Image:©2013 ACEA/Photo: Abner Kingman
 

Race 7:
Both teams took fairly conservative tactics in the pre-start, heading from the back of the starting box to the starting line in a time-on-distance contest won by ETNZ to windward of Luna Rossa.  The Kiwis once again showed their reaching speed, rolling over the top of the Italians and hitting 44 knots of boat speed at the reaching mark, though only five second ahead. 

Chris Draper and Luna Rossa found some gains on the first downwind leg, closing in on ETNZ at the first gate with the delta only 27 seconds.  But though Luna Rossa closed to 100m early on Leg3, Dean Barker put on an upwind sailing exhibition, continually putting Aotearoa on foils upwind and taking the delta up to 1:52 at the third mark.  From then, all the Italians could do was watch as ETNZ went on to win race seven by 1:58.

Race 8 was postponed for high winds and will be re-scheduled for Sunday

Read More about Race 7 on LVC Finals Main Page

Quotes of the Day:

Dean Barker, Skipper, Emirates Team New Zealand

"It’s been a little while since we raced in this much breeze, but it was awesome sailing in these boats.  There’s always improvements and gains to be had so I think it’s a matter of using what you’ve got and developing that’s the big challenge.  The more racing, the more time you go around this course, there’s always areas you know you can improve."

"You don’t focus too much at the speedo, but you know you’re going fast. There are different types of vibrations as you go through different speeds, but you definitely know when it’s really ripping, the thing feels like it’s going to shake itself to pieces."

"But you get to a certain breeze strength and it’s very hard to get around the mark, accelerate up on the foils and get stable, it just takes a lot of work. The loading changes so quickly. We’re still playing around with different things upwind and trying to learn at the same time as race. Getting consistent will be the key."

Chris Draper, Helmsman, Luna Rossa Challenge

It was full on, probably the windiest race we've seen.  Pushing the boats in that breeze and sailing the boats hard in that wind is impossible to get over, even to people who have sailed all their lives, what these boats are like to sail.  It's just incredible.  Even though we weren't winning and the Kiwis were sailing away from us, it was still an amazing race to do. 10 years ago, we'd have set the world speed record!  And we're racing these boats around marks.

But it's frustrating for us as a team.  We'd love to buy some time back, but we just can't do that.  We've gotten a lot better and our performance numbers show that, but so have the Kiwis and it's impressive to see. I think if we were able to go back and do everything again, we would do a way better job. We can see the improvements all the time.

But there are a lot of strange forces going on downwind.  You're starting to get on the edge of ventilation and cavitation, so it starts to change the pressures on the foils.  I think as the appendages evolve and develop the speeds you can reach get a lot higher without facing those issues.  There are some pretty weird forces going on in the bay, things like tide lines, rib wakes -- they're heinous when we sail across them, they really change the balance of the boat.

Franceso Bruni, Tactician, Luna Rossa

The boat was going pretty well downwind, the problem is there’s a one-way track upwind.  There is so much to do and the leading boat is just going to extend.  I thought about going to the shore after tack one but I thought it was too risky a solution.  After that there was not much we could have done differently.

I still say there is a little bit of a difference in performance upwind, downwind I think we can be quite competitive, definitely better today than yesterday.  I would have loved to start to windward but that is not easy with Dean Barker when he enters on the port side, which is kind of the controlling position.  He had a perfect direction going back to the line so there was not much we could have done differently.  But definitely the start made a difference; I think the windward position was key today, as yesterday.  Apart from that, I think we made a couple of mistakes with the boards up and down downwind, but I think we did sail pretty close to 100 percent. 

-- Diane Swintal for CupInfo/©2013 CupInfo.com
 

 Image:©2013 ACEA/Photo: Abner Kingman
 

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Daily Race Calendar for 2013 Louis Vuitton Cup and America's Cup

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