Boat problems for China Team in warmup

by China Team on 3 May 2007
Cloudy with 10 knots of wind, Louis Vuitton is back on schedule. Two races have been run, unfortunately lost by Longtze, not spared from technical problems. It was not exactly a surprise to see the same teams victorious, even if Oracle had to escape from jail twice.

Longtze's fate was quickly decided this afternoon. During the warm up exercises, a part of the mainsail sail track broke (the connection between the mast and mainsail) and stopped the crew from being able to raise the sail. We attempted at sea to do an 'express' repair. Gilles Andre’ was sent up the mast accompanied by Wayne Crossland, one of the boatbuilders, to attempt repairing the damaged area. At more than 30 meters above the water, it is a perilous exercise but performed in record time.

Unfortunately, the stopwatch of the committee boat doesn’t wait, and the race is started while CHN95 can only a genoa at first. Longtze finally starts with a five minute deficit on the line, whereas its first adversary takes the race handily.

In the second race of the day, Longtze is battling with the Germans on GER89, helmed by the Danish Jesper Bank. The Scandinavians are victorious in the pre-start phase and cross the line with an almost two-boat length advantage. It is an uphill struggle to overcome for Longtze, who throws all its forces into an intense tacking duel. At the windward buoy, 42 seconds separate the two boats. The spread stabilizes not enabling Longtze to comeback onto the heels of Team Germany.

The favorites won tonight, even if it was very intense for BMW Oracle. Being behind for three quarters of the race two times against Shosholoza and Victory, Chris Dickson and his men had to go to extremes and carry out dramatic exploits to take their two matches of the day, justifiably. Therefore, BMW Oracle remains at the general classification accompanied by Luna Rossa.

Olivier Herledant, mast man:
'Against the Swedish, we needed just a little more time to do the repair job, it is a shame. Gilles and Wayne did an incredible job on an open sea. Afterwards, the rest of the day went well. The maneuvers were very fluid and it was a pleasure to be onboard. We beat our own tacking record against the Germans on the first beat. Afterwards, even if they are supposed to be the closest to us, there is still a certain margin. They won the start, managed the course well and didn’t have any technical worries, it is normal that they should finish in front. We don’t have anything to be ashamed of and sailed well. We had a new Chinese sailor on board today, ZHANG Wenpei, in place of Thierry Barot, in the sewer, who was slightly injured yesterday and that is important too.'