They’re Racing!
12 February 2010
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2 Comments
12:30 am AESST
And Alinghi has a penalty before they cross the line!
Watch Race 1 of the 33rd America’s Cup here.
UPDATE: Dong Doing. Not good news from Valencia. Peter Wilson explains in Comments below how his earlier prediction that “if something can go wrong it will” came true as technical trouble dogged his electronics. Talk about tempting fate: “…after weeks of faultless calibration, checking and testing, the damn thing decided to take a day off.” On the other hand he almost(?) met Richard Branson. Read more in comments.
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Hi again. Well! After all of the huffing and puffing. “We” lost!
Not only did the supposedly weaker,concept boat of BMW win AND stay together, they did it by a staggering eight and a half minutes! My day wasn’t much better! As luck would have it, the course which was eventually chosen by race organisers didn’t require much of a decision by the Alinghi weather team as to which side to chose. Good job too. Because my equipment failed even before flying the first lay line. For some reason, after weeks of faultless callibration, checking and testing, the damn thing decided to take a day off. The most important one! I just couldn’t get the iridium satellite transmit unit to “aquire”. And when it did, the speed between my trike and Russel’s was out by approximately 4 knots! As opposed to point 2!
Then the unit would finally aquire after dropping out and stay on for about 5 minutes and fail again. I “landed” a few time to check the G.P.S. allignment and start and stop the engine in casse it was a voltage issue, but it simply became worse and worse. While I was returning to base, Russel had the job of criss-crossing the course and checking each point alternatively.
In reality however, because the wind was from the South and the course was effectively – North-South, there really wasn’t a “good side” or a “bad side” the chose from.
Other news is that Sir Richard Branson came through the base and had a quick guided tour by Mr Bertarelli.
Obviously nobody knows who’s going to win the cup, but today just goes to show that it never pays to be too confident, and if something can go wrong, it will!
Pete.
We looked for you in the video feed but couldn’t see you! (okay, admittedly we weren’t watching all the time) We could see a helicopter at some points. Would you have been visible or do you fly ahead of the boats on other legs of the course? Or when we were watching, maybe you were on the water fiddling with the electrics?
(We suspect sabotage, by the way, industrial espionage. BMW probably had some sort of jamming device going.)
btw, did you get to meet Branson or just see him passing by? And another thing, would you rather meet Branson or Claudia Schiffer? Do you reckon Branson is a candidate for trike lessons? Or Claudia?
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