king wing
BMWO absolutely smoked Alinghi today in race one of the AC, and this after BMWO was way behind at the start as Alinghi fouled BMWO badly, however BMWO was stuck in irons and took quite a bit to get going. Said BMWO wheelman Jimmy Spithill, "We did a pretty nice job we were able to get the penalty and really had them on the ropes. But we got
locked in to windward and tried to tack out but had a bit of a fumble and got stuck in the breeze. It didn’t turn out the way I
wanted it to!"
It appears to matter not at all about who wins the start as the trimaran looks to be significantly faster than the cat on all points of sail, certainly in the breeze (6-10) sailed today.
The final delta was huge – 15 minutes – as Alinghi buggered the finish and penalty turn to complete a perfectly awful day for them but it was in actuality truly indicative of how much slower Alinghi is and it looks for all the world that BMWO has done a much better job figuring out the multihull equation of this version of the AC.
Alinghi is going to have to show much better to make a race out of this, but it looks very unlikely as apparently Bertarelli has brought a knife to a gun fight. Has Ernie’s head expoded yet?
More later but jump in the AC Anarchy forum brought to you by Slam for the best discussion anywhere – over 1,200 people are in our forums as we write this…
