Day 5 - Round Robin 1

The Races:

Race1:

BMW Oracle Racing by Damiani Italia Challenge by 55s

Race2:

Team Shosholoza bt Alinghi by 3m39s

Race3

Emirates Team New Zealand bt K-Challenge by 1m38s

Race4

Team ORIGIN by Greek Challenge by 58s

Round Robin 1 Points Tally:

Pool A:

1st: Emirates Team New Zealand - 4

2nd: BMW Oracle Racing - 3

3rd: Damiani Italia Challenge - 2

4th: K-Challenge - 1

5th: China Team - 0

Pool B:

1st: Team ORIGIN - 4

2nd=: Alinghi, Luna Rossa - 2

3rd: Team Shosholoza - 1

4th: Greek Challenge

Round Robin 2 Gold/Silver Fleets:

Gold:

Emirates Team New Zealand (Pool A 1st)

BMW Oracle Racing (Pool A 2nd)

Damiani Italia Challenge (Pool A 3rd)

Team Origin (Pool B 1st)

Alinghi (Pool B 2nd)

Luna Rossa (Pool B 3rd)

Silver Fleet:

K-Challenge (Pool A 4th)

China Team (Pool A 5th)

Greek Challenge (Pool B 5th)

Team Shosholoza (Pool B 5th)

What a day of racing we had today, man some big upsets as well as some good classic racing on a perfect day in Auckland.

Weather wise, could not be better, light breeze, blue skys with lovely white puffy clouds, amazing!

Racing was on track all day, 1st race at 10AM with BMW Oracle Racing doing a good job over Damiani Italia Challenge. Won by 55s.

Race 2 was the biggest upset of the day. With a LONG proper dial up lasting 3 minutes Alinghi & Team Shosholoza bore away to start their race which everyone thought was done and dusted before it began but no, how wrong we were. Alinghi made mistakes in the prestart, late to the line with Team Shosholoza powering away. Alinghi never regained and trailed the South Africans around everymark, eventually to finish 3m49s behind, well over 1KM!!!!

Well done Team Shosholoza, but the hype on Sailing Anarchy is that was there a gear failure on the Team New Zealand boat Alinghi were sailing for them to be so far behind?

Surely they cannot be sandbagging? Speculation is rife but there has been no reports of gear breakage or any excuse loaded onto the gear at all from them, a good clean win, massive win from a greatly sailed race by Team Shosholoza.

Race 3 was a pretty close one on the first beat between Emirates Team New Zealand and K-Challenge, but the excellent crew work of Team New Zealand put away K-Challenge which Team New Zealand won with a 1m38s lead.

Team Origin also put away Greek Challenge although the Greeks tried hard, good on em, show it to the brits as much as you can guys!

Now this is round robin 1 complete today. 

Pool A is easy, we have a easy 1st -5th. Pool B is harder, we have a 2nd tie between 3 teams, so im not sure what happens there.

Anyhow, there is a lay day tomorrow, be sure to catch as much as you can on YouTube or the TVNZ Highlights in NZ tonight at 11PM ish or the podcasts or online.

I will be back again on Thursday (or before when I hear the final Gold/Silver fleet line up) and keep you up to date with info as it comes to hand as well as daily race highlights in the evenings.

Lovely evening here in Auckland, make the most if it guys...I am!

Ciao