KEY POINTS:
Team New Zealand and Luna Rossa survived the tactical minefield that greeted the teams on the opening day of the semifinals in Valencia chalking up wins over Desafio Espanol and Oracle.
Emirates Team New Zealand sailed a smart, conservative race to beat Desafio Espanol by 43 seconds while Luna Rossa were a lot more risker in their approach but came away with a convincing 2 minute 19s win over Chris Dickson's BMW Oracle Racing.
The challenger series semifinals are a best of nine race series. Race two is tonight and race three tomorrow night. There is a day off before race four on Thursday.
The opening day was brain draining for the afterguards to say the least.
Team New Zealand tactician Terry Hutchinson perhaps summed it best when he took his cap off and wiped his forehead with his arm when his team crossed the finish line.
"We had a fantastic race against the Spanish," Team New Zealand navigator Kevin Hall said.
"We are just glad it is over."
It was the first time in the competition that the teams had raced in an off shore breeze. The last time an offshore breeze appeared during the round robin racing was called off because it was too windy.
This morning the breeze was all over the show which lead to both enormous gains and enormous losses on the race track.
Team New Zealand started perfectly to windward of the Spanish. The weather call had been to go to the right and the right was the place to be as they made a huge gain over their opponents early on up the first beat.
Team New Zealand proceeded to sail a cool, calm and collective race keeping themselves between their opponent and the mark.
The Italians took a completely different approach in their match against Oracle.
Luna Rossa chose to back themselves and separate from their rivals.
On the first beat the move paid off as Luna Rossa secured the better breeze on the left and powered out ahead of the Americans and around the top mark 52 seconds ahead.
However instead of covering closely on the run, where the leading boat is always susceptible to being passed, the Italians gybed off to the centre while Oracle headed down the right where they found better pressure and came screaming back.
Oracle recouped a 400 metre deficit to put Luna Rossa helmsman James Spithill under pressure at the leeward gate.
Spithill did just enough to claim the left-hand gate mark while the Americans peeled away to the right, just 7 seconds back.
Again both boats gambled with their respective sides of the course and again the Italians' faith in the left paid off as they leapt to another 400-metre lead.
This time Luna Rossa did a better job of shadowing the Americans down the final run, and even when the breeze shifted nearly 180-degrees just before the finish, Luna Rossa capitalised on the changeable conditions and stretched the winning margin to over two minutes at the finish.
On the Luna Rossa boat was Prada boss Patrizio Bertalli who leapt up and shock all his sailor's hands once they crossed the line.
Sailing on the Oracle boat as he always does as part of their afterguard was Oracle boss Larry Ellison. His staunch, arms folded, grim face spoke a thousand words.
