Yachting: Swiss hope for stronger winds

By Suzanne McFadden

It can't be easy to Be Happy when you are being thrashed by almost quarter-of-an-hour in the first couple of days of the America's Cup.

But the Swiss are refusing to quit despite being left in the wake of the rest of the fleet. The yellow boat Be Happy has lost every race so far by an average of 10 minutes.

The Swiss were so far behind during their 14-minute defeat by AmericaOne yesterday that they were overtaken by Abracadabra and Stars & Stripes, who had started their race 10 minutes after Be Happy.

Later in the afternoon, they were buoyed by keeping pace with the Nippon boat, Asura, for two minutes - but unfortunately the Japanese were in a different race.

"It was the first time we had been able to line up with somebody - and we were pretty happy," said Swiss tactician Luc Dubois.

The trouble is, Dubois explained, the Swiss boat's strange underwater configuration - thought to be two keels - has been set up for the strong winds they had been told to expect in Auckland in October.

"If we're not sailing in 10 knots or more we look really bad," he said.

"So far we've had five to seven knots - which our designers were not expecting.

"We've had a really bad start, but that's racing. I'm not going to bed tonight thinking that it's all lost," said Dubois.

"Of course the guys are feeling down. But if the weather changes, we will forget it pretty quickly.

"If it carries on, then we've got something to really worry about.

"We have no points, but many of the others only have one. We look at it that we are just one point off fifth place," said Dubois.

When the winds freshened up yesterday afternoon, the Swiss were a little more respectable, losing by just under 5 minutes to Young America.

Dubois figured there could be some slight changes made to the yellow boat if their fortunes did not pick up.

Their French neighbours are already planning along those lines, after losing to America True and Spain yesterday.

Skipper Bertrand Pace said they would put on a new keel and make the stern of the boat longer after the first round.

By how much? "I'm not the one who decides - but it will be a lot," he said.