scheduled it to be sailed tomorrow, Monday October 14.

Stay tuned. Kiwis 3. Brits 0.