khayyam

Well I guess I should be more specific. Being on the reach is better than having to run angles trying to go DDW. Of course being to weather might be an advantage if it meant reaching rather than tacking.

Which is a disadvantage.

Looks to me like the front boats in the west are almost into the new breeze as well. Le Cam may have made it work but Conrad was a bit too far east?

Going to be interesting. I wish the tracker updates were a little more frequent. I wonder if the western boats will dare to follow the breeze further west. Looks good in the short term but then having to work back up to clear cape branco...

It's definitely the contrarian view. Only two boats going east? Interesting to see if they can get through to that southerly or not.

He just said it would be exciting and that there would be sightseeing. No promises were made re: dry, comfortable, or warm!

Not sure that's the budget solution!

Where do you keep the boat, and how often are you going to be lifting it on and off? If you're lifting a lot, and doing it somewhere awkward like a mooring, the lighter weight of a 2 stroke helps a lot. If the thing's just going to live on the stern except for getting it serviced, and then you lift it off in the marina, doesn't matter so much.

I'd hazard a guess that most of those 26' and under boats have had inboards replaced by outboards now. Our Farr 727 had, and that was 10 year ago.

Wanted to give themselves a bit of room to hook if tacked in front? Didn't quite get it right though obv.

They looked so much quicker upwind in the light at least.

I think you'd struggle to get a GP to write you an oxycodone script in NZ. They're really careful with giving that stuff out.

It has been good. To my eye, Ineos have an edge downwind in the upper range conditions. But forecast is for light conditions for the last two possible race days so who knows? But yes at 6-4 seems like they will probably get there.

I'm enjoying watching this round with close boats. It is pretty much about winning the start though, not much in the way of passing lanes.

Wait for someone to drop a carbon rig and cut down what's left?

Presumably they don't care and just run a reaching course.

They certainly don't care what they block. On the other hand, it's only for 5 hours? Not so hard to work around.

Anyone know if the details of the exclusion zone are publicly available? Searching for it just brings me back to this thread!

I am looking forward to the final. No idea who's faster. LR maybe? But only just.

Amazingly bad decision from LR to go for the penalty at the bottom mark and fall off the foil. Even if they'd got the penalty (which they didn't) falling off the foil would have been death. Too bad, spoiled what was a pretty decent race up to that point. Ineos-Alinghi continues to be incredibly dull despite the nominal improvement in the scoreline. I'd guess that they have a broader boundary for spectator boats, inside of which they can shift the course axis.

USA might get one or two but I reckon LR fairly easily. Inios-LR might be good though.

Cool. The 19m version seems... ambitious but I hope they pull it off.

Penalties can be overcome, but if one boat comes off the foils they might as well just stop the race.

Two of the "yawn" type last night sadly.

The odd race is pretty good (ETNZ v AM last night). But an awful lot of them are quite dull. Nice to watch in replay to skip forward...