Bow action on ALL4ONE. Image copyright Frank Socha.
by Stephanie Nadin
ALL4ONE raced its first official match in the Louis Vuitton Trophy - Nice Sunday against Emirates Team New Zealand.
The Kiwis confirmed their status of favourites by taking an excellent start, leading the regatta from there. ALL4ONE tried all that was possible to come back, but a technical problem occurred and decided the final result of the regatta. The team is of course disappointed, but that's the game.
Emirates Team New Zealand leads ALL4ONE. Image copyright Paul Todd/OutsideImages.co.nz
Sébastien Col, Helmsman: “our team has finally started to race! On our first match this morning, we made a good entry in the start area, but we were a bit late on the timing when coming back to cross the line, and Emirates Team Zealand started with more speed than us. We wanted the left of the race course, but we ended up with the right. We managed the race with it, and we sailed quite well until the beginning of the second upwind leg, where we had a problem with the main sail, and we had to abandon the match.”
Indeed, a problem with the main sail on top of the mast forced the team to stop racing. The ALL4ONE crew would have preferred not to go through that... but they had to deal with it, as in any mechanical sport.
Yann Gouniot, mainsail trimmer, comes back on the incident that happened just at the beginning of the second upwind leg: “we broke the system that holds the main sail on the top of the mast, that is to say the rope that is around the mast, which is hooked on the main sail. And it is on the main sail itself that the webbing broke. The main sail fell, and the boom fell down on the deck. We couldn't repair, so we had to give up that race.”
Louis Vuitton Trophy Nice Day 2. Image copyright Frank Socha.
The coming days look better, as the weather is getting better from tomorrow, with 10-15 knots of wind announced, which is perfect for that kind of racing. Also, the second pair of boats from Mascalzone Latino is now operational, and will race from tomorrow.
The race committee should be able to launch 4 x 2 regattas on Monday.
ALL4ONE will race against Artemis (flight 3) and against BMW Oracle Racing (flight 4).
Round Robin 1 Pairing list for 09/11/09:
Azzurra (75) vs BMW Oracle Racing (93)
ETNZ (99) vs Synergy (90)
TFS Pages Jaunes (75) vs TeamOrigin (93)
ALL4ONE (99) vs Artemis (90)
ALL4ONE (93) vs BMW Oracle Racing (75)
Artemis (99) vs Azzurra (90)
Azzurra (75) vs ETNZ (93)
BMW Oracle Racing (99) vs TFS Pages Jaunes (90)
ALL4ONE
Louis Vuitton Trophy
No comments:
Post a Comment