Americas Cup off to a good start

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The Valencia Life Network reports...

The stage is set, and the weather seems to be favourable as yesterday the two teams completed their final testing off Valencia in the afternoon.

The time signal for the first race, which will comprise one twenty-mile beat to windward and a twenty-mile run to the finish is scheduled for 10:00 am, six minutes before the start gun. The wind forecasts are promising: light to moderate breezes and these should be enough to get Race 1 under way.

At a toss of a coin yesterday, it was decided that the priority to enter the start area for Race 1, the starboard tack, went to BMW Oracle Racing, with the giant craft being steered by James Spithill, who will use a rigid wing sail about seventy metres high. Alinghi 5, the Defending Catamaran will be steered by team President Ernesto Bertarelli and Loïck Peron of France as Alinghi bids to win the Americas Cup for the third time.

This multihull match is all new territory for the Americas Cup.  The craft can sail at two and a half to three times the wind speed. No one can predict exactly what will happen when the two giant protagonists square up in the start area. In conventional match racing the immediate goal is to inflict a penalty on the opposition, but such penalty turns, if the opposition is sailing away at 20 knots, could be doubly expensive.

Security measures are in place to maximize the safety on the race course. The start line is expected to be somewhere around 800 metres long, depending on the wind strength

Over nine hundred journalists from thirty-seven different countries have requested accreditation to follow the event in situ.

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