America's Cup World Series Portsmouth – Standing room only.

by Guy Nowell, Asia Editor, Sail-World.com on 23 Jul 2016 There are no half measures where English weather is concerned. Happily, that means that when it’s good it very, very good. Blue skies, sunshine, 23 deg C, clean air, and the whole place looks as if has put on a party frock and got lit up. Wonderful.

So whether it was the weather, or whether it was the promise of Sir Ben Ainslie leading out his Land Rover BAR gladiators in front of a home crowd, or whether it was the amount of pre-event coverage that has been pushed out hereabouts, or a combination of all three – who knows. But this afternoon saw a lot of people on the Southend waterfront, watching this latest round of the infinitely flexible and extendable Louis Vuitton America’s Cup World Series (that’s ‘LVACWS’ to you and me), and I mean A LOT. Organisers will say tens of thousands. (The HK Police would say a few hundred, but they use different appendages for counting). The Brits go understandably nuts when the sun comes out; we didn’t actually see any knotted handkerchiefs, but the shorts were short, the summer dresses were floaty, and the Gosling’s Rum counter was doing a roaring trade in Dark 'n Stormies. Pass the sunscreen.

The waterfront at Southsea is a great natural grandstand. Stack up the audience on the grassy ramparts of the old fortifications, keep them up to date with a decent sound system, and get on with your racing. You can see the official race reports elsewhere (XXXX), so we won’t repeat here. Suffice to say that two bullets from three races by Land Rover BAR and Britain’s favourite sailing knight had the crowd on their feet. Well, actually, they were on their feet anyway, but you know what we mean. Andy Green (GBR) on the commentary did a great job of stirring some noise out of the thoroughly and happily partisan crowd, and alongside him Tucker Thompson (USA) assisted nobly.

It was a light air affair for the most part, with an occasional hull up out of the water, but definitely no foiling action. The wind strengthened throughout the three races, and then all of a sudden it was all over, just as solid breeze and a few whitecaps started appearing on the unusually blue waters of the Solent. The great god TeeVee who commands and controls everything these days had been fed, on schedule, and that was that - which just goes to reinforce the opinion of some that running sailing races to an inflexible tv schedule is a daft idea. When the hype and the posters and the promise are all predicated on the image of superfast boats flying down the racecourse at insane speeds, supported on thin air and foils the size of dinner plates, there’s always going to be a bit of an anticlimax when the trick just doesn’t come off. Never mind. A downspeed win for the ‘home’ team was more than enough to send everyone home happy.

If you didn’t want to go straight home there were RC cars to race at the BMW Yacht Club, AC match racing simulators to try out, ‘grinding’ against the clock (and against some selected and appropriately huge AC grinders) and a power-hoisting simulator, and a whole organised session for young autograph hunters.

Tomorrow is Super Sunday, when races count for double points. LVACWS regattas are notoriously unpredictable, a bit like throwing a handful of dice, so no predictions. Please, let’s have some more of the same.

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Results (10 points for a win, 9 for second etc)

LVACWS Portsmouth
1. Land Rover BAR (6, 10, 10) 26
2. Groupama Team FRA (10, 7, 9) 26
3. Softbank Team Japan (7, 8, 8) 23
4. Oracle Team USA (9, 9, 5) 23
5. Emirates Team NZ (8, 5, 7) 20
6. Artemis Racing (5, 6, 6) 17

LVACWS Overall
1. Emirates Team NZ 315
2. Land Rover BAR 311
3. Oracle Team USA 308
4. Softbank Team Japan 282
5. Artemis Racing 279
6. Groupama Team FRA 260