Day 2 racing: Sardinia AC40 fleet showcase
Fleet Race 6 complete | Sardinia, Italy
Series Leaderboard – After Fleet Race 6
| 1. Luna Rossa – Women & Youth | 55 pts |
| 2. Emirates Team New Zealand (Senior) | 47 pts |
| 3. Luna Rossa (Senior) | 44 pts |
| 4. Emirates Team NZ – Women & Youth | 39 pts |
Race 6
Winner: Luna Rossa – Women & Youth
Italian masterclass vs. Kiwi system meltdown
High drama on the final downwind leg. Emirates Team New Zealand (principal) was leading comfortably when the crew hit a severe autopilot glitch. The boat kicked violently out of the water before stuffing its bow into a spectacular, high-load nose-dive. They sat dead in the water, dropping from first place to stone-last across the finish line. Meanwhile, Luna Rossa’s W&Y Marco Gradoni timed a masterclass downwind gybe perfectly to exploit the dying breeze.
Luna Rossa Women and Youth complete a dominant Day 2 with a 3rd race win
Management Debrief
Seb Menzies (ETNZ Port Helm): “Today had some stressful moments… you’re just trying to stay calm and talk to each other without tone or anything like that so you keep the boat calm and make the best decisions you can. A lot of reviewing what went wrong tonight.”
Race 5
Winner: Athena Pathway – Women & Youth
Light air turns the course upside down; Alinghi capsizes
Shifting 7-knot doldrums completely scrambled the fleet, forcing the race committee to shorten the course four times. Tudor Team Alinghi was slapped with an immediate boat-on-boat penalty after a hyper-aggressive pre-start duel with the ETNZ W&Y crew. Chasing from the back of the fleet, the Swiss crew pushed a downwind gybe too hard into a dead-air pocket. The AC40 stood on its side, dropping its wing and capsizing into the Gulf of Angels. The shore crew rushed out to upright the hull, but it was an instant DNF.
On-Board Comms
Alinghi (Phil Robertson): “Watch the cross, he’s coming up – up, up! Far out, that’s a penalty. No wind here, she’s falling off the foil… coming down, watch it, we’re over!”
TV Commentary
“Athena Pathway have managed to stay fully airborne while the rest of the fleet is completely stuck in the mud! And look behind them – Alinghi has tipped it in! A full capsize for the Swiss!”
Management Debrief
Paul Goodison (Alinghi Skipper): “It’s been a tough day. We made some big changes overnight, went back out there today and struggled a lot. The boat wasn’t working quite as it should… but we got a good look at how we operate under pressure as a team.”
Race 4
Winner: Emirates Team New Zealand (Senior)
The ultimate six-leg match race arm wrestle
A legendary heavyweight duel. Nathan Outteridge and Seb Menzies locked horn-to-horn with the principal Luna Rossa team over six punishing legs. On the second upwind beat, ETNZ ducked behind the Italians’ transom, threw a tactical split to the right boundary, and came back with a starboard-tack advantage. Approaching the finish line, ETNZ executed a perfect, high-speed crash gybe directly across the face of the charging Italians to secure the win by just two seconds.
Down to the wire, ETNZ edge out Luna Rossa in Race 4 Sardinia Preliminary
On-Board Comms
ETNZ Senior (Nathan Outteridge): “Ducking here… now burn it to the boundary. Holding starboard. Prepare for the slam-tack right on his nose. Hold the power, hold it!”
Pre-Race
The “Bay of Angels” Eases Up
The brutal, high-impact survival chop of Day 1 eased back into a smoother, highly tactical 11–16 knot southern breeze. However, PredictWind data showed a thermal collapse threatening to drop dead-air pockets over the race course within the hour.
The teams head into the final day of racing tomorrow, featuring the last two fleet races before the top two point-scorers advance to the winner-takes-all Championship Match Race.
