Crew error costs Oracle

3.25pm

A sloppy spinnaker drop cost Chris Dickson's Oracle BMW Racing precious seconds and any chance of squaring the series in the Louis Vuitton challenger series finals raced on the Hauraki Gulf today.

Team Alinghi of Switzerland moved to a 2-0 lead in the first-to-five series, beating Oracle by 40 seconds this afternoon.

Again billionaire Larry Ellison was perched on the back of Oracle's boat as 17th man, and again he would have seen Alinghi demonstrate superior boat speed before the bad luck sank Oracle's hopes.

However while yesterday Oracle could do little about the wind shifts which propelled their competitors to a comfortable first win, today the crew were the authors of their own misfortune.

A crew error saw Oracle's spinnaker drop in the water near the end of the second leg, and the subsequent scramble to clear the sail and repair a snapped spinnaker pole cost the Americans the race.

With Peter Holmberg at the helm across the line, Oracle had won the start of the second race and seemed to have the favoured side of the course for the first beat being sailed in a moderate 13 knot easterly breeze.

The US$95 million San Francisco team should have reaped the benefits of a slight right hand windshift, but it was actually Alinghi who showed they had the speed to gain an edge.

The Swiss, with New Zealanders Russell Coutts and Brad Butterworth, German Jochen Schuemann and boss Ernesto Bertarelli in the afterguard, could be heard saying they were sailing higher and faster than Oracle, and so it proved.

The two boats engaged in a short tacking duel, and it was Alinghi who pushed to a two and a half boat length lead. Despite Oracle being well-placed to benefit from the swinging wind, Dickson, who had taken over the helm from Holmberg after the start, was unable to close the gap and trailed at the first mark by 26 seconds.

Oracle's strong downwind speed had Alinghi under pressure heading into the second mark, but a costly crew error as they dropped their spinnaker proved critical to the outcome of the race.

The sail fell into the water, and as Dickson gybed to try to avoid running over it, Oracle snapped their spinnaker pole. Alinghi's lead should have been cut to about ten seconds, and even though it was only officially 19 seconds at the second mark, Oracle had lost vital boat speed and Alinghi was 52 seconds ahead by the third mark, halfway through the race.

Alinghi had their own problems with a spinnaker pole on the final run, but had a strong enough lead that Oracle never threatened them.

The winner of the Louis Vuitton Cup will race Team New Zealand for the America's Cup from February 15.

- HERALD STAFF

nzherald.co.nz/americascup

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