In-Port Race Blog

Saturday 4 April 2009, 13:00 GMT

19:00 GMT UPDATE

 

RACE FINISH: Telefonica Blue wins the Light In-Port Race in Rio. PUMA finish second. Delta Lloyd grabs the final podium place by just metres from Ericsson 4.

Fifth was Telefonica Black, followed by Green Dragon and Ericsson 3.

That's it for the day with the Race Committee running out of time to stage a second race following a two-hour delay to the first after the sea breeze took a while to make its presence felt.

LIGHT IN-PORT RACE RIO: RESULTS

1. Telefonica Blue - 4 pts

2. PUMA - 3.5

3. Delta Lloyd - 3

4. Ericsson 4 - 2.5

5. Telefonica Black - 2

6. Green Dragon - 1.5

7. Ericsson 3 - 1

OVERALL STANDINGS

1. Ericsson 4 - 66 pts

2. PUMA - 56.5

3. Telefonica Blue - 54.5

4. Ericsson 3 - 44.5

5. Green Dragon - 41

6. Telefonica Black - 23

7. Delta Lloyd - 15

8. Team Russia - 10.5

Dockside reaction to follow shortly.

18:46 GMT UPDATE

 

Telefonica Blue maintains her lead at the top mark for the second time in an impressive display from Bouwe Bekking and Iker Martinez. The home straight beckons and some well-earned points to add to their overall tally.

PUMA is second, Delta Lloyd third, Ericsson 4, Green Dragon, Telefonica Black and the hapless Ericsson 3. If positions stay this way, with a couple of boats sandwiched between the Blue boat and Ericsson 4, they will gain overall points on Torben Grael's men.

The real battle is on for the final podium position - and Brazilian bragging rights. Delta Lloyd v Ericsson 4 for third place. Marcelo Ferreira and Andre Fonseca v Torben Grael and Co.

18:37 GMT UPDATE

Big gains for Telefonica Blue and Delta Lloyd on the right-hand side of the course while Ericsson 3 lost out in the three-boat gybing duel with the sisterhip and PUMA to the bottom mark.

Bouwe Bekking's Blue boat goes from mid-pack to the lead at the bottom mark with Delta Lloyd, after a brilliant recovery from the rear of the field, rounding in second, PUMA is third.

Then follows Ericsson 4, Ericsson 3, Green Dragon and Telefonica Black. A big split develops. Ericsson 3's day is ruined by having to do a penalty turn.

18:23 GMT UPDATE

 

At the top mark, it's PUMA from the Ericsson duo (3 then 4), Telefonica Black, Telefonica Blue, Delta Lloyd and Green Dragon paying a heavy price for getting squeezed at the start.

18:17 GMT UPDATE

At the midway gate, it's Ericsson 3 and PUMA leading neck-and-neck to the top mark. PUMA's port gamble has paid handsomely.

The 2D Race Viewer shows the spread in the rest of the fleet.

18:10 GMT RACE START

They're off ... in 6-8 knots. Ericsson 4, Ericsson 3 and Delta Lloyd start well leading the fleet on starboard tack. Green Dragon and the Telefonica twins are occupying the middle lane.

Ken Read's PUMA, alone on the right, brings up the rear though their pay day may come later on this beat. A hero or zero strategy.

18:00 GMT UPDATE

 

The postponement flag is down. 30 seconds to the 10-minute gun. After another slight delay while the Race Committee grappled with the tricky conditions - wind and current - on the Bay in an effort to set a course.

17:48 UPDATE

We are set for a start in Rio in 12 minutes.

17:30 GMT UPDATE

The news from Rio is that the Race Committee will try for a start in 30 minutes.

The knock-on effect of that is that at race HQ in Whiteley it's time to finish the remains of the scones, jam and clotted cream.

17:15 GMT UPDATE

Good news. The breeze is beginning to fill in, slowly. We may have a race on our hands after all. The Race Committee has decided that given the delay, there will be just one race rather than the usual two.

There will be no start before 15:00 local (18:00 GMT, 19:00 BST). Hope you've paid attention there. We'll be testing you later. More soon.

16:15 GMT UPDATE

Still a delay. Mark Chisnell sees a glimmer of hope on the horizon from the roof of the Naval Academy overlooking the bay.

For now, there is no action to speak of. Most of the crews have kept their mainsails under wraps. It's a waiting game.

On board Ericsson 4, Victoria, Crown Princess of Sweden, looks pensive. Her skipper for the day, Torben Grael, will no doubt dip into his local knowledge bank once we are underway.

Grael, who has spent countless hours honing his ample skills on the Bay as a youngster, was keen to play that down and added that he was uncomfortable with the favourite's tag in a pre-race audio chat.

15:50 GMT UPDATE

POSTPONEMENT. We have light winds for the Light In-Port Race Series in Rio. The Race Committee has no option but to hoist the AP as racing is postponed.

Conditions are breathless, hot and humid out on the bay under charcoal skies.

It seems that racing is dependant on the arrival of the sea breeze. No sign of it yet. We will update you when we have news of a re-scheduled start time.

15:00 GMT UPDATE

The fleet is leaving the Marina da Gloria now, heading out to Guanabara Bay. Follow our live coverage...links to audio and web tv coverage are here.

14:45 GMT UPDATE

The crowds have built and there are now hundreds of people in the race village, spanning sailors, spectators and an 82-year-old man who plays football at the Maracana stadium every week. "I just love playing football," says Jankel Schor, who has been there performing tricks at half-time for 11 years. He got invited on Ian Walker's Green Dragon this morning, but the skipper ended up accidentally kicking the ball in the water...

