KEY POINTS:
New Zealand official Harold Bennett says the decision to abandon yacht racing every day so far in the America's Cup challengers' series has been pretty easy to make.
The Louis Vuitton Cup regatta faces a backlog of matches that will continue to grow over the weekend unless the
wind picks up off Valencia.
After three years of build-up, the series to decide which of the 11 challengers will go on to face Swiss defenders Alinghi in two months was to have started on Tuesday (NZ time).
But not one competitive tack or gybe has been made because the conditions have been deemed too light to provide a fair contest.
The crews have gone out each day to the two courses, dubbed Romeo and Juliet.
They've then waited around for a couple of hours or more for the sea breeze to kick in, before Bennett and his fellow principal race officer, American Peter Reggio, have called it quits.
The repeated postponements have produced plenty of frustration for sailors, organisers and fans, although Bennett, who is in charge of Juliet course, is more disappointed than frustrated.
"I'm here to do a job and my job is to run races," he said today.
"If there's no wind, there's nothing I can do about it. It's disappointing we can't get it going, but it's out of our hands."
The decision to abandon over each of the past four days had been "absolutely" easy to make.
"We're quite relaxed."
Bennett was principal race officer for the past two America's Cup matches, in 2000 and 2003 when Team New Zealand were defending the Auld Mug in Auckland, and he knows all about postponements.
In 2003, race four of a contest eventually won by Alinghi 5-0 couldn't be sailed for eight days because of both too much and not enough wind.
The delays got to Alinghi boss Ernesto Bertarelli, who described the situation as "a zoo" after he had wanted to race on one particular afternoon.
Bennett said there was no pressure being exerted on officials in Valencia to get the action going on the water.
While the crews were impatient to start, they were also philosophical about not being able to.
"The agreement we have with the teams is quite clear and that is we race in certain conditions," he said.
"Those conditions have not yet existed so no one is trying to push the boat out on that."
Bennett said the forecast over the next three days gave hope that there might be some racing, but possibly not the two races a day that were planned.
The LV Cup involves two round-robins ending on May 8, after which the top four syndicates will go through to knock-out semifinals.
Already the two reserve days set aside in the first round-robin have been filled with postponed matches.
The other unsailed races have been added to the calendar for the second round-robin, which originally envisaged the syndicates racing just once a day.
Valencia was chosen as the host for this year's America's Cup because of its stable summer weather and the best-of-nine cup match itself has been set down for late June and early July.
But those dates meant the challengers' series had to begin in April to fit all the races in.
Bennett said organisers knew that conditions for sailing in Valencia at this time of the year could be difficult.
"But we didn't think it would be this difficult," he said.
"We need all the luck we can get at the moment."
- NZPA