Start gun has yet to fire

by BMW Oracle Racing Media on 19 Apr 2007
After three days of waiting for suitable racing breezes, the Louis Vuitton Cup Race Committee has yet to fire a starting gun.

Today, the fleet was sent ashore once again after waiting in vain for two hours for the breeze to build and stabilise enough for racing.

BMW ORACLE Racing tactician, Gavin Brady, commented: 'We don’t really feel disappointed, because we really don’t want to race in these extremely light conditions. After three years of development, we don’t want to let it all come down to a lottery. We are here to race, but we want to race in good conditions.'

Brady said that in these extremely light and fickle winds, if one yacht picked up just half a knot more windspeed than another, it could decide the race. 'We don’t want races to be decided on the roll of the dice,' he said.

BMW ORACLE Racing was to have raced Luna Rossa Challenge today, one of the so-called Big Four teams in the 32nd America’s Cup fleet. That match, like the other four lost from the first two days, will be pushed to the back of the program. Tomorrow USA 98 is scheduled to meet the French Areva Challenge and the Italian +39 teams.

BMW ORACLE Racing navigator, Peter Isler, commented: 'We had high hopes of racing today, but it did not happen again. We have to take what Mother Nature is giving us, but now we are having to think about how this affects the regatta going forward. Already we are in a situation where some of the make-up races will have to be sailed during Round Robin Two.'