| America's Cup Race 1 - Rumble in the Jungle abandoned for the day |
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Day 1 of the 33rd America's Cup- billed as the sailing equivalent of the Rumble in the Jungle At the scheduled start time, with the two giant multihulls tethered, motionless in the almost breezeless conditions in the start area, in international waters some 25 miles off Spain’s Valencia coast, PRO Harold Bennett signalled postponement at 10:00 local time. Three hours later and the wind had built a little but it was unstable. At the top mark 20 miles closer to the Spanish coast, there were gusts of up to 12 knots from the south west, (around 240-245) but at the same time, the wind over the horizon at the start line was three knots but unfortunately from the north west (335). That 80-90 degree difference across the course made it very tough for the race committee to run a race. Ernesto Bertarelli's Swiss Alinghi 5 team was keen to go sailing, with the very lightweight catamaran expected to have an advantage with wind speeds up to seven knots. On the other hand all the body language/signals from the Larry Ellison's BMW Oracle Racing's trimaran USA-17 was don't even think about dropping that flag Harold, wait until we have seven-10 knots. Finally the Race Committee decided that no racing was going to be possible and abandoned racing for the day around 1345 local time. This was the start gun for the drag race back to Valencia for the media and the race officials. After travelling for about 35 minutes at around 35kts, land was finally sighted. Next race will be on Wednesday at 10h00 (CET), that is 0400 US East Coast time, 09:00 GMT, 2000 Australian East Coast time and 2200 NZ time.
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