EXCITING and Unscheduled Racing Today

February 10, 2009

There is big wind scheduled for tomorrow so they moved racing up to today.

First match up - Luna Rosa vs. China team.  China had LR on the ropes the whole time.  Luna Rosa in the last 2 minutes of prestart tried to tack onto Starboard and Ian Williams did a perfect job of showing the umpires that they had tacked too close.  Penalty Luna Rosa!  They started a tiny bit ahead and worked to stretch as much as possible.

K-Challenge vs Origin was also a very aggressive pre-start and they started overlapped but with no penalty. Until they got to the top mark.  There was a dial down by Origin which KC did a good job of reacting to so they rounded the top mark on their tail by inches.  K-Challenge  did a better job on her set and started to roll over Origin.  Origin finally got their sail set and then luffed K-Challenge.  It looked like KC was going to roll over the top of them but then the spinnaker halyard was let go. This is a move where you try to say that the only way to keep clear to windward is to drop the spinnaker and sail with a jib and the trick is for the windward boat to drop the spinnaker and hit the leeward boat to show that they didn't give you enough room and opportunity to stay clear.  The umpires didn't agree and gave KC the penalty.  But KC was ahead for a while making it exciting until Origin was just able to get over to the right and gain starboard tack advantage and went on for the win.

Luna Rosa pushed to get enough of a lead to do the penalty turn and stay ahead.  They waited to the end and did a bat turn on the finish line and limped over the line at less than 3 knots while China Team ROARED over at 9 knots. No one knew who had won for minutes and in the end it was Luna Rosa by less than a meter and less than a second.  Unbelievable racing.

You can read other road notes in the 'more road notes' on http://www.dawnriley.com and other more social notes on the "Friends and Family Blog" page on this site.

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