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Why can't they sail? Posted: Thursday October 31, 2002 12:47 PM
By Matt Sheahan, Yachting World "How can Cup racing maintain credibility in the public's eye if every time the breeze gets above that sufficient to snuff a candle, the prospect of racing goes out too?" That is a familiar and commonly heard view from those watching, or at least trying to watch, Round Robin two. Indeed, my own nine-year-old junior reporter/daughter came back from a day out on the briny Saturday asking why she hadn't got to see any racing with the America's Cup boats. Not that she was complaining. Instead, she'd spent the afternoon aboard the press boat watching some very exciting racing in a local P boat class where every few minutes someone else her age would take a swim. No such excitement was in evidence on the course that they'd spent the morning on, and the fact that a healthy fleet of juniors completed their race just reinforced the point. TV and radio programs also seemed to be asking similar questions as to why multimillion-pound campaigns and the world's best sailors couldn't race when the breeze was up. Part of the answer is very simple. It's not that the boats or crew can't cope, but more that they won't. The Louis Vuitton Cup teams are here for one reason: To cultivate and select the team with the best chances of taking the America's Cup away from New Zealand. It's as simple as that -- except when the weather and sometimes team tactics intervene. The America's Cup matches themselves start on the Feb. 15, slap bang in the middle of summer, when the winds are generally light and sea breezes play a big part in what happens afloat. Twenty five- to 30-knot winds are rare at this time of year, and while the eventual Challenger may have proved themselves in big breezes in the spring, a boat and crew optimized for these conditions would not necessarily present the biggest threat to the Kiwis. At least that's how the story goes. The reality seems to suggest otherwise. When it blows dogs off chains, as they like to say down here, Team New Zealand are often out on the Gulf two boat tuning and racing. Several local experts will also confirm that if it blows during the Cup itself, you can be sure that the Kiwis will be wanting to race. And it's not just TNZ who like a bit of a blow. One World and the Swedes are often seen scooting around in the tougher stuff in between races with their full sail plans up. But when the stoppages start, it's not always the weather that's the problem. Tactical play by the teams themselves is often to blame. When the weather doesn't suit them or their boat, there are a few aspects of the rules that can allow a team to delay, or even pull out of a race altogether. Gear failure on a day when two races are run is one way that a team can dip out of the second race of the day without prejudicing themselves. As well as this, a team can ask for a 45-minute delay on any day, but they can only play this card once per Round Robin. Being granted this delay can sometimes be enough to push the race beyond the time limit, or buy enough time for the wind to build or drop, above or below the required limits. Either way, this can buy you time if you find yourself facing the kind of conditions that will have your boat barking its way around the course. Of course, this is not the only reason a team would ask for a delay; there may well be genuine reasons for not wanting to start, and far be it from me to point the finger at who might be using the rules in this manner. You'll just have to make up your own minds about why there seemed to be so many gear failures after the first race Tuesday -- I couldn't possibly say. So, for several days I was busy catching up with the backlog of work, finding trivial snippets on Web sites and wondering whether I was past the point (read weight) at which I could take up kite surfing. It seems that only they get out of bed on the kind of days that some America's Cup sailors head back towards theirs. Courtesy of Yachting World.
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