Alinghi, America's Cup & Louis Vuitton Cup

Alinghi on match point

Photo credit: Th.Martinez / Alinghi

Photo credit: Th.Martinez / Alinghi

Photo credit: Ivo Rovira / Alinghi

Alinghi, the Swiss Defender of the 32nd America’s Cup, moved to match point in its series against the Challenger, Emirates Team New Zealand (ETNZ) with a hard fought 28-second victory.

It was Alinghi’s third consecutive win in the Match and the second straight in which it rallied from an early deficit. Alinghi now leads the series 4-2 and one more win will cap its defence of the America’s Cup and will mean the Cup is to stay in Europe.

In an 8-10 east/southeasterly, Alinghi helmsman, Ed Baird, did a good job controlling ETNZ helmsman Dean Barker in the pre-start. Baird held the starboard-tack advantage entering the 5-minute period and used it to dial ETNZ up head-to-wind. Baird started Alinghi tight at the race committee boat end of the line and both boats drag-raced out to the left-hand side of the course on starboard. Alinghi was forced to tack away first and ETNZ won the first cross when it hooked into left-hand pressure on port tack. ETNZ led by 14 seconds at the windward mark, but Alinghi was tight behind and attacked on the run to claw the Kiwis back in and round the leeward gate 11 seconds behind. Alinghi was able to split with the Kiwis through the leeward gate, rounding to port while the Challenger rounded to starboard.
The turning point came halfway up the 3-mile leg, when Alinghi using its starboard-tack advantage, forced ETNZ to tack on its leebow twice. At the third meeting Alinghi had gained enough that ETNZ was forced to tack further to leeward. Baird poked Alinghi’s bow up and moved into the lead for good. Warwick Fleury, mainsail trimmer, comments: “The shift didn’t go with us, but I think we got a little bit more extra pressure and our tacks were very good. Once we started tacking we made pretty big gains.”

The Swiss Defender began the run to the finish with a 16-second advantage, but ETNZ was far from done. The Kiwis closed up to within a boat length about three-quarters of the way down the leg, but Alinghi defended and extended the lead to win by 28-seconds.