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| AC Silver Spoons and Chop Sticks  The
wind blew today. It blew Shosholoza out in front and it kept blowing until
they had crossed the finish line with a handsome advantage. It blew Luna
Rossa round the course with the panache of a pedigree colt.It also blew BMW/Oracles genoa out of the fore sail foil. No one, but no one, can complain about the sailing here in Valencia when the wind blows. Least of all, Team China. They mixed it up with BMW/Oracle on the start line, they tried to push the Yankee boat out of the box, they tried every trick in the book and still they lost the start. Then ...... about half way up the beat there was a sudden hush on the press boat. "It can't be" , "They have a flapping sail", "I reckon that they are sandbagging", "Nah" came the general reply. Oracle really had lost it; the genoa had escaped from the head foil, just like it had in ACT13. Now that wouldn't be a problem on most boats, but this beast was flapping enough to almost bring down the stick. I don't know why they didn't dump it straight away, because it was struggling to bring down the mast for quite a long time, which led us to speculate that maybe something else was wrong. What was obviously wrong was that this is the second time that this identical sail escape has happened, in above 10 knot of wind, and, if that is worrying to us, it must have Larry Ellison in palpitations. These foils are no longer made of aluminum, they are made of carbon, which, if it is stretched or deformed in any way, becomes totally unreliable or, in this case, potentially dangerous. Team China, meanwhile had decided that discretion was the better part of valour and shot down the run, only to drop their kite miles from the mark and wallow the rest of the way until they could harden up. Oracle stomped along, about 4 mins behind, with no obvious spi problems and as they rounded the mark, surprised us all by having a new headsail hoisted. Now they will catch them, we all said, but no way. It was Team China's day as they romped around the windward mark and set a huge spinnaker with "TAG Heuer" plastered all over it. Tag are a sponsor of Team China and I bet that this was the best bit of marketing they have ever had. China crossed the line amid hoots, toots, applause and the loudest cheers, since Desafio Español beat BMW/Oracle across the line last Saturday, and they deserved every bit of it. Whether it was a win because of breakages or not, Team China sailed very well and would have been celebrating last night, I doubt Chris Dickson and Larry Ellison did. William Wallace / BYM News 3000 America's Cup pictures 05/01/07 |