Light Wind, Oracle Thwarts Kiwis in America’s Cup

The lightest wind of the America’s Cup led to one crazy day on foggy San Francisco Bay.

When the boats came back to shore Friday afternoon, Jimmy Spithill and his Oracle Team USA teammates were smiling and slapping each other on the back after keeping the America’s Cup in America for at least one more day.

Dean Barker and his mates on Emirates Team New Zealand could only shake their heads at how close they’d come to wresting the oldest trophy in international sports from the American powerhouse.

Spithill and Oracle Team USA stayed alive for the second straight day, pulling away from the Kiwis to win the re-sail of Race 13 by 1 minute, 24 seconds.

Oracle’s victory came an hour after light, shifty wind thwarted the Kiwis’ chances to wrest the Auld Mug from software billionaire Larry Ellison.

The first attempt at Race 13 was abandoned because of a time limit with the Kiwis far ahead.

Team New Zealand, which reached match point on Wednesday, leads 8-3. Oracle has won five races but was penalized two points by an international jury in the biggest cheating scandal in the Cup’s 162-year history.

Oracle Team USA, owned by Oracle Corp. boss Ellison, has won four of the last six races. It needs six more wins to complete a miracle comeback.

Earlier Friday, organizers had to abandon or postpone a race for the sixth time since Saturday. The previous five were because of wind over the safety limit. That was imposed after British sailor Andrew "Bart" Simpson was killed in the capsize of Artemis Racing’s catamaran during a training run May 9.

Team New Zealand was slogging along on the upwind fourth leg when the 40-minute limit was reached. The Kiwis had a lead of a mile at one point on the fourth leg.

It was a bizarre scene as the high-performance catamarans limped between the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz Island in only 9 knots of wind.

Previously, the cats had hit speeds of 50 mph while skimming across the tops of the waves on hydrofoils, with their hulls completely out of the water.

The Kiwis might have beaten the time limit if not for a move by Spithill.

Barker went too deep in the starting box, allowing Spithill to take the favored leeward position off the start line. Normally it’s a sprint across the wind on the reaching first leg as the big cats pop onto their foils. But during the crawl to the first mark, Spithill pushed the Kiwis off course as far as he could before rounding the buoy.

But the Kiwis caught a favorable puff early on the downwind second leg and sailed into the lead.

The wind built past 11 knots for the restart and both boats foiled into the starting box.

With the big cats a mere 10 feet apart, Barker fended off Spithill’s attempt to get the inside position and led at the start and around the first mark.

With both boats foiling going downwind, Oracle was able to grab the lead.

As the boats converged, New Zealand crossed just ahead on port gybe but Oracle, on favored starboard, had to dip out of the way and protested. New Zealand was penalized, but it was moot because Oracle had sailed into the lead.

The Kiwis made another mistake at the bottom gate mark. The American boat gybed on top of them and headed for the right buoy. Instead of following Oracle, the Kiwis gybed toward the other buoy and slowed considerably. That allowed Oracle to open a 20-second lead.