White-knuckled ride at sharp end

By Peter Calder

Out on the green water, through the channel that passes the primeval hulk of Rangitoto, the sea is boiling.

A brisk southerly chops the surface as the armada of motorcraft slowly assembles, screws thrashing at the waves, running at high revs just to stand still.

Sleek luxury craft and small fizzboats jostle for position, pitching in the swell. The more ponderous support craft, more certain of purpose, ease into the best spots.

The tugging wind is full of the sound of whining motors.

Gradually, the football field-size square of sea takes shape where another race for the Louis Vuitton Cup will begin.

Among the spectator flotilla, the two big yachts move like sharks through minnows as the five-minute gun goes. The shoals part as the circling sailboats approach, and regroup as they pass.

The rival challengers lope in tight circles, impossibly nimble under the well-drilled control of their 16-man crews. Like sleek killer animals, they size each other up as they slice figure-eight wakes in the starting area.

Their split-second calculations are aimed at the perfect start, timed to hit the line obliquely an instant after the start gun, sails full of a fair 19-knot headwind, eyes on the distant first mark.

This, the so-called pre-start, is where a race can be won or lost. The corkscrew-tight circles in the duel of wits generate G-forces that, in heavy weather, turn the sterns into carnival rides. The 17th man is in for a wild race.

"It's like being in a washing machine," remarks a veteran of several regattas. "Only the most athletic can hold on."

At the sharp end of the challenger series, each moment is a white-knuckled ride.

Television pictures and Internet technology take armchair viewers to the edge of the arena, closer than any spectator on the spot can hope to get. But out on the water the technology is in perspective.

Here, as the fickle wind tests the tacticians and waves wash the length of decks, the regatta is less up-close but much more personal. It's all the sharp tang of salt air in the nostrils, the whine of sheets, the crack of unfurling sails.

Any sense that this is the leisurely pursuit of gentlemen evaporates as the yachts pass within metres. Tacticians bellow at each other to yield or go about. The briny air is thick with imprecation and, even though each word, each hull creak, is picked up by broadcast microphones, decorum can be washed overboard in the heat of battle. One testy exchange ends with the cry "Madonna mia," an utterance as bad as most good Italian Catholics can imagine. On the media boat, the nostrils of the Italian press corps flare.

Heeled over at improbable angles as they tack to opposite sides of the course, the boats seem in different events, though their relative positions are easily calculated and updated, second by second, by sophisticated software.

On the downwind runs, as the spinnakers billow fatly, it looks more like what it is: a struggle for supremacy that can only have one winner. At the end of 30km, they finish barely a boat length apart. As the flotilla beats back to shore, the supporters' faces tell the story.

The man on AmericaOne's supporters' boat waves the lime-green card with mantra "Go America!" in 30cm-high letters.

The Italians slump glumly in their seats and dream of two more wins.

And tomorrow is another day.