Sail-World New Zealand- October 22, 2012

by . on 22 Oct 2012 Welcome to Sail-World.com's New Zealand newsletter for October 22, 2012

The Coastal Classic is over for another year, and Friday's start proved to be one of the more challenging as a rain squall moved in from west and a large car transport ship moved in from the east, with the 167 boat fleet in between.

The race was reckoned to have been won and lost by Rangitoto, as boathandling in a tight racing situation came to the fore, and those who got a clean start, got on the right side of the the harbour, and were clean through the gybe - generally got away to a slingshot start.

Going down the Rangitoto Channel we clocked the ORMA60 TeamVodafoneSailing at 35kts and the TP52 V5 at 22kts - sailing under just a main and jib. They were gone and held the lead in their respective multi and monohull fleets all the way to Russell.

TeamVodafoneSailing reduced the multihull race record for the third successive year, while V5 came within two minutes of taking the line and handicap double. Given the way ratings seem to be stacked against canting keelboats that was quite a feat.

TeamVodafoneSailing are reported to have hit 46kts in a burst heading north, V5 did 28.6kts. Those are very good speeds to say the least - particularly considering they were largely in flat water and not surfing in Southern Ocean conditions.

One of the great sights was the new Elliott design, Crusader also hitting some very high speeds exiting the Channel. She went on to finish seventh on line honours in Division 1, and fifth on handicap.

We have plenty of reports, images and video on the race north, in this edition of www.sail-world.com, plus several videos, including two from one board TeamVodafoneSailing and another on board V5. There's also some excellent on the water video from Will Calver of www.oceanphotography.co.nz

The America's Cup scene has gone quiet since the capsize and recovery ofOracle Team USA's AC72on Wednesday (NZT).

The causes of the incident seem to be the usual culprits - a combination of factors which all seemed to fall into a catastrophic alignment.

In this edition of Sail-World.com's newsletter we have a story with links to audio interviews with Murray Jones of Oracle Team USA, and Grant Dalton of Emirates Team NZ.

A little surprisingly, Murray Jones said that Oracle have not yet had a detailed debrief on the incident and its causes, but traverses some of them with prodding from interviewer, top international sailing commentator, PJ Montgomery.

The combination of wind, sea state, slim bows, boat not properly on foils and a few other factors all combined to create the first AC72 capsize.

On Friday came the brief media release from Artemis Racing revealing that they had suffered damage to their front cross-beam when doing towing testing.

Quite what this means remains to be seen.

Next Friday, Luna Rossa will be launching their AC72 in Auckland. They too will be going through the tow testing process, and may be sailing sometime the following week.

That will mean that the AC72 and America's Cup will move to a mode where two AC72's are sailing in Auckland during the summer, while in USA just one AC72 (Artemis Racing) will be sailing in the US winter.

Many thanks to those who have contributed to this edition, particularly those using our online submission and image loading facility which can be accessed by http://www.sail-world.com/admin/add_story.cfm?rid=6!clicking_here

Good sailing!

Richard Gladwell
NZ Editor

sailworldnzl@gmail.com

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