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Adam Beashel heading up the mast on Team New Zealand - Source: Photosport -
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The afternoon flight got underway on Tuesday in the Louis Vuitton Pacific Series with two races in action.
Team New Zealand faced the French team K-Challenge while the British boat TeamOrigin took on the Greek Challenge.
Team New Zealand's race started first with the Kiwis again winning the start but the French trailed by only seconds and stayed tight down the first leg with both boats maintaining a very straight line down the course as the wind died down.
The Kiwis pushed K-Challenge out to the left just before the mark and turned their first leg into a comfortable 21 second lead as the two boats took the different marks.
Throughout the next leg New Zealand dragged their lead out to nearly 100 metres and Sebastian Col's boat gambled on a bold move to take the different mark but it did not pay off.
The Kiwis extended their lead to over 300 metres as K-Challenge failed to find the extra wind they went looking for and were forced to just try and stay in touch.
As they approached the finish line Dean Barker's team keep
pushing downwind and ended the race ahead by one minute and 38
second to finish on top of Pool A with four points.
Despite the ease of victory, syndicate boss and crew member Grant
Dalton indicated that the conditions had left no room for
complacency.
"You come that close into the harbour and the tide and the
windshifts mean that, as you saw with Alinghi, it can go bad pretty
quickly," he said.
"We've been bitten by days like today over the years."
Dalton also said little could be read into Alinghi's loss to
Shosholoza, adding that the Swiss "still look very sharp around the
track".
TeamOrigin beat the feisty Greeks by 55 seconds.
There is a lay day on Wednesday (no coverage or live streaming) and then the second round robin begins on Thursday.
