AC World Series Naples - Emirates Team NZ 'sailed well, bar two races'

by Warren Douglas and Rod Davis on 16 Apr 2012 On America's Cup World Series Naples final day Emirates Team New Zealand’s good record in the fleet racing championship came to naught.

Going in to the start on 52 points with four wins from six races, the massive scoring of the final race (50 points for the win then 30, 20, 20, 15, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6 – compared with 10 for the win during the week) skewed the final result.

Emirates Team New Zealand went in to the final day on 52 points, five ahead of Oracle Racing 4 and 10 ahead of Luna Rossa Piranha.

The weather was very light - not exactly Emirates Team New Zealand’s favourite conditions – and a bad start (being shut out by Luna Rossa at the committee boat end of the line) meant we languished towards the back of the fleet.

In the conditions – three knots of breeze at the start - there were few passing lanes.

Emirates Team New Zealand finished seventh to collect eight points. Luna Rossa Pirhana won the race to collect to 50 points, catapulting them to 92 and top of the leader board for the ACWS fleet race championships at Naples.

Oracle Racing 4 was second on 77 and Emirates team New Zealand on 60 points was third.

Coach Rod Davis blogs from Naples for the last time….

In first report on the Naples regatta I said, 'you never know how a regatta will turn out'. I got that right. I never dreamed we would win four fleet races, to then have a shocker in the Super Sunday race.

Where to start? Let’s take an over-all view. We did sail well, bar two races and consider that a plus. We have some speed problems in a breeze, everyone does bar the team that has been training in San Francisco. We know what their set up is now, so we will start with a copy of that.

So why did we miss-fire on the last day? A good question, which has no simple answer. Normally we sail our best in the big races. I’m pretty sure of a few contributing factors and will laminate those. But it is never just one thing. And sometimes s**t really does happen..

My other prediction that Artemis would be the big improver did not come true either. Maybe I will stick to coaching and get out of prediction business.

Emirates Team NZ Americas Cup website