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Thar she blows ... not! America's Cup postponed by calm winds again
Posted: Sunday February 27, 2000 09:24 AM
AUCKLAND, New Zealand (AP) -- The 30th America's Cup has sailed into the doldrums. Sunday's scheduled Race 4 between Italy's Luna Rossa and Team New Zealand's Black Magic, which leads 3-0, was postponed due to a lack of stable wind on the Hauraki Gulf, the third time in nine days that conditions have been too tame to race. The wind was only about 4 knots at the scheduled 1:15 p.m. starting time. There was a puff of hope at about 2:30 p.m. when the wind was about 7-10 knots, and sails aboard both yachts were hoisted. "I was talking to both yachts and between the three of us we were feeling pretty happy that there would be something, then it died off and changed 100 degrees," race committee chairman Harold Bennett said. "Then it started to get far too fragile to do anything." By 3 p.m., the breeze dropped back to about 5 knots and the jibs were lowered. The race was abandoned at 3:25 p.m. and the yachts were towed back into the Viaduct Basin. Monday is a lay day, so officials will try again Tuesday, with Race 5 in the best-of-9 series scheduled for Thursday. Becalmed on the water and locked into a schedule dictated by television, organizers have gotten in just three races in nine days, stripping away any momentum for sailing's biggest regatta in what's supposed to be one of the best places in the world to sail. While the wind can sometimes rage on the Hauraki Gulf, it can also hinge on the 'Battle of the Breezes.' Breezes from the northeast and southwest meet at Rangitoto Island near the race course, and if they're similar in strength, they cancel each other out. The lingering image of this regatta, besides that of Italian crewman Massimiliano Sirena bleeding all over Luna Rossa's hull after being injured in Race 2, will be of the idled 75-foot yachts bobbing on the water under the baking summer sun, the crewmen as bored as the spectators. When Race 3 was postponed Thursday, there were complaints that Bennett was influenced by Team New Zealand, which doesn't want to race in light conditions. The Italians felt a race should have been held. But Bennett, who taught Black Magic skipper Russell Coutts to sail many years ago, said the wind was too unstable toward the top end of the course and could have shifted dramatically. "It was worse today because the shifts in the breeze were a lot bigger, 100 degrees," Bennett said. There were complaints about fluky wind when the America's Cup was held in San Diego, but there were no problems getting off any races in the finals in either 1992 or 1995. This America's Cup will at least match the 1983 regatta as the longest ever at 13 days. That was the year that Australia II rallied from a 3-1 deficit to beat Dennis Conner's Liberty in seven races and end the New York Yacht Club's 132-year winning streak.
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