ACT 4, DAY 3 - Preview Jun 18, 07:25
Valencia, 06:30 Saturday
Each evening before a race day the RC issues a "Pairing Notice" detailing the next day's racing which I thought you might like to see. Here is pairing notice 3 (pdf, 25 KB) for today's (Saturday, 18 June) racing.
And here is the "Morning Show weather slide" Chris Bedford produces for us early each race day, among many, many other facts and figures and predictions which he provides to the Sailing Team for their mid-morning wx briefing....
We have seen this movie before -- on both Days 1 and 2 of this Act 4. More lightish sea breeze and flat water.
For our race with Alinghi today, it will be the first time we race SUI-75 in an official race. We did race that yacht in a very close practice race last Monday, but teams tend to play all sorts of games (using old sails, for example) in practice races so you can't place too much stock on the relative performances of our boats that day.
Alinghi had problems with SUI-75 during the 2003 Cup so they ended up racing, and winning with, the older of their two yachts, SUI-64. (For cost-cutting reasons, under the AC Rules each team is permitted to build no more than two new yachts per Cup cycle.)
Interestingly, Alinghi tested a "hula" on SUI-75 in the late stages of the 31st AC, similar to what Team New Zealand was using on both their boats. Alinghi never got it to work, and were not convinced that it was any better anyway (nor were we at what was then called ORACLE BMW Racing), so they stuck with their conventional SUI-64.
For this Cup, as with our yacht USA-76 and all the other yachts competing in Act 4, SUI-75 has been modified to comply with Version 5 of the AC Class Rule. V5 took effect 1 January 2005. Essentially, a V5 yacht has about 10% more downwind sail area, is a tonne lighter, and the keel bulb is 100mm deeper (maximum draft of 4.1m).
Each evening before a race day the RC issues a "Pairing Notice" detailing the next day's racing which I thought you might like to see. Here is pairing notice 3 (pdf, 25 KB) for today's (Saturday, 18 June) racing.
And here is the "Morning Show weather slide" Chris Bedford produces for us early each race day, among many, many other facts and figures and predictions which he provides to the Sailing Team for their mid-morning wx briefing....
We have seen this movie before -- on both Days 1 and 2 of this Act 4. More lightish sea breeze and flat water.
For our race with Alinghi today, it will be the first time we race SUI-75 in an official race. We did race that yacht in a very close practice race last Monday, but teams tend to play all sorts of games (using old sails, for example) in practice races so you can't place too much stock on the relative performances of our boats that day.
Alinghi had problems with SUI-75 during the 2003 Cup so they ended up racing, and winning with, the older of their two yachts, SUI-64. (For cost-cutting reasons, under the AC Rules each team is permitted to build no more than two new yachts per Cup cycle.)
Interestingly, Alinghi tested a "hula" on SUI-75 in the late stages of the 31st AC, similar to what Team New Zealand was using on both their boats. Alinghi never got it to work, and were not convinced that it was any better anyway (nor were we at what was then called ORACLE BMW Racing), so they stuck with their conventional SUI-64.
For this Cup, as with our yacht USA-76 and all the other yachts competing in Act 4, SUI-75 has been modified to comply with Version 5 of the AC Class Rule. V5 took effect 1 January 2005. Essentially, a V5 yacht has about 10% more downwind sail area, is a tonne lighter, and the keel bulb is 100mm deeper (maximum draft of 4.1m).
Racing | by TFE
