BMW ORACLE Racing left the dock at 0700hrs after a spectacular Hollywood style send off. 

Wind prospects for the day appear to be good. Confidence is high that we should see Race 1 of this best-of-three series today. And just as the race crews docked out very early this morning, in preparation for this morning’s start, so too the race management team were heading out on to the water very early.

“Here we go…..” 

Principal Race Officer Harold Bennett’s final words as he left his office this morning to go afloat echo the same buzz of excitement and anticipation that is evident everywhere this morning. He headed off to the race area confident that we should see a race today:

“The forecast looks good. There should be a good morning breeze. At this point we could have a SW’ly over the morning with maybe 12-14 kts. But we have to get out there to really look at it.”  Said Bennett,

He said he is fairly confident about getting the race under way today, but feels no additional pressure to have the race start at the published time 1006hrs:
“I feel pretty happy about it at the moment, looking at the forecast we have.”

“I will go when it is ready. It is important any time.”

“I hope the breeze cooperates, that is all I would like.”

Russell Coutts (NZL) CEO and afterguard BMW ORACLE Racing (USA): "It has been a long time. We are ready to go racing. There are a few rain showers going through and that is going to bend the wind. It'll be a day with bands of pressure and it will be important to always be going towards the best pressure."

Murray Jones (NZL), runner Alinghi (SUI): “There's about 5-12 knots forecast. We'll see when we get out there. It's always changing here in Valencia and it depends exactly where we are out there. We'll line-up and see how we go.”