"The biggest waves I have ever driven the chase boat in. Going up alongside the yacht wasn't fun and more than a bit scary." --Chase boat driver "Captain" Craig Christensen (NZL).

That about sums up the day.

When the Race Committee first set up today, the north course (ours) was out in the open sea. We experienced several sets of 3-metre seas on our team spectator vessel Zurga as we headed out. As the breeze and seas continued to build, PRO Peter Reggio wisely moved the north course under Levanso Island. The seas were flatter but it was damn rough nonetheless. About 20kts of wind most of the day. It reminded me of Freo during the 86-87 Cup.

Indeed, it also brought to mind the conditions at San Diego in '95 when OneAustralia sank, and in '00 when Young America nearly sank, and the similarly rough day in San Diego in '95 when the keel on DC's Stars & Stripes partially pulled off the hull. Young America and S&S would probably have sunk had it not been for the fast action of their tenders and chase boats getting airbags and pumps onboard the yachts.

Paul "Flipper" Westlake (AUS), main trimmer on '76, said, "I copped a bit of flack from my teammates today about the last time we sailed AC yachts in these conditions, because I went for a swim and had to take a chase boat back to the dock." Flipper was main trimmer on OneAus. By the way, our design coordinator, Ian "Fresh" Burns (AUS), was navigator on OneAus and also went for a swim that day.

Flipper went on to say, "We were happy with today's conditions and never felt that we weren't prepared to race. We were disappointed we didn't race the second one."

Given the conditions there was surprisingly little carnage, probably because the race committee called it off after one flight. [Sat morn update -- last evening we heard about a number of other significant problems other teams experienced during the race, or discovered upon returning to their bases -- so "we saw surprisingly little carnage" would have been more accurate.]

Having said that China Team did pull out of their match with Desafio Espanol. Not sure what they broke. K-Challenge had to retire from their match with Shosholoza after the genoa pulled out of (and in the process broke) the headfoil -- the carbon u-shaped slot fitted over the forestay that the luff of the genoa is fed into when hoisting.

Our guys broke the spinnaker pole when setting the spinnaker after rounding the top mark the second time. They had to "free-fly" the kite down the 2.5 mile leg to the finish, and did a magnificent job of it, or so said the radio commentators covering our match. Navigator Peter Isler (USA) pointed out that 76 even gained on that leg. "The surfing conditions," he said, "were awesome."

The round robin continues in order tomorrow. Today's postponed Flight 4 will now be the first flight tomorrow (Saturday). We race K-Challenge in that one. Then we race ETNZ in the second. There will be two flights on Tuesday, instead of just the 11th and final flight previously scheduled.

Chris Bedford says less windy tomorrow, but perhaps almost as rough.

Tomorrow's pairing list is here.

ETNZ came back into the harbour today, I thought to avoid waiting
around for the start in the very rough conditions outside. However, radio
reports this evening are saying that they appeared to be effecting structural
repairs. Regardless, they easily won their match over United Internet Team
Germany.

What goes up...

...yikes.

The beautiful Italian sail training vessel, Amerigo Vespucci, pulled into
Trapani Harbour this afternoon accompanied by USA-76 after our win over
Mascalzone. AV was in Auckland during part of the last Cup.

(If you liked the last three photos, there are more by our ace team photographer, Gilles Martin-Raget, at our team photo site www.bmor-photo.com).