Tactics at the last rounding mark
The America’s Cup race course ends with a reaching leg to the finish line. Here’s a winng move by a boat that is behind while sailing to the final rounding mark.
These screen shots from the CupExperience App let us analyze what happened.
Let’s look at the finish of a fleet race from the ACWS in Newport in June 2012. Emirates Team New Zealand has won the race handily. Jimmy Spithill (USS) is about 100 meters ahead of Loïc Peyron (NRG). Spithill will round the last mark and sail to the finish on starboard tack. Peyron will need to gybe. But Peyron is overlapped and inside of Spithill, which would give him rights to round inside of Spithill.
Notice, too, that Peyron has a lot more speed.
Here we see that Peyron has chosen to go outside of Spithill. This has broken the overlap, so Peyron also loses his inside rights, as there was no overlap when Spithill entered the three boat-length zone.
What is Peyron thinking? Notice that he still must gybe to make his rounding, and that he is still much faster.
Peyron rounds outside Spithill, He has lost speed in the gybe, but he is still faster.
He also knows that Rule 17 has been deleted from the Racing Rules of Sailing, America’s Cup Edition. This means he can sail above his proper course.
Now for the big move…
With the rounding complete, Peyron, the leeward boat, can luff Spithill, and force him to slow down and head away from the direct line to the finish.
Peyron has held Spithill up, so now Peyron bears away towards the finish, in the lead and with more speed.
Spithill hits his yellow button to signal a protest, as shown by the race committee “chatter” message at the bottom of the screen. This is the same message that shows up on each helmsman’s onboard display. (Photo in this article.)
Peyron finishes ahead of Spithill, grabbing second place.
Spithill finishes, as the umpires signal, “no penalty.”
In the early days of the ACWS racing, some people complained that the reaching finish was boring – there was no opportunity to pass. But the skippers and tacticians have shown that the course and the rules give a lot of opportunity to develop new tactics!
Last updated by Jack Griffin on Sunday 7 April 2013.