Yeah, but NZ gave them a pump-fake luff...just enough. The LAST thing JS wants to do there is get a penalty so a little porpoising is not too much of an over-reaction.

Added to which, it's sailing...any number of things could change on the race course and affect the outcome. Either boat could have a mechanical failure, crazy wind shift, hit a mark...any number of things could go wrong and change the outcome. You would be insane to "rig" it to be this close.

I never completely dismiss a good conspiracy theory.

What's Vegas saying about today's race? If it can be gambled on, there's an over under on it.

A knife fight is the highest compliment one can give to a match race, from true match racing fans (there are no bigger fans of the pure sport than IUs). They don't want to see boats going fast away from one another, they want to see constant attacking.

Nothing dirty is implied, the goal is to use boat positioning and the rules to crush the competition. If the give-way boat escapes cleanly, you want the boats to sail on and re-engage quickly.

That's also the intent of the delayed penalties in normal match racing. The idea is to allow the penalized boat a chance to force an offsetting penalty, and keep the racing close.

I hadn't thought about it before, but the instant penalties in this event are as much of a game changer as the boats themselves.

Of course, as I tell anyone who will listen, Larry is more of a purist than anyone. The original AC wasn't about equalizing the field or close match racing, it was full-on, buy it, build it, and bring it.

Mike

BTW, for all the media coverage, the "journalists" are all worthless. The most important piece of information to uncover (and this should have been the goal as soon as ETNZ got 8 wins): who is on the boats with the commodores? Who is lining up to be the next CoR?

Mike

Apparently the race was featured on Good Morning America today.

Can't seem to find any clips of it though

works for me.... I tried watching some of the chicago match race video.... I lasted for about 5 minutes..... and that was the highlight reel.

Great to do... not so much to watch.

Philip, thanks for getting the replays up so quickly, I just finished watching them. Wow is about all I can say.

In race 1, obviously Jimmy won the start (hit him, just like I said a couple days ago, the Darlington stripe!) and it was adios after that, but in race 2, Barker got him back, both at the start and at the first mark, but the two big mistakes I saw that cost ENTZ the race were;

1. they tried to lee bow Oracle when they should have crossed instead, and gone to the (favored) left side then tacked back for a loose cover and kept the train rolling at high speed, vs. a leebow (that never works in cats, I'm surprised Ashby didn't say "WTF Deano?" on that one!)

2. Then they made two extra downspeed tacks once they hit the boundry.

Sure Oracle was on their air a little bit after they both tacked at the boundry, but they didn't accelerate up to speed before they went, they were only going 19 when they started the first one. It looked like each tack cost them at least 100 yards.

Judging by that wind forecast, 18 G 24, at 2pm local, they should be able to get a race in today, I HOPE!

I still wish they would bring back the Nationality Rules, ie. every thing and every body should be from the Nation of record.

How many Americans are actually sailing on the "American" (in name only) boat?

Two? One?

It's just wrong.

If Larry had hired Randy Smyth and Cam Lewis to drive it, it would have been 9-0 to the Americans a week ago, while Deano the boys were still trying to figure out how to sail a cat. It took much too long, but Jimmy has finally figure it out. I LOVED it when he footed off and rolled ETNZ after they tried to lee bow him! Classic stuff that no Mono-only guys would ever understand.

Tim, we'd get our butts handed to us on a plate with an all American team. French, Ozzies, and Kiwis are just better sailors.

Puts a bit of pressure on Deano, ya think?
An open letter to Emirates Team New Zealand, from Team New Zealand

Ben Ainslie's Oracle Team draw level to set up incredible climax to America's Cup

I understand that, but we have to ask ourselves, WHY??

Doctor Dennis Leary's got it figured out, pay attention:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pD32kTcKMI

Because they can make a living at it.

Are you saying American Sailors can't make ends meet on what Larry is paying the Expats to sail his boats?

I still don't understand why both teams went out and got Monohull experts to race their catamarans, when there were plenty of world class catamaran racers available. The mono guys are -still- making mono-match racing type moves that most cat guys know won't work.

The thought process was, we can teach professional, big-boat, match racing sailors how to sail cats, much easier than we can teach cat sailors to match race.

EDIT: I agree about the nationality rules. Jerome (Rome) Kirby is from Newport (and is either Ken Read's godson, or should be) and is the only American currently on the boat.

Don't forget, the rules had loopholes in the past, and you saw a lot of shady passport-changing leading up to each iteration.

Mike

Ainslie's been doing a great job, if it's him that's been calling the tactics. Seems he's got them going to the correct side of the course most of the time, certainly upwind leg 3 yesterday! Either that or they just got very lucky with a left shift. ENTZ went right, to get out of the flood behind Alcatraz, Oracle went left, and closed the gap when they came back together....not ahead, but closer. I still think ENTZ blew it when they tacked under Oracle. What were they thinking??

They just watched the left side pay off for Oracle, they should have crossed and gone left! Or at least got to the left of Oracle far enough for a one-tack back on the layline to the mark. Instead, they made 3 tacks, all of them slowwww and ended up 200 yards behind!

Re. teaching a mono-match racer to sail a fast catamaran:

Yeah...not so much. The speeds are so great on cats that one bad move (or 2 extra tacks) are going to give the other guy hundreds of yards. Like Randy Smyth said in Rick's book, "Speed is all that matters, go as fast as you can, as long as you can." and that was long before anyone ever went 40knots on a cat! Speed is much more important now, because 'going slow' costs you so much more, when the other guy is going 40!

These guys still seem to think tacking is going to win them a race.

ETNZ looked a lot like Oracle at the beginning of the series. Even when they led to the first gate, no matter which way they went, or what they did next, they got passed on the beat.

What's most shocking to me is that both sides seemed really hesitant to try foiling upwind until the end.

Mike