Stars & Stripes' Oversight
A pre-start penalty cost Team
Dennis Conner its first LVC quarterfinal race against
Britain's GBR Tuesday, but it didn't need to.
Stars & Stripes USA 77 showed
signs of speed in its debut and at one point had a 55-second
lead---ample time in fresh breeze to execute a 270-degree
penalty turn---essentially, a backward tack---and retain
the lead. Instead, the crew sailed on, then tried a
futile luffing tactic near the downwind finish that
only allowed GBR to pass.
At the post-race press conference
strategist Peter Isler was asked about the thought process
in the back of the boat. He said:
"Somewhere between 35 and
55 seconds is probably a big enough lead in that amount
of breeze for a boat to pay off a penalty turn and keep
the lead. [But] they gained on the last beat and sailed
the shifts really well and closed up to us. So from
having the breathing room at the bottom mark, all of
a sudden we did not have the breathing room to be able
to pay off the penalty at the top mark.
"We didn’t start attacking
them immediately as we thought we could boat-speed them
down the run. It was close enough to the margin we needed
that a bit of boat speed could have made the difference.
But it was puffy and shifty and it didn’t play
out that way. So about halfway down the run or maybe
a little bit more, we decided ok, Plan B.
"It’s a lot more difficult
to pay off your penalty when you try to do it the hard
way. We definitely increased the degree of difficulty.
I’d be lying if I said we weren’t really
really disappointed with the way the umpire calls went,
but this is the match racing game we all play with all
the time so we’re used to this. You just put your
feelings aside and go with the way the calls are made.
"We dropped the spinnaker
and decided to try to attack by luffing GBR and trying
to either force them to take down their spinnaker and
get into a luffing match, where maybe we could do our
tack penalty and still retain the lead, or draw a foul
on them . . . in which case our penalties are offset,
and just continue leading them in the race. Easily said,
but hard to do, and we whiffed. In the end, the umpires
signaled two penalties, one on us and one on them, so
essentially that’s a green flag and we still carry
a penalty and now GBR’s passed us on top of that."
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