Elsewhere, the mood is calm. "You have to favour the local boys," said Richard Mason of Ericsson 3. "This is a tricky bay (Guanabara Bay) with some weird currents so local knowledge should pay off."

He is expecting some great racing. "You've got 18 Olympic medallists racing today, it's making the America's Cup look a bit out of date! The quality should be great. To be honest, all the in-port races have been a high standard."

He thinks it is blowing between 10 and 12 knots from the east, which makes Gerd Jan Poortman of Team Delta Lloyd happy. They have not raced since pulling out of leg four, but have undergone a makeover. They have a new boat, new sails and plenty of new crew.

"We have made a lot of positive changes and they showed in yesterday's two practice starts. "We were first over the line both times," he said. "It only matters when you do it for real, but we feel like we've made some good improvements and I think we can do well from here on in.

"As long as the wind is about 12, that's in our comfort zone and we can keep pace. If it's less than 10 it's still Black Betty (ABN AMRO ONE from the last race) and she doesn't like it. But we all feel excited and think we can do well. There's a positive tension at the moment."

14:30 GMT UPDATE

Mark Chisnell has checked in with his preview and analysis ahead of today's race:

Today's Light In-Port Race promises action, with seven Volvo Open 70s racing around a very compressed race track set in Guanabara Bay, right off the downtown area of Rio de Janeiro. Even in the lightest of breezes, the two-lap, windward-leeward format with the mid-course gate has provided some great racing in Alicante, Singapore and Qingdao - and there's no reason to think that it will be any different today.

WEATHER

Race Forecaster, Jennifer Lilly's analysis of the weather describes a straight-forward situation, with a high pressure system building to the south. Rio de Janeiro is sitting in the easterly wind flowing around the top of the high, at 12 o'clock relative to the centre. But we can expect that gradient easterly to be modified by the heating of the land during the day.

The morning sky was clear over Rio, so there's no shortage of warmth to get a thermal breeze going. And by start time, we should have the south-easterly sea breeze starting to fill across the Bay. The hotter and sunnier it is, the more southerly we can expect the breeze to be, and the hope is that we will see the wind speeds in the low to mid-teens. As the day goes on, the wind will slowly ease back towards the east, and drop - but we should be all done before it gets much under ten knots.

A south-easterly wind direction is going to be blowing across an awful lot of pretty rugged land, including the fabled Sugar Loaf, before it gets to the race course. So we can expect to see a similar pattern to yesterday's practice race, with a lot of shifts and changes in wind speed and direction. All of which should make for an entertaining afternoon for the spectators, and a rather stressful one for the racers.

TIDE

Today's race track is compressed between two north-south running shorelines, with Niteroi to the east, and the city of Rio to the west. The tide runs in and out of the bay, north to south, and with high water just before the planned time of the first start, we will be sailing with an ebbing, south-going tide all afternoon.

The current will be flowing pretty strongly - Torben Grael told us in yesterday's audio interview that the early explorers thought that they had found the mouth of a big river, rather than a bay. In the main channel in the middle of the course, I think we can expect that flow to be a pretty straight-forward north-to-south, but the closer they get to the edges the more complicated it will be.

On both sides of the race course a headland projects outwards at the northern end, narrowing the gap between the shores, with a shallow section to the south of it. This set-up will likely vary the general north-south current with a back eddy and weaker flow over the shallows. Any advantage from that will come on the downwind legs when they are sailing against the current, but whether anyone can actually use it effectively is another matter entirely, as tactics will be tightly constrained by the race course.

TACTICS

At the risk of sounding like a stuck record - and a cover version of one that was recorded yesterday at that - we already know that tacking and gybing these boats is very expensive. The fastest way round the course has usually been the one that requires the least number of tacks and gybes - and that won't be any different today.

Once again, it will put a big premium on the start - getting away fast, with clear wind and the ability to be able to continue all the way to the layline for the gate will be vital. But we've seen before how quickly the picture can change on these boats, with their ability to accelerate in the puffs, and the fast changing sailing angles when they do - so a great start doesn't guarantee a win.

Nor does the intimate local knowledge of Grael, Signorini and Carabelli on Ericsson 4, and Ferreira on Delta Lloyd - the format, the boats and the randomness of the breeze and tide swirling around the tight confines of the bay will negate much of their advantage. I think it's going to be a really open day's racing, and the winners will be the ones that turn up ready to rock and roll from the first gun. No easy task just a week after the end of their epic six week odyssey to get here. Today we may well see who's up for the rest of this race, and who isn't.

13:15 GMT UPDATE

There's been a substitution to the crew list published yesterday. On PUMA's il mostro, Jerry Kirby stands in for Michi Muller.

13:00 GMT UPDATE

Four scoring points await the winner of the 'Light In-Port Race' series today. Two races are scheduled for this afternoon, beginning at 13:00 local time (16:00 GMT).

Conditions are forecast to be good for racing, with a light to moderate gradient wind predicted. There will be some sea breeze effect later this afternoon as well.

There are some interesting names on the crew lists, as Riath Al-Samarrai reported. Check out his story here. As well, royalty is visiting the race - HRH the Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden will sail on board Ericsson 4.

You can follow this afternoon's action through the blog, or with live audio commentary hosted by Guy Swindells. We also have full broadcast coverage with English commentary. Find all the relevant links here.

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