SailJuice Blog

Azzurra strategist Tom Burnham looks back at a classic – and controversial – day’s match racing at the Louis Vuitton Trophy in Nice.

CLICK HERE FOR AUDIO INTERVIEW…

It was windy – at last – and it produced some vintage match racing.

Emirates Team New Zealand just crossed ahead of surprise Russian package Synergy in a nailbiting light-wind race at the beginning of the day. At the end of the day, when the wind had picked up, Synergy stuck a penalty on the Kiwis, forcing Dean Barker into some daring defensive tactics. It resulted in a bizarre finale – and a collision that led to a late-night protest hearing.

BMW Oracle Racing was given harsh treatment for tacking in the water of All4One, resulting in a red-flag penalty.

Tom Burnham is also put on the spot about his views on… Read the rest

SailJuice spoke to Mike Drummond the morning after the first day of sailing for the wing rig. Here’s the first part of the interview. Click on the link at the bottom to listen to the audio for the meaty, technical stuff …

SailJuice: Mike, you and the team put the wing rig on the trimaran for the first time yesterday. How is it going so far?

Mike Drummond: Well, I would have to say that things are going pretty well because 12 hours from rolling it out of the garage to actually sailing where we were starting to overrun the chase boats. It has exceeded our expectations because there were many steps along the way where things could have gone wrong, but so far it’s working out very well.

SailJuice: You must have your heart in your mouth… Read the rest

The Louis Vuitton Trophy in Nice is two days in, but the weather hasn’t been behaving, leaving the event two days behind schedule.

Still, I haven’t heard too many grumbles. At least teams are back racing after an America’s Cup hiatus that’s lasted well over two years.

I’ve been busy interviewing various big names in the sailing world, working with two up and coming TV guys who made their name doing great work for the Quantum TP52 campaign. So I’ll hand over to Matthew Carkeek and Keith Brash of BTS who put these videos together and posted them here:

http://www.youtube.com/user/btsbroadcast