America's Cup - Extended racing hours to catch up first day's schedule

by Richard Gladwell on 26 May 2017 The strong winds forecast for the first day of racing in the 35th America's Cup have hit the Great Sound in Bermuda, but are less than predicted.

But on all three locations monitored by Predictwind.com the wind strength is clearly outside the limits allowed for racing with out the need for the Regatta Director to exercise his discretion to take safety consideration into account.

The America’s Cup Event Authority (ACEA) and America’s Cup Race Management (ACRM) announced on Thursday, local time, that Friday’s full event schedule has been postponed until Saturday due to the high winds expected. Later forecasts had wind strengths above 40kts.

As a safety precaution the entire America’s Cup Event Village was closed for Friday.

The expectation is that the front will have passed by Saturday and good conditions will prevail for the rest of the week with light winds expected for the next couple of days, increasing to moderate for early next week, before becoming lighter later in the week. At this stage it would seem unlikely that racing will be lost through insufficient wind.

To catch up the race schedule officials have extended the race schedule from a two hour slot each day to three hours with racing getting underway at the original time of 2.00pm and continuing to 5.00pm.

It is expected that once the race schedule has caught up the days lost that it will revert to the standard two slot for racing.

At this stage it is not known whether TV right broadcasters will cover the extra hour, or if they will just show the first two hours scheduled.

The Media Conference which is expected to be covered live on Youtube will get underway at 5.30pm (local time) and run for 45 minutes.