Gone Sailing and watching the AM Cup

Two ..uuhps three tasks at hand on the weekend:
1. "Samantha" had to be delivered to Flensburg for the upcoming Musto-Double-Hand-Challenge.
2. On Friday we had been invited to race on a Archambauld 35 during Kieler Woche and:
3. The first two races in the Americas Cup this season!
Gone sailing in Kiel Friday evening. The pleasure factor from this regatta being just OK. Nice boat but with a 35 footer you would not like to start in IMS 1 where you have mostly 45 footers upward. Takes a bit of fun away already close after the start. One after the other is passing just on the basis of a longer waterline.
Saturday afternoon we watched the first race (on compie) and were not too much impressed after that first wind shift which some commentators have seen at abt. 10-12° in favour of "Alinghi". Nevertheless she did not look slow.
Jumped into the car after the race to drive up north (Maasholm) to the boat and detaching ropes within half an hour. Sailing upwind until midnight in a nice breeze and a late sundown with some moon putting a silver shine on the sea. Berthed for the night at Marina Minde late at one o´clock and leaving next day in a rainstorm reefed. Ended up motoring in no wind at close to 13.ooh into the Marina Sonwik and got collected after putting all the wet stuff away. Just making it home for the second race and man, has it been exciting. 1:1 and everything is OK. Tomorrow I will be with my team in Valencia watching the third race. I still cannot believe this as we had booked it already last year. And now we see a very important race.

A friend had send me some interesting comment on the race strategy yesterday. Read for yourself if you have not scrolled through all my links on the right side. As I understand the analyses is from Gary Jobson. One of my favourite tacticans of the old days. He and Dr. Stuart Walker whom´s books taughed me a lot.

quote
ETNZ caught a favorable wind shift on the left side of the course during
a tacking duel. ETNZ closed within one boat length after trailing by
three lengths. Hutchinson called for his helmsman, Dean Barker, to sail
low of course by about 7 degrees. But ETNZ did not ease the sails out.
Butterworth on Alinghi called for helmsman, Ed Baird to tack right on
the Kiwi’s wind. Fooled by NZ’s head fake, the call to tack was made too
early. Instead of hurting NZ’s wind Alinghi allowed the Kiwis to have
clear air in their sails. Barker brought his boat back up on the wind
and now had the Swiss blocked. It was a rare mistake by Butterworth. And
it was costly.

Quelle: http://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/news/07/gj/#Race2