Challengers defend going their own way

By MICHAEL DALY

Leading America's Cup sailors are defending their tactics after several instances in the past few days in which leading boats have been overtaken after allowing opponents to split.

It was the Russell Coutts-skippered Swiss Alinghi team who first allowed opponents Oracle to separate yesterday during one of the semifinals of the cup challenger series on the Hauraki Gulf.

A slight windshift, on a day of mainly steady north-northwesterly 12 to 16 knot winds, saw Oracle slip into a lead that the San Francisco boat held until the fifth leg.

Then it was the turn of Oracle, skippered by Chris Dickson, to allow Alinghi to separate by up to 700m.

Around that time the wind shifted left and Alinghi were back in front, going on to win by 46 seconds, and take a 3-0 lead in the best-of-seven contest.

In the other semifinal Seattle's OneWorld beat Prada, of Italy, by 33sec.

The race had been close until the umpires gave Prada a red flag penalty, meaning the penalty turn had to be carried out as soon as possible, as the boats were nearing the second mark.

Downwind Prada had almost wiped out OneWorld's 10sec lead at the first mark, and were just to the right and behind the Seattle boat as they crossed the left hand layline together.

As OneWorld skipper Peter Gilmour gestured furiously the umpires awarded the penalty, ruling that instead of sailing the proper course Prada had ensured they would get to the second mark first by pushing OneWorld out beyond the layline.

Once the Italian boat carried out the penalty, soon after the start of the second leg, OneWorld were too far away for Prada to come back.

After yesterday's race Dickson explained his team's decision to allow Alinghi to separate from them on the fifth leg, saying it had been a difficult day and there had been small wind shifts during the match with small gains to be made.

"The door's going to be a little bit open on one side or the other, and on the first beat happily it was open on our side and we took advantage of it," he said.

"On the last beat the door was open on Alinghi's side and they took advantage of it."

Oracle went into the race with Dickson at the helm, usual helmsman Peter Holmberg off the boat, and John Cutler back on board in the afterguard.

Dickson said several changes had been made to the boat before yesterday's race and the team had gone out with two objectives in mind.

"One was to look at our boat speed from a number of different perspectives ... and we came out of today happy that we learned a bit more about our boat.

"So in that respect it was a good day. We'd have rather come out having learned what we learned and got a point, but that's okay."

He acknowledged Oracle were facing the prospect of having to race in the semifinal repechage round.

Were that to happen and Oracle had another go at Alinghi in the Louis Vuitton Cup final, it would be sudden death, Dickson said.

"We know that to race Alinghi a month from now we need to be stronger than we are now.

"We need to look at our boat speed, we need to look at it from different angles and different positions, and for me to have the opportunity to drive."

Alinghi crew member Murray Jones said his team thought they were on a reasonable right hand shift when they allowed Oracle to separate from them in the first leg of yesterday's race.

Later on the breeze had shifted further and his team had paid for it.

"The way we sail, we like to sail the shifts."

On Wednesday it had been OneWorld who lost a lead after allowing Prada to split, and yesterday OneWorld helmsman James Spithill said in many of the tricky conditions on the race course leading boats could not keep covering their opponents.

"You cover and you basically give them the other side that you wanted to go to," he said.

"It's the Hauraki Gulf and you've just got to make the decision at the time and you hope it's going to pay off.

"But as we've seen over the past two days, every now and then it doesn't."

- NZPA

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