America’s Cup preliminary regatta: False start for teams as weather sees opening day’s racing called off in Vilanova i la Geltru

Heavy rain saw the opening day of the first America's Cup preliminary regatta called off. Photo / America's Cup

The America’s Cup teams have found themselves at the mercy of Mother Nature.

Expected to be sailing in the opening day of their first preliminary regatta in Vilanova i la Geltru overnight, the crews headed back to shore early as bad weather gave race management no choice but to call the day off.

It put a big dampener on what should have been a milestone day for the America’s Cup cycle, with teams getting the chance to race against each other in a competitive setting for the first time. While they did contest some practice races earlier in the week, this morning’s three scheduled races would have been their first opportunity to race for something.

There is, however, plenty more opportunity to sail over the weekend. The regatta was set to run over three days; the first two featuring three fleet races before a third made up of two fleet races followed by the top two teams contesting a match-race final. So while they lost the first day’s action, the teams will still have five fleet races in which to earn their place in the regatta final.

It was a moment the sailors had been looking forward to. The teams are racing this weekend in the one-design AC40s - a scaled-down model of the AC75 foiling monohull - so although it will be months before we see how they really shape up for the America’s Cup proper, this weekend’s event was an important building block in terms of how communication is operating onboard in a race scenario.

“From a competitive standpoint, it’s just a really good moment, about a year out from when we start racing over here, to check our systems, our procedures, our communication out,” Team New Zealand helmsman Nathan Outteridge told the Herald earlier in the week.

“The America’s Cup is always a design race, so you’re always focused on designing and engineering the fastest boat. We as a team put together the AC40s which we’ve now handed to all the competitors and what’s interesting is we get to see how people sail the boat - how they do the setup of the boat, how they trim the sails, how they use the autopilot on the boat.

“There’s a lot to be learned observing the other teams and how they use the equipment. If we see things that are an improvement on how we do it, we can adapt our design and the way we sail the boat to make improvements. Whoever goes into this regatta with the mindset of ‘how do we learn the most?’ will come out of it with the most to be gained for next year.”

The teams will try again tomorrow morning, with racing expected to get underway from 1.30am NZ time.