Fisher's View: Louis Vuitton Trophy - Can it get any better than this?

8:53 AM Thu 11 Mar 2010 GMT

'The Fish. (Bob Fisher, doing what he does the best.)' Guy Nowell &copy Click Here to view large photo

Can it possibly get any better? The Louis Vuitton Trophy regatta's third day in Auckland came close to approaching perfection. The 15-20-knot wind, funnelling down the harbour, provided an ideal race track for the equally matched Version V ACC yachts of Emirates Team New Zealand.

The flat water, glistening in the late afternoon sunshine, is what gives the Waitemata its name and the racing was tight fought and as full of tactical display as any match racing event - a big call for these huge boats.

The five-minute pre-starts were action packed with close calls demanding action from the on-the-water umpires, whose reaction was mostly to wave the green flag to indicate that no infringement had taken place, but in the final race of the day, between Synergy and Artemis, the blue flag denoting a penalty against the Russian team was raised.
Can it possibly get any worse (for TeamOrigin)? What had looked to be in line with the general perfection all around turned into a bowl of school custard - full of hazardous content, given that Ben Ainslie and his British team had upended the Emirates Team New Zealand initial advantage of the starboard entry in the pre-start to hold control off the line. Tight circling gave the Kiwis little time to manoeuvre and they were pushed towards the pin end with the Brits tacking away on the gun and going right.

What followed was a classic tacking duel, with Ainslie and his tactician, Iain Percy, using the power of the right (on starboard tack) to force Emirates Team New Zealand towards the Auckland side of the harbour. Each time they met, Team Origin gained a couple of metres. The layline calls for the first mark are crucial in the shifting breeze, but Ainslie and Percy shot the mark with a 14 second advantage.

It should have been the beginning of a triumphal day for Ainslie against the team with which he had been the B-boat driver throughout the Cup campaign, but the shifting breeze and lack of hard match practice in these boats for the British crew proved to be their undoing. Firstly, while Percy had made a call for a gybe set at the mark, it was safer to perform a bear-away set. That was achieved while the more experienced Kiwi crew was able to gain with the more difficult gybe set.

Just perceptibly ETNZ gained ground and as they approached the leeward gate, the bow of the Kiwis' boat was very close to the stern of TeamOrigin. Ainslie was caught with a choice of decisions. His gybe had gone badly, the jib was not up and in the kerfuffle the spinnaker boom was broken. TeamOrigin continued to sail downwind with the crew attempting to sort out the mess while the Kiwis rounded the mark and sailed away to victory.

The depth of the crew work was the measure of the match - another win for Emirates Team New Zealand, stamping its authority on the regatta. Three races, three victories; could anything be better?

Certainly it couldn't be for the Franco-Prussian alliance of All4One, who against the odds, defeated the previously unbeaten Italians in Azzurra. Francesco Bruni had the better of the start, gaining the favoured right hand side, but the persistence of John Cutler's calls to Sebastien Col had the All4One crew locking out the Italians at the weather mark, drawing them into a dial up to the right of the buoy, until Col could dial down, break the overlap and round the mark ahead. It was indeed heady stuff.

And as if that were not enough, Cutler and Col were required to repeat the dose to the Italians at the leeward gate, sailing them well past the buoy and biding their time for the tack back to the gate, enabling them to open a decent lead. The shoulders of the Italians visibly dropped and All4One drew away to record her second win of the regatta.
As if that were not enough, the next match was just as close on the opening beat with Gavin Brady and the Latin Rascals holding off Bertrand Pace's Aleph at the top mark to round ahead by 11 seconds. It was close on the run and they began the second beat with just 12 seconds separating them. But on this windward leg, Mascalzone Latino stretched away from the French boat and continued to gain on the run to the finish.

And it didn't stop there. Terry Hutchinson on Artemis and Karol Jablonski on Synergy are two of the most experienced match racers in these boats and the sparks few early. It was in the dial-up that a late gybe by Jablonski saw Synergy penalised, but the Polish skipper of the Russian boat would simply not give up. He harried Hutchinson throughout the race and most of his 41 second loss came from taking his penalty at the finish.
Promise me that it will get better than that, and I don't think I'll believe it.

by Bob Fisher