America's Cup - Artemis Racing wins on first day of Practice Session
by America's Cup Media on 7 Apr 2017
24/03/2017 - Hamilton (BDA) - 35th America's Cup Bermuda 2017 - America's Cup Class (ACC) boats practice racing Austin Wong | ACEA
Artemis Racing joined its America’s Cup opponents on the water on Thursday for the start of the second race week. Skipper Nathan Outteridge was excited to be back racing on the team’s America’s Cup Class (ACC) race boat.
The racing had an eventful start when Artemis Racing managed to skilfully avoid a power boat which had wrongly driven straight onto the course as the team was rounding Mark 1, in its first race of the day against Oracle team USA. The Regatta Director, Iain Murray, promptly abandoned the race and cleared the course area.
“We had a good start in the first race against Oracle Team USA. Unfortunately, we had to abandon the race as there was plenty of traffic out on the Sound and we had to take evasive action in order not to collide with a power boat that was not supposed to be in our way”, said Outteridge.
After a short break at the dock, making sure that the boat was fine, Artemis Racing headed out again to face Oracle Team USA. This time, the American team got the better start.
“But we fought hard and clawed our way back to take the win from them. We managed to turn the day around quite nicely. The racing team had six good hours of sailing”, said Outteridge.
As communicated earlier in the week, during Tuesday’s practice session, the team’s Turbo AC45 (T2) suffered platform damage which lead to the wing falling into the water. No one was injured. The wing, one of our ACC wings, sustained minimal damage, and only the tip of the wing touched the water. There were some minor repairs to be made to the wing and checks to be undertaken, but the team got it back in the shed that night and the repairs and checks were quickly completed.
After a solid start yesterday, the team is fully focused on continuing to develop ‘Magic Blue’ and putting in a good performance next week.
Outteridge concluded, “Friday has a very strong forecast, around 30 knots, so we won’t be sailing, but we’re hoping to get out at the weekend. There’s always lots of tweaks you’d like to do on the boat, so we’ll take the opportunity to tune her up a bit. We’ll be out racing again on Monday through Wednesday with the other teams. Day off tomorrow, but plenty of work to be done still”.
Unofficial Results on Day 1 (won-lost):
Artemis Racing 1-0
Oracle Team USA 1-1
SoftBank Team Japan 0-0
Land Rover BAR 0-0
Groupama Team France 0-1
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