America's Cup Race 3 - The Kiwis triumph in the end!

So I got the privilege (maybe) of watching this race from a spectator boat up close and personal on the water next to the race course.

Our boat left the dock at 12:30pm, was going to go out, sail around a bit, serve us lunch and then allow us a front row seat at the start, the 3rd mark and the finish of the race. This is all in theory of course...

We boarded the boat and it left shortly after 12:30. Dad and I found a spot near the back of the boat and we enjoyed the views of the harbor as we motored out into the Mediterranean, where the racing was to be held. As soon as we cleared the harbor, we were treated with 6-10 foot swells. At this point, I began to feel a little motion sick so I had a coke. After about 5 minutes, I didn't feel any better so I took some medicine to stop my stomach from arguing with my inner ear. When the chop didn't subside any and I kept feeling worse, I put on a seasick band that sent a pulse of electricity through my middle two fingers on my right hand. I also took a spot in the exact middle of the Catamaran so that the rocking would be minimized.

There I sat for the next 6 hours while the race was postponed from 3pm to 5pm. What I did see was some good racing though...

New Zealand got the early lead, stretching it out to over 400m at one point over Alinghi on the first leg. They then rounded the first mark and again smoked Alinghi on the downwind leg. Rounding the second mark, NZ botched their sail change, getting their spinnaker caught in the jib clue while taking it down. This cost them some valuable time, allowing Alinghi to catch and pass them on the upwind leg 3. The last leg was a shootout between TNZ and Alinghi to see who could get to the finish first, both teams taking a different path. Due to wind shifts and other factors (NZ Rules!) they were able to pass Alinghi at the last moment. It was as an exciting race as I could muster from my one spot near the center of the boat, but I was glad that I was able to see a race from the water.

One of the other cool things was the jockeying for position that the spectator boats did to get a front row seat at the start/finish. With multi billions of dollars of boats lined up, all trying for a front spot, it's amazing there was no carnage. Occasionally, one boat would be spit out formation to avoid colliding with other boats and the first mate on our boat did have a heated exchange with the crew of a multi-million dollar yacht, but for the most part, it was uneventful.

Pics

Check the link list in the right hand column where you will find our personal blogs and now introducing the photo gallery. Woohoo.

In general

On the off day of racing we explored the inner city which is lovely; beautiful building fronts, clean small streets, and of course the Holy Grail. The only damper on going for a walking tour was that the high of the day was 41 degrees C. It was also a Monday which means not all of the stores were open. It seems like Sundays are completely shutdown and Monday is about half and half (they say don’t eat the fish on Monday because no one fishes on Sunday…we tried it…no deaths yet).

The Valencians themselves you probably wouldn’t be able to pick out from anyone else walking the streets in the US. There is more fashion but nothing over the top. The one thing that might be brought to your attention is that they are all slender, the young and old. Maybe this is because they all smoke all of the time? This feels to me as a soft introduction to traveling the world. I have warm running water, bathrooms to be found when I need (especially since they are catering to the American Cup visitors), a bed, washer, etc. The enormity of what lies ahead though hits me when I ride on the coattails of my compadres who are fluent in Spanish. I imagine soon we will truly learn the meaning of “a picture is worth a thousands words”.

NZ wins race #2!

The second day we again traveled to the Port for round 2 where we helped cheer on the Kiwis to a victory. We stayed at the Port until dinner walking around checking out the sights. The day does not follow the same rhythm that you would see in the US. As tourist we are even a little more off the normal schedule everyone seems to follow. We tend to rise around 9 or 10 for breakfast and then sometimes there is a lunch around noon or 1 but tapas follows in the late afternoon between 3-5pm I would say. We seem to get hungry around 6ish which has proved to be a very bad time to find anyone willing to serve us a snack. The reason you eat a snack so late is because restaurants don’t even open their doors and start taking reservations until 9pm. Dinner doesn’t end until 11 or midnight where the locals will then go to their disco clubs and we of course wander back home and finish up the night. When we found a place at the Port for some tapas and to wait for our dinner reservations we found out that it is best to avoid bars where there are a lot of Kiwis celebrating the victory of the day. Don’t get me wrong, the Kiwis are fun but this day it seemed they had drank the bar out of all the beer! Good times.

Valencia at last

Despite the lack of updates we did arrive in Valencia Saturday morning 1AM and started our sightseeing the same day by taking the metro to the Port to watch on the big screen Race #1 of the America’s Cup final duel – Alinghi SUI vs. Emirates NZ. Alinghi won this first round.

The apartment we are staying in with Papa and Mama Clarke is in Rufasa SouthEast of the inner city. It is a short walk from basically everywhere. We walked from the train station, walked to the metro, came back and walked to dinner…it is wonderful! What is not wonderful is the wine. So far we have not taken to the different taste of the Red wines from Rioja and the one White we tried to order ended up being carbonated, go figure.

Spain's Landscape: 10:52PM 6-22-07

It’s dark now and you can’t really see much out the windows, except for a few lights from the cars on the roads that we’re crossing. I was really surprised by the landscape of Spain – it’s extremely arid, almost southwestern if you had to compare it to the US. I’m not sure what they do with most of their land, but occasionally you’d catch a glimpse of a farm of some sort with rows of trees or grape vines. We’ll definitely spend some time investigating more detail about this country. There are more rolling hills on the way from Madrid to Valencia than there were surrounding the airport in Munich.

Traveling By Train: 6-22-07

Traveling by train:

10:30PM
This definitely beats flying. It’s much less expensive, deadly silent and the food is better. I believe that the train that we’re on is supposed to be traveling close to 220kph, but I have yet to see it get that fast. Maybe there are a lot of cows on the tracks or something.

11:00PM
Correction, now we’re flying. The lights are streaking past and I think we’re about to jump into hyperspace!