Bernie Wilson: Brits retire from America's Cup trials race with damage

[If you are trying to follow the AC and are pressed for time, the one story to read following each day's racing is the Associated Press report by Bernie Wilson that we always post a quote from, and link to, here on SAILING ILLUSTRATED. Bernie is simply the best at what he does. –TFE]

QUOTE-UNQUOTE: [Sir Ben] Ainslie's Land Rover BAR crew pulled up on the third of seven legs after the camber arm in the high-tech wing sail broke. He radioed to the race committee that he was withdrawing. The race was black-flagged, allowing the Kiwis to collect a point without sailing the whole course.The Brits tried to get back to the dock to replace the wing. Because the craft couldn't sail, it had to be pushed backward and sideways by support boats, costing the team 20 to 30 minutes and making it impossible to get back out for the next race.Team New Zealand merely had to start the second race and the race committee immediately black-flagged it, giving the Kiwis a 2-0 lead in the best-of-9 series."It's a tough day for the team to lose two races like that so early on in the piece, considering what's at stake here," Ainslie said. "But I've got a lot of belief in the team that this is something we can come back from. ... We'll be back out tomorrow pushing hard."He said the boat had just rounded the downwind mark and gotten on the wind when there was a "big crunching sound coming out of the wing. In those situations it's awfully tempting to just keep plowing on and ignore it, but it was a pretty loud bang. We knew something fundamental was wrong." –The AP's esteemed Bernie Wilson, in his daily wrap-up of the AC racing in BDA. Full story.

Emirates Team New Zealand and Great Britain's Land Rover BAR compete during the America's Cup challenger semifinals on Bermuda's Great Sound in Bermuda on Monday, June 5, 2017. Photo: Ricardo Pinto, ACEA.