Yachting: Pressure mounts in face of strong winds

Team New Zealand break their spinnaker pole in their race against Azzurra during round robin racing yesterday. Photo / Dean Purcell

With two days left of the Louis Vuitton Trophy round robin, the leaderboard is delicately poised and the pressure is mounting in the fight for the best elimination-round seedings.

But the team under the most stress heading into the second week of the regatta is Emirates Team New Zealand's 16-strong shore crew, who burned the midnight oil well into the early hours of the morning after a series of mishaps on the water over the weekend.

The freshening breeze on the Waitemata Harbour over the past few days brought with it more gear breakages, as some of the crews struggled to cope with the testing conditions.

And with strong souwesterly winds forecast for today and tomorrow, the fix-it crew are anticipating more long nights ahead.

Principal race officer Peter Reggio described the ETNZ shore crew as "magicians" for being able to keep the boats operational and the regatta running to schedule in the face of all the setbacks.

"They held this thing together last year and they're doing it again. So they're the real heroes as far as I'm concerned."

Even the locals weren't without their problems over the weekend, with Team New Zealand suffering a broken spinnaker pole in yesterday's race against Italy's Azzurra.

As they rounded the first top mark with a handy eight boat-length advantage, the Kiwis showed a crack in their impeccable crew work as the spinnaker pole end dropped overboard at the hoist and broke.

It was the third incidence of a broken spinnaker pole in the opening week, after Artemis and Team Origin both suffered a similar fate on previous days. Team Origin were also involved in a collision with French team Aleph on Saturday.

Team New Zealand skipper Dean Barker believes his side's problems yesterday may have stemmed from one of the earlier incidents.

"As a result of what has been happening with the crew issues the last couple of days, I think there might have been a bit of a problem with the chopping lift when we were doing the gybe-set at the top.

"It's a pretty routine manoeuvre, but we just couldn't seem to get the pole-tip to go up. So it wasn't ideal."

Despite the breakage, the Kiwis went on to win the race by 42 seconds after sailing both runs with the spinnaker clipped to the bow.

There was more drama to follow, though, with Azzurra ripping their spinnaker when they trawled it overboard while dropping after the finish.

Sailmakers assessed the damage yesterday and deemed the spinnaker beyond repair.

Team New Zealand operations manager Kevin Shoebridge said the weekend's mishaps had proved a time-consuming and costly exercise.

Shoebridge estimated a spinnaker pole - worth around $50,000 each - took around 14-man hours to repair. Torn spinnakers could take anywhere upwards of 10 hours for the sailmakers to fix.

He said the teams responsible for the damage would have to foot some of the bill.

"We're responsible for keeping the regatta on the road, so we do all the repairs and maintenance. The teams all have a damage deposit, and normal wear and tear is fair enough.

"But when there is operator error, and there is damage done, it comes out of the team's damage deposit," he said.

On top of the strong winds, Shoebridge believed the number of gear breakages could be put down to the highly competitive racing and the ambitious sailing programme.

"We went for months in Valencia without any type of gear damage. These boats aren't used to doing this much racing. At the America's Cup you do 30 to 35 races over four months. These things are doing 45 over two weeks."

With just two days of racing remaining before the end of the round robin, a hungry pack of four teams is in equal second place fighting to catch the thus-far unbeatable Kiwis.

All4One, representing Germany and France, Azzurra and Mascalzone Latino from Italy, and the British-based Team Origin are all on three points with three wins and two losses.

A weekend of mishaps

Yesterday:

Team New Zealand broke a spinnaker pole rounding the top mark in their match against the Italian Azzurra team.

But despite the setback the locals still managed to win, sailing both runs with the spinnaker clipped to the bow.

Azzurra then ripped their spinnaker to shreds when they trawled it overboard while dropping it after the finish.

Saturday:

Saturday saw the first collision of the regatta when Aleph swiped their boat's stern across the bow of Team Origin in the pre-start of their encounter.

The French team were slapped with a penalty, then docked a point for failing to avoid hard contact.

Both yachts were scraped in the collision, forcing a quick patch-up job with duct tape on the water, with the Team New Zealand shore crew making more permanent repairs once racing had finished for the day.

Swedish team Artemis also left them with a list of fix-it jobs including a snapped spinnaker pole and torn gennaker from their disastrous race with Azzurra.