BMW strolls the last race

As expected it was a pretty one-sided affair in the re-match that was called off earlier in the week, between BMW Oracle and +39 Challenge. But as +39’s tactician, Ian Walker, commented yesterday, “We’re certainly not going to learn anything sitting in a coffee bar with hangovers.” So they went sailing with hangovers instead. But Iain Percy and his gang did as well as they could in a dog of an old boat, winning a marginal advantage at the start but unable to do anything with it. ITA-59 is just plain slow below 10 knots wind, and today’s race barely saw more than 6 knots.

I spoke to Percy afterwards, and asked if he had even seen a glimmer of hope of beating BMW ORACLE today. “No,” he said, matter of factly. “If we were racing in 15 knots, yes, but in that wind? No. I don’t want to make the mistake – which I did against Alinghi - of doing something radical. That’s not the way to learn. Where are you in a year’s time? You’ve got to take your weather calls, pick your right side, then you one-tack up and make the cross - normally. Of course you’re not going to do that when you’re 3/10s of a knot slower, but we got to sail BMW Oracle today. You still learn from that.“

Even BMW Oracle’s tactician Bertrand Pacé reckoned they got something out of the one-sided encounter. “We are learning each time we go on the water. It’s quite hard to understand what’s going on with the wind here. We try to learn with the weather team.” While the weather remains difficult to fathom, there is a quiet confidence about the team when talking about USA-87. Pacé said: “This boat is tacking quite well, and I think this boat is quicker in the light and quicker in the heavy. It’s not much, maybe two boatlengths faster in a beat, but it’s quite enough to stay there when you have a bad shift, and make a good gain when you get a good shift.”

Two boatlengths in this game is an awful lot. And when you combine that with the boat’s ability to snap through the tacks, it’s a potent combination. But how much speed has the team sacrificed for that manoeuvrability, or can you really have the best of both worlds? Pacé doesn’t think so. “Everything is a trade-off. To get this boat we have probably compromised the speed but that’s what we needed to do for this racing. It’s hard to know the answer yet.”