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Sailing News
America’s Cup Update
Well, what can I say, it was awesome, amazing, intense and exciting! Those of you that followed the race here at home, or through us at the WCYC, know that our team Alinghi was victorious and successfully defended the cup. It was great to be there, watch the racing, and witness another chapter in the history of sporting’s oldest trophied event.
In the Semis we saw the American team BMWOracle from the Golden Gate Yacht Club fall horribly to the Italian Prada team, and then Spain lost to the Kiwis. That set up the final between TNZ and Prada; TNZ emerged the winner with the right to challenge the Alinghi for the Cup.
I arrived after the finals of the Louis Vuitton Cup, and had a day of rest before the first race. The city of Valencia was electric with excitement and anticipation for the first race to begin. They had built a beautiful venue to host this historic race; it was the first time the race had been held in Europe since the first one in England in 1851. I was lucky enough to be the guest of my good friend Peter Holmberg and his wife Denise. Peter was one of Alinghi’s helmsmen, so while he was out on the race course, Denise and I either followed closely from the team base, or, on several days we were able to go out and watch on the water from the team’s family spectator boat.
The spectator fleet was huge! They estimated that there were some 800 to a 1000 boats on the water. The racing was tough, and we saw that we were not going to run away with the Cup. We won the first one and then lost 2 in a row, so the tension was high. We then had a day of racing canceled because there wasn’t enough wind. We won the next three in a row and just needed to win this next one to win it all. We knew that this race would go down in history! There were several lead changes, which is not very common in these races. We got a penalty on the opposing team and took off on the downwind run to the finish line. We then broke our spinnaker pole, but they picked up some breeze that missed us, and before we knew it they were passing us just a few hundred meters from the finish line. We started to get a bit of wind now and began to close the gap. They still had to do the penalty turn before they crossed the line. We were now even, they started the turn, we surged for the line, they came out of their turn, and both boats crossed the line. The horn goes off but it took 5 more seconds for the flag to go up. ALINGHI WON the 32nd Americas Cup!
I was watching all this action in the base camp with the team’s friends and family. Needless to say, after that all hell broke lose and the base camp was getting ready for a huge party. Now from a chef’s/restaurateur’s point of view, this was pretty interesting to watch. The company that put on the party didn’t even know it was a go until 4pm and then they went to work. The fork lifts started unloading and in 4 hours had transformed the whole place into
a beach party complete with sand, tiki bars, bbq’s and scuba divers with cocktail dispensing tanks. They even had a full size replica of the Cup made out of chocolate on display.
A few thousand people partied until the wee hours of the morning; we pedaled our bikes out of the Alinghi base as the sun came up. After a day of rest, we were on our way to another unforgettable experience; dinner at El Bulli.
Considered by many to be the greatest restaurant in the world. We boarded a train and headed about 6 hours north to Costa Brava. We checked into our hotel and then hopped in cab for 30 minute drive on a cliff side, curvy mountain road and then we were there!
It was as the races were; awesome, amazing, intense and exciting! I’ll give you the short version here, but if you come in I’d love to tell you about it and show you some of the pictures. We toured the kitchen and I met the man himself, Chef Ferran Adrià, and even got our picture together.
Then the magic began; 6 hours and 33 courses later we made the cab ride back to our hotel.
Next time you are in, don’t forget to ask me about it! I love telling the story.
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