Emirates Team New Zealand had to let the spinnaker go; lose to BMWOracle

Emirates Team New Zealand had to let the spinnaker go at the second leeward mark of its match against BMWOracle today, costing vital time that ended any chance of winning the race.

The halyard jammed and strategist Adam Beashel went to the top of the mast to free it but not before they had lost five boat-lengths.

Tactician Ray Davies summarises the race: “We got a good start, happy tight to leeward and looking strong enough to hold Oracle out to the right layline but they gained enough in the tacks to lead into the top mark by 10s.

“We threw gybes at them on the run and did catch up; we were quite overlapped closing on the gate and chose to go right. We gybed on the layline, the breeze went shifty and we couldn’t lay the mark, so gave ourselves a difficult rounding on the left.

“Then we had the issue with the halyard, but made some solid gains up the beat, rounding 15 seconds behind Oracle – exactly the same delta as at mark 2.”

But there was no catching Oracle when went on to win by 25s.

With round robin 2 drawing to a close, the big mover today was the Italian Mascalzone Latino which won both its matches and is lying third on the leader board, behind BMWOracle and Emirates Team New Zealand.

Tomorrow we race both Synergy and Mascalzone Latino.

Points after race day 8:

BMWOracle 15 points

Emirates Team New Zealand 8.5

Mascalzone Latino 8

All4ONE  6

Synergy  6

Artemis 5