The Bay of Naples made us wait through two abandoned starts. When the breeze filled, the AC40s produced racing worth losing sleep over, and Peter Burling gave his old team plenty to think about.
I went into Friday night half expecting to be bored. Weeks of light-air SailGP had me wondering whether high-performance racing was quietly becoming a museum piece, all that money and carbon going nowhere in particular. Sassnitz, where the Bonds Flying Roos beat the wind while the rest of the fleet drifted home, is not a distant memory.
The first couple of hours in Naples didn't help. Racing was set for 2pm local time, midnight here. The nine AC40s sat on the bay waiting for the 7.5 knot minimum while the breeze filled in and faded out again. The first attempt at Race 1 got the fleet as far as the top gate. Downwind, with about five knots at the bottom of the course, boats came off their foils one after another and the committee called it off.
For a few minutes of the second attempt, it looked like being a good morning for New Zealand. Both Emirates Team New Zealand boats were first and second approaching the top gate when the principal crew dropped off the foils in a tack. Soon afterwards the wind went soft across the whole course, and that race was abandoned too.
The race committee deserves its due. Two abandonments are frustrating at one in the morning. Watching a foiling fleet drag itself round a course at displacement speed is worse, and I've seen plenty of that lately. Naples chose to wait.
Once the bay switched on
By the third start the breeze had swung and built. All nine boats came into the line on starboard at around 30 knots, and from the gun it was full noise. At Thursday's practice, GB2 skipper Hannah Mills had said the top mark here is so tight that one wrong cross leaves you stuck at the back. On Friday you could watch it happen.
American Racing Challenger Team USA, sailing its first preliminary regatta of the cycle, found a clean lane off the line and led from the first gate. Harry Melges IV, steering on a foot he broke stepping onto a RIB last week, and co-helm Lucas Calabrese won by 18 seconds from Luna Rossa 1. In the next race they finished seventh. Tudor Team Alinghi, with Kiwi Phil Robertson on port helm, did the reverse and climbed from ninth to second. Starts are deciding a great deal off Naples, and the Swiss and the Americans have already seen both ends of it.
The French capsize
La Roche-Posay Racing Team's Race 2 lasted a matter of seconds. The French were a touch early at the line, with boats around them, and had to slide back behind it in a hurry. They turned hard, the rudder lifted clear of the water, and with no steering the AC40 went over at speed.
Every foiling sailor understands that kind of error. It was a quick fix for a small problem, with no margin left once it went wrong. These boats don't slow down gently when they hit the water. Nobody appears to have been hurt, Kiwi trimmer Jason Saunders included, but the crew took a proper jolt and the scorers recorded a DNS, worth nothing. The timing was cruel as well, because a day earlier the team's AC75 had become the first Cup boat to arrive in Naples.
Luna Rossa on home water
I'd love to tell you New Zealand had the beating of Luna Rossa on Friday. It didn't. Burling and co-helm Marco Gradoni were second in Race 1. In Race 2 they took the lead before the first gate and covered Alinghi all the way to the finish, winning by 21 seconds.
On Thursday the same crew won all three practice races, at times by as much as 500 metres. Five races have been sailed in Naples, practice included, and only Team USA has finished in front of them. That's with a reshuffled line-up, including Gradoni and Maria Giubilei stepping up from the Women and Youth programme, which Burling described before racing as being on a "really steep part of the learning curve". They still lead by five points.
The reason that stings is the equipment. Preliminary regattas are sailed in AC40s, strict one-designs that are identical right down to the foils. Nobody arrives with a quicker hull or a cleverer sail. What separates the boats is the sailing, starting with the start. On that measure, the three-time America's Cup winner New Zealand used to call its own is the man to beat right now.
Where that leaves the Kiwis
Emirates Team New Zealand finished fifth, then third. It sits second on countback with Team USA on 14 points, five behind Luna Rossa. There's some cause for concern in that. Nathan Outteridge's principal crew struggled off the line in practice, and it lost a race lead to a foils-off tack before the second abandonment. In May it lost the Sardinia final to, of all people, Burling.
There are reasons to keep calm, though. Nothing won in Naples carries over to 2027, when the Cup will be sailed in AC75s that each team designs and builds for itself, and design is where Team New Zealand has made its name. The Women and Youth crew of Jake Pye and Erica Dawson held third for most of Race 2. Only their own principal boat ran them down, by one second, on the final run. Nine New Zealanders are racing in Naples across four teams, and some of them happen to be wearing Italian and Swiss colours.
Saturday night
With one race lost on Friday, four fleet races are planned for Saturday, starting around midnight NZT. The city forecast says sunny and 26°C, but the marine forecast says light again, and on this bay that could mean anything. Sunday brings the last two fleet races and the winner-takes-all match race final.
The race-by-race detail from Day 1 is in our live blog. We'll be back on it tonight through the New Zealand small hours. Read it over breakfast, or follow along from bed.
