Baird and Bilger back on form

Ed Baird answered his many critics with a peach of a start today, defending the right and winding SUI 100 up to speed, bang on the line and pointing high as the gun fired. Dean Barker and the Kiwis were happy to take the left, based on the weather call from ‘Clouds’ Badham that a shift was coming from that side. However NZL 92 was just a touch off the line at start time, and Baird did a good job of living on the hip of the Kiwis.

The gain line swung back and forward but never quite turned in Kiwi favour. That half-boatlength advantage off the start line stood the Swiss in good stead, and that left-hand shift just wasn’t coming. Alinghi dragged the match all the way out to the port layline. Terry Hutchinson commented: The way the breeze was off the start line, we didn’t see it staying right so long, and it only came left with a minute to the lay line. That was frustrating.”

Strategist Murray Jones painted the picture from the Defender’s perspective: “We got a last minute call from Jon Bilger, our weather man, to take the right and Ed did a fantastic job in the pre-start, so we got a beautiful start to the right of Emirates Team New Zealand. We eventually managed to get better boatspeed and that was really the race won as we managed to hold all the way out to the layline and capitalise on that.”

So Ed Baird redeemed himself after a good start, and Jon Bilger made up for yesterday’s oversight when the Kiwis hooked into that big right-hander up the first beat of the epic Race 3. Ed was even allowed to make a media appearance (his first for weeks) at the Alinghi base press conference. Having won today’s race by 30 seconds and levelling the series at 2-2, the Alinghi helm was asked who had the momentum now: “One of the interesting things about momentum is that it is usually viewed very differently from the outside than it is experienced from the inside. I think what we are trying to do is put ourselves in a position to win every race and so far we are doing that. A couple of things haven’t gone our way but all we can do is to keep trying.”

After being strangely quiet about his helmsman over the past few days, Brad Butterworth was full of praise today: “I think Ed has been sailing the boat very well and you can’t ask for anything else. He has done all that has been asked of him, upwind and downwind he was pretty happy. He has been having a pretty good time, and hasn’t won all the races but for no weakness of his. I think he is going to get stronger as the regatta goes on.”

Today’s victory was certainly an important morale booster for the team, and a momentum blocker for the Kiwis. However, ETNZ have put a flea in Alinghi’s ear with a protest due to be heard tomorrow morning over whether or not the Defender is capable of lowering the Alinghi mainsail without sending a man up the rig. Alinghi were asked to demonstrate this after the race following a spot check by the measurement committee.

Alinghi weather spotter Murray Jones explained: “They elected to do a random measurement check on our boat today. One was to ensure that the mainsail can release off the main halyard lock without any assistance. So with the big waves we asked the guy whether we could put the halyard on loosely so the whole thing didn’t fall down and break battens and damage stuff when you actually do release it. So we tripped it off and that was that.”

All of which sounds fair enough, but have ETNZ spotted something that the measurers missed, or are they just trying to ruin their opponents’ day of rest? Could be some mind games going on here. Despite today’s loss, the Kiwis are feeling increasingly bullish about their prospects. Terry Hutchinson, on being asked if he agreed with Butterworth’s assessment of race 3 as being akin to a lottery, fired back: “No! He loses a race because of spectators and because of windshifts. That would be like me saying we lost the race today because the wind went right.”

Clearly, Hutchinson and his team mates draw strength from Alinghi’s extraordinary reaction yesterday. “It probably tells you they’re bunched.” Bunched? “Tense, nervous, high anxiety, all those things. They are the Defender and they have a lot to lose. Anything that helps put the pressure on them – happy to have it on them.”

“I think they’d probably prefer a 14 knot regatta with small shifts. That plays to their strengths.” Unfortunately for Hutchinson, that is more or less what the weather forecasters are predicting for the next two races scheduled on Friday and Saturday. Valencia may be returning to conditions closer to what Ernesto Bertarelli had in mind when he selected the venue, and when Rolf Vrolijk designed SUI 100, so hard questions will be asked of the Kiwis in the coming days.

Team Spirit v Boatspeed

If Emirates Team New Zealand fail to win this America’s Cup, it won’t be through lack of team spirit. One of the advantages of coming through the challenger series is that they have had to take a few knocks along the way. Provided you can take those knocks then you’ll be the better for it – you know, the ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’ theory.

Alinghi have had not had the same ‘luxury’ of the LVC rollercoaster ride. So when the Defender suffers a setback like yesterday’s extraordinary example of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, they’re in new territory. It asks much tougher questions about team spirit.

According to a friend who watched the race from the Alinghi base yesterday afternoon, the atmosphere turned ‘funereal’ the moment that NZL 92 nudged into the lead. Word is that Brad got out of the wrong side of bed yesterday morning, and that the goings-on out on the race course only exacerbated an already bad mood.

Perhaps this accounts for his lapse of concentration up the second beat, and his colourful choice of language in encouraging a wayward spectator craft to vacate the field of play. “Get that fxxxing boat off the fxxxing course” certainly got his point across, but offended the ears of some who heard his tirade over the live television feed.

The man sounded rattled, even if at this stage he was in the lead. It was also interesting to note that once ETNZ pulled into the lead, Brad had removed his customary wraparound sunglasses and there was the ever-so-slightest look of concern on his usually more relaxed features. Brad is the coolest cat in the Cup, so you have to look hard for any signs of worry, but I think they were there.

It would be fascinating to know who his old mate Russell Coutts is rooting for in this intriguing match. Coutts is in town doing some commentary for New Zealand TV, and without mentioning Ed Baird’s name, he noted the “poor lee-bow tack” made by Alinghi. Baird could and should have tacked closer to NZL 92’s lee bow, and if he had, it just might have just given the Defender a hope of holding the lead.

Baird is not a like-for-like replacement for Russell Coutts. To be fair to Baird, who is? However, Alinghi have always seemed confident that they could defend the 32nd Cup without the most accomplished helmsman in the world, but after yesterday it didn’t look so likely. Whatever Coutts might feel for Brad and his other old muckers (Jones, Phipps, Daubney & Fleury) on board Alinghi, a part of him must also be hoping that the Defender fails without him. Conversely Ernesto Bertarelli would love to prove that Coutts wasn’t quite so crucial to a successful defence as perhaps Coutts would like to believe. It will be fascinating to see who gets the last laugh here.

Returning to the question of helmsmen, one wonders if there is the same level of support for Ed Baird as Dean Barker enjoys in the ETNZ camp? While ETNZ team members give praise to Barker for his starting ability or his momentous piece of precision steering at the turning point of yesterday’s match, it’s hard to think of a time when any of Baird’s comrades have been similarly effusive with praise for their helmsman. In fact it’s hard to think of a time when Mr Ed has even been mentioned. It would be easy to read too much into this, but there just isn’t the same sense of team spirit emanating from the Defender as you get from the Challenger.

It’s a shame Mr Ed hasn’t been available for comment at any point in the past few weeks because he’s always good for a quote. It seems like the Alinghi philosophy is to put a protective wall around their helmsman, to shield him from the glare of the media. Does this cotton wool approach really work? ETNZ seem to take the complete opposite view, with Barker appearing in front of the media every time the Kiwis lose a race. The media admires that courage, and it helps take the sting out of the media’s tail when a key player does front up to answer the hard questions. You could argue that keeping Ed out of the spotlight only increases the pressure on him and the rest of the team.

This all makes it sound terribly gloomy for the Defender’s prospects, but for my money they are still the clear favourite. A chance meeting with one of the Luna Rossa afterguard today confirmed my (and almost everybody else’s) view that SUI 100 is the superior toy. Based on his observations from the two informal race days between the Italians and the Swiss, my Luna Rossa friend said the boat looked awesome in “stability conditions” as he put it, ie in 10 knots or more. He believes there is something special going on with that boat, perhaps the non-canting keel that caused such speculation a few weeks back, but which seems to have fallen off the media’s radar screen of late.

From a Kiwi perspective, at least the breeze looks set to be light tomorrow, and with an easterly sea breeze expected to veer round to the south-east, Dean Barker will most likely be fighting hard to defend his starboard entry advantage. From what we’ve seen of the starts so far, Barker should have no problem doing that, and NZL 92 looks to just about be the match for SUI 100 in the softer stuff.

It’s unlikely to be so light for the remainder of the series, however. Today for example, it was stinking hot and blowing a solid 18 to 19 knots all day. When one of those comes along, SUI 100 will be a hard machine to stop. The boat’s one weak spot seems to be that it takes a while to get rumbling out of manoeuvres – whether out of the start, out of a tack or a gybe. It’s a chink that the Kiwis will be keen to capitalise on.

Everything about the Alinghi campaign seems focused on straight-line speed, from the team’s self-confessed 95% focus on testing and development at the expense of boathandling practice, to the choice of Baird over Holmberg as the faster straight-line helmsman. Which means that the Kiwis’ best chance is to engage the Swiss speedsters in as much manoeuvring as possible, both before and after the start. Throw them off the boatspeed game.

Brad Butterworth continues to insist that the America’s Cup is a design race above all else, but it is up to Dean Barker, Terry Hutchinson et al. to prove otherwise. That good old seat-of-the-pants sailing can be the deciding factor of the 32nd America’s Cup after all.

Baird to steer Alinghi, but Kiwis win starboard entry

Alinghi confirmed the worst-kept secret in Valencia with the announcement that Ed Baird is to steer SUI 100, with his boss Ernesto Bertarelli standing just behind him, working the runners.

Talking of runners, Alinghi’s hope of being able to move their top-mast backstays forward next to the mast was knocked back by a new Public Interpretation yesterday. Today Alinghi fired back by asking for a further interpretation over the practice which was commonly seen during the challenger series, that of moving the slack runner from the leeward side of the yacht forward and to windward of the boom to reduce windage.

Chief measurer Ken McAlpine said that this too was prohibited, with the caveat that it is permitted for “the runners, having been eased, to be secured against the boom using a secondary tensioning device, to avoid movement and damage while racing and to protect the crew from injury”.

So the upshot is that Alinghi’s hoped-for advantage in this small area has been negated, although the overall feeling around Valencia is that the Defender will still go on to dominate this series. I’m not so convinced of Alinghi’s invincibility. The Kiwis’ crew work will be better, and their boatspeed is well proven across the wind range. The Swiss have done surprisingly little sailing over the past few weeks, with the boats spending a lot of time in the shed. They’d better be sure of that speed edge that SUI 100 is reputed to have.

With Terry Hutchinson winning the toss (Dean doesn’t like tossing the coin) and opting for starboard entry tomorrow, coupled with a light forecast for the first two matches over the weekend, the Kiwis have an excellent chance to take an early lead in the series.