With all the sparofdeath discussion, I think this might have been missed.

http://sports.espn.go.com/oly/news/story?id=4641049

"They've fought over every aspect of the racing, including rules, dates and a port.

Alinghi spokesman Paco Latorre said the Swiss are making a concession in their fight with San Francisco's Golden Gate Yacht Club, which backs BMW Oracle Racing.

"Until now, both the court and GGYC had accepted and agreed February and Valencia, and we hadn't," Latorre told The Associated Press by phone. "And now because we want to have this race on the water, we accept this decision of Valencia in February. We are making the concession. We had said it's not the most suitable venue in February.

"We want to have this sorted out on the water," Latorre added. "Let's go to Valencia in February and get it done. They wanted February, they got February. They wanted Valencia, let's go and sail. It's going to be cold, it's going to be unstable, