Exciting Racing and then...

February 12, 2009

Yesterday's racing was amazing with just seconds between almost all finishes including one where Oracle did a penatly turn on the finish line to just beat Luna Rosa to go into the semi finals.  They had earlier beaten Damani Italia in a tough race and then it was time to face Alinghi for the 1st race of the Challenger semi finals.  They had an amazing race with the boat seriously being within a boat lenght or overlapped all the way around the course.  At the top of the 2nd beat Oracle finally pulled ahead a little bit.  Then on the downwind leg they were a whole 4 boat lengths ahead when Alighi got a couple of big puffs and surged into attack range.  Oracle missed the fact that the boat was favored and in the last possible second Alinghi surged ahead to get the win.  It was so close that the RC put up the wrong flag origionally but in the end it was Alinghi ahead by less than a second.  A really tough tough day for Oracle.

Today we all left the dock an hour earlier to get racing in before the front that would bring 40 knots of wind.  It was all going forward and then it was pretty much all over when Oracle misjudged the time to kill to the line and ended up shut out at the boat.  Nothing left to do but watch as a spectator.  I am still struggling with my voice though as the racing has been so spectacular that I have shouted it out of condition.

Tomorrow we will see Alinghi vs Team New Zealand

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