Clone Wars

Just arrived in Valencia, and went out for a look at the America's Cup boats training. Even though the wind was only blowing about 12 to 14 knots, there were some big, sloppy waves left over from the strong winds the night before. It looked like very wet work for the bowmen as they stood on the bows going into some practice pre-starts.

All in, there were 16 boats that I counted out there today: two Alinghis, two Luna Rossas, two BMW Oracles, two Mascalzones, and two Emirates Team New Zealands, all going through private in-house training sessions; and doing some friendly races against each other were: +39 v Germany, Desafio v Victory, and Areva v Shosholoza.

This is one of the last days of training for the teams before Valencia Louis Vuitton Act 13 kicks off next week. We watched +39 and Germany roll off the line, the Italians claiming the pin while the Germans split to the right. When they came back together after about half a mile of sailing, Iain Percy's team were comfortably ahead of Jesper Bank's crew. Very hard to draw any conclusions from where we were, but that sort of gain had to be down mainly to better wind rather than any inherent boatspeed advantage. Encouraging nevertheless for the underpractised +39 crew.

Victory and Desafio had a very aggressive pre-start, with the Spanish coming off the pin and the Swedes taking the committee boat end on port tack. They then proceeded into a tight duel up the beat and we didn't hang around long enough to see which team succeeded in exerting an advantage.

It's also pretty hard to tell which boat is which among some of the teams. There were two NZL-92s out there for the Kiwis, and two ITA-99s engaged in some private Mascalzone match racing. But it was great to see the boats chugging along in some good wind and waves. Let's hope Valencia can surprise with some more wind and wave action for the coming weeks and months.