Yes, Alinghi did win that final race
by Richard Gladwell, nzeditor@sail-world.com on 6 Jul 2007
The coup de grace as SUI-100 edges through a near-stalled NZL-92 on the finish line. The finish line is biased away from Alinghi, and she has almost double the distance to sail compared to NZL-92. Valenciasailing.com
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With the margin of just one second at the finish of what proved to be the final race of the 32nd America's Cup, many Kiwi fans were querying just how accurate this call was on the part of the finish line judges.
Sail-World decided to investigate this margin further using a combination of photos taken at the finish, and GPS positions from both boats. Don't forget to expand these shots if you wish to see the full detail.
The first photo taken at the finish, and shows the position of the two boats at the time NZL-92 had completed her penalty. We have drawn the finish line between the mast on the finish boat and the apex of the finish mark. By measurement we can see that Alinghi has almost double the distance to sail to finish ahead of NZL-92.
This fact means that she has to sail at twice the speed of NZL-92.
As we saw on the video of the finish Alinghi did not have any more breeze than NZL-92, but did have the disadvantage of not having to do two low speed tacks to clear her penalty and finish. Althugh the winds were light and Alinghi did have to recover from a botched spinnaker drop, and broken spinnaker pole, she had recovered and was able to sail a straight line to the mark, preserving her apparent wind. It was this wind which provided her additional boatspeed.
Emirates Team New Zealand still had to get onto her new course, and build her apparent wind. She was forced initially to use just the true wind, which was probably around four to five knots at the time, but her boat speed was yet to build her apparent wind and enable her boat speed to build further.
Going to the second shot, taken about the same time as the photo, we can see from the animation the speeds of the two boats at the time NZL-92 exited her penalty turn. This shows she is travelling at around 3.5kts out of the tack while Alinghi is sailing at about 7.8kts. So Alinghi are above the target speed required to finish by a modest margin. Alinghi at this stage, due to the bias on the finish line is trailing NZL-92 by 11 metres.
In the third shot we see the position of the two yachts as Alinghi finishes in accordance with the definition of finishing in the sailing rules. NZL-92 is definitely behind the finish line at this point. So according to the GPS based animation, Alinghi was first to finish.
In the fourth shot, we can see the GPS animation positions at the time that NZL-92 finishes and the finish time in the top right hand corner, along with the race time in the bottom right hand corner. According to the GPS animation, NZL-92 finishes two seconds astern of Alinghi, which was the original margin called by race officials, later reduced to one second.
The conclusion is that Alinghi did win that vital Race 7 and with it the 32nd America's Cup.
The other conclusion that can be drawn from this sequence is that the GPS animation is very accurate compared to the actual situation and position of the boats on the water.
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