Paul Cayard up the mast on Artemis. Image copyright Frank Socha.
by Paul Cayard
We had one race Friday and it was important. We raced BMW Oracle and if we had won, it would have put us in fourth place after Round Robin 1.
We knew the importance of this race and we were doing a great job half way through. Terry had gotten another great start and Morgan and Kevin did a great job of controlling the race. We rounded the first windward mark with a 20 second lead.
On the first run we suffered a hydraulic failure and lost all of our hydraulic controls. So we sailed up the second windward leg at about 93% of full speed. They got ahead of us and rounded the second windward mark about 2 boat lengths in front of us. We closed a bit on the run but they managed to hang on.
That was very frustrating to lose a race we had in hand through equipment failure. Did anyone else notice that it was Friday the 13th?
Now the Race Management Committee has decided to modify the format of the event. There will not be a complete 2nd round robin. Rather they had decided to pit the top four boats against the bottom four boats. So this will result in each team only sailing 4 matches over the next four days rather than the 7 we were supposed to sail. This is because the committee thinks it is unlikely that we could complete the full round robin give the current weather forecast.
So there is now a huge difference between being 4th or 5th after round robin 1. If you are 4th you race only 5-8. If you are 5th you race only 1-4.
There is one more match to finish from round robin 1 and that is between Synergy and BMW Oracle. If Synergy wins that race, Artemis will end up fourth. All three teams, Synergy, BMW Oracle and Artemis will be tied on 3 wins, an unbreakable tie, so it will go to the team who beat the highest placing team not involved in the tie. And that is us because we beat TeamOrigin.
So let's keep our fingers crossed for our Russian friends Saturday morning!
Artemis Racing
Louis Vuitton Trophy
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