Many America's Cup fans say this is their best source of information.
Although teams have agreed to keep “a respectable distance” away when taking reconnaissance photos, the rules do not limit how close the teams can approach each other. Still, no one likes to have other teams’ photographers around. In the photo below, SoftBank Team Japan points their telephoto lens at Artemis’s Turbo 2 at the Artemis base.
Land Rover BAR photos courtesy of the team.
Artemis Racing images from CNN’s Mainsail program. See Shirley Robertson’s interview of Iain Percy here.
Both Oracle and Land Rover BAR added external rams to their test boats after initial testing. Some people have speculated that they found they needed more leverage, given the loads on the daggerboard bearings. Artemis Racing has built two test boats and both of them manage daggerboard rake without an external ram – clearly a better solution for windage.
Land Rover BAR “T2” on launch day – daggerboard cant ram is inside the hull.
Land Rover BAR “T2” when it relaunched in December. Notice the external ram.
Artemis Racing’s second “Turbo” boat in Bermuda. The daggerboard rake ram is inside the hull.
Watch the video of incidents between Oracle and Team France at the windward gate in Races 4 and 6 in Oman. In each case they lost one place.
Oracle Team USA finished two points behind Land Rover BAR. Did this incident at the windward mark in Race 4 cost them the regatta? If they had come in fourth instead of fifth in Race 4, they would have had equal points to BAR and would have won on the count back.
In Race 6 Team France passed Oracle to take the lead at Gate 3. France went on to win – their first race win in the ACWS.
Ben Ainslie and his team showed grit and tenacity to win the Oman stop on the America’s Cup World Series. After getting a third and two firsts in Saturday’s races, they had poor starts in all three double points races on Sunday, including two OCS* penalties. On Sunday they were in last place at the first mark in each race but clawed their way back to finish those races 2-4-3 to win the regatta. With this win they become the first team to win two ACWS events.
*OCS = on course side, meaning they crossed the starting line before the starting signal. The penalty is to drop two boat lengths behind all the boats that started correctly.
The teams are allowed to bring 11 sailors and shore crew to each AC World Series event. See a bigger view of this table and more Oman ACWS details here.
