Oracle BMW Racing held an early lead of one boatlength after tacking to port following the start. Both teams wanted to start to the left and fought hard for it, but Oracle BMW’s Peter Holmberg did a masterful job in winning it.

Three minutes into the race Oracle BMW was converging with Alinghi, which approached on starboard. When Alinghi first tacked to starboard it appeared that Oracle BMW might have the legs on port to cross. But they couldn’t and were forced to lee bow Alinghi, tacking to starboard to leeward of Alinghi’s port bow three and a half minutes into the race.

In most races we’ve seen in the Louis Vuitton Cup the windward boat usually tacks away when it is lee-bowed. They’re not able to live in such close proximity to a leeward boat because of the disturbed air coming off its sails.

Not so for Alinghi. The Swiss boat skippered by Russell Coutts not only lived to windward of Oracle BMW Racing, they rolled the American sloop. Aided by a lift and slightly more pressure, they did it quickly, too.

In the matter of 90 seconds Alinghi went from even with Oracle BMW into a 13-metre advantage. Ten minutes later at the 15-minute mark of the match Alinghi had stretched that advantage to more than 100 metres.

Although there was still two hours of racing left, the match was essentially over.

“We forced them to tack but because the sea state was up a little bit it makes it more difficult (to carry speed through a tack) and that evened us up,” said Alinghi tactician Brad Butterworth. “We sailed for about a minute and then I was keen to tack away because they were coming up to us and it looked like we were going to start to lose quickly.”

So was Alinghi’s advantage due to better boatspeed or the right-hand wind shift that developed while it was to windward of Oracle BMW Racing?

“Everything fell into our hands,” Jochen Schuemann, strategist aboard Alinghi, said in a television interview following the match. “I think the boats are still reasonably close in speed. There was a rotation to the right and that helped us.”

The pre-start was predictably lively. Oracle BMW’s Holmberg kept Alinghi’s Coutts on the ropes, chasing him for much of the 5-minute sequence until breaking off to lead back to the line.

After the two boats luffed head-to-wind for 2 minutes, they fell off onto opposite tacks and approached each other. Holmberg was on starboard and Coutts on port.

Coutts briefly got away from Holmberg in this situation. He had established his course to leeward of Holmberg. As the right-of-way boat under Rule 16, Holmberg had to give Coutts room to keep clear if he altered his course.

“We’ll be jibing after ‘em guys,” said Holmberg, coolly.

After jibing onto port, Holmberg chased Coutts out past the committee boat. When Coutts bore off to jibe, Holmberg hardened up to tack to starboard and then bore off to cross to the leeward side of the start line.

At this point both boats were on starboard with Holmberg leading back to the line. Although Coutts tried to get a leeward hook to force Holmberg to tack, the skilled Oracle BMW Racing starting helmsman had won the fight for the leeward end of the line.

“Oracle started really well. They got end we were fighting for,” said Butterworth.

Although Oracle BMW got the end of the start line they were fighting for, Alinghi owned a 3-second advantage off the line.

And tonight, Alinghi owns the score of 1-0 in the first-to-win five series, an advantage Oracle BMW would readily trade for.

“We’re disappointed,” said Oracle BMW Racing skipper Chris Dickson. “We never like to lose, but we still have to win five races. Our job hasn’t changed.”

Source: Sean McNeill