7:27 PM Thu 28 Jan 2010 GMT
Spanish sailing website
www.valenciasailing.com
was on the water today in Valencia for the Race Committee practice day to which the America's Cup Challenger and Defender were invited to attend, and report that the US Challenger suffered a significant breakage in the vicinity of the Race Committee boat:
BMW Oracle Racing later said the breakage was minor and would be repaired without lowering the wingsail
Meanwhile in Valencia... beautiful day but USA suffers breakage approaching the Committee boat
Sorry for the delay in publishing any updates but it was again due to spending a long day on the water off Valencia. What a difference a day makes. While yesterday I was complaining about the cold, windy and rainy weather we had in the world's sailing capital, Thursday was a completely different day. Fortunately, the weather front that whipped Valencia for 4 days finally moved further north and gave way to blue sunny skies, flat seas and light breezes, too light at times.
I had the chance to be on the committee boat with Harold Bennett, Principal Race Officer, who together with the rest of the Race Operations team ran a number of tests in order to simulate a Deed-of-Gift race. One thing is for sure, it will not be very easy to set up a fair race course rapidly.
The dockout was at noon but the breeze was absent, topping 2 knots at best. The remains of the wind from the inland were fighting with the developing thermal breeze and as a result the safest option was to go further offshore, in order to set the starting line at 24 miles from the coast. Yet halfway through, approximately 10 miles from the coast, the shift was becoming more evident and there was a faint 3-knot thermal breeze. As a result, we moved back, getting closer to the shore. In fact, we got much closer than I would have imagined, just 2.5 miles from the Malvarosa beach.
This is due to the fact that the actual layline angles of the two giant multihulls are smaller than initially anticipated, making it possible to set up the starting line at least a couple of miles closer, if of course there is a constant thermal breeze from the east. At that distance, sea depth is about 35 meters, so the race committee and pin end boats can even anchor. A number of the race operations boats are already connected to the AIS and it seems to be working perfectly, so if you are curious to see what they are doing every day you can log on to
www.marinetraffic.com
zoom in on Valencia and track some of them.
For the rest of this story
click here
by Valencia Sailing
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