America's Cup: Update #5 from Valencia by Paul Cayard

by Paul Cayard

No wind, no race, no good. I feel like we let everyone down today.

Too often when we have big events where Television, sponsors, sailing fans and media have planned on following a race, the race doesn't happen on time or at all. Some of it I can accept. I know that we need wind to race and even with the best of planning and venues, there are going to be days of no wind. But there are times where we don't do ourselves any favors.

In this case here in Valencia, we have put ourselves in the hands of a judge because we could not agree on when to race. So here we are in February, in Europe, trying to hold the most important race in our sport. This is going to be about as difficult as holding the World Cup of skiing in Gstaad in August.

And there have been other times in past America's Cups where we have had upper wind limits in the Version 5 ACC boats at 19 knots. 19 knots is just plain a good day for sailing. It is embarrassing when the Opti kids are heading out and we are towing in.

We need to raise our game!

I guess you can tell that I did not enjoy myself today trying to make small talk on Eurosport while explaining an indefinite delay followed by a race abandonment.

The schedule put forward by SNG allows for racing only on scheduled race days and race days have been scheduled for every even numbered day this month. So Wednesday we will try again to bring you race #1 of the 33rd America's Cup. Then Friday is next for race #2. It is hard for the media, sponsors and fans to stay in Valencia when the prospect for racing on any given day is not too good and there are 48 hours between scheduled races.

The forecast for Wednesday is for a north westerly in the morning to die and for a south east sea breeze to fill in the afternoon. Sounds sketchy to me as there isn't much heat around here to suck in a sea breeze. The forecasted strength is good enough to race....7-10 knots. Let's hope!

Tomorrow we are shooting some material in the morning and I have been invited to go out with BMW Oracle and watch them on a short training run in the afternoon. We also will have a WSTA lunch tomorrow so it will be a busy day.

Sorry, no photos of the rain and no wind from today. Better not to document that.

Cayard Sailing