by Paul Cayard
Big day for Artemis. In our only match of the day, which did not get underway until 1830, we beat Emirates Team New Zealand by 17 seconds to take solo possession of first place overall.
After a tough pre-start with Artemis entering from the left side on port tack, Dean Barker, helmsman of ETNZ, had control of us. Terry Hutchinson was cool and patient as ETNZ eventually got uncomfortable and went away. ENTZ then picked a nice lay line to the starboard end of the line and we had no choice but to start to leeward on starboard.
Again we were patient and slowly gained on the Kiwis from the left side. They tacked and we followed closely and pinned them out to the starboard lay line. The Kiwis had a go at us at the top mark with a flag but the umpires green flagged it. From there we kept to the right side on the run and got around the gate in good shape with the Kiwis following us by two lengths.
Up the second beat, we played the shifts and stretched to an 8 boat length lead. That made the final run a bit easier. A nice win for Artemis and we move to 6 points from 8 races.
In other racing, Mascalzone lost to BMW Oracle in the first race then stole one off of the French who mismanaged that last 400 meters of the race when they were leading by two lengths.
All racing took place in about 15-20 knots from the northwest. It is always shifty in the Maddalena channel and sometimes there are even two, slightly different breeze directions within the race track. That is called “split breeze”: Tactician's nightmare!
In the third race, Luna Rossa beat Aleph, in the fourth race BMW Oracle beat Azzurra, then Azzurra beat TeamOrigin.
We have one more race tomorrow against All4One and that will be the last match of the round robin. The line up tomorrow will be good:
Mascalzone vs. Team Origin
All4One vs. Aleph
Emirates Team NZ vs. Mascalzone
Artemis vs. All4One
Once the round robin is complete, we will move into the 1/4 finals. It is unlikely we will finish the quarter finals on Wednesday and Thursday so there will be a premium on finishing the round robin 1st or 2nd.
Artemis
Louis Vuitton Trophy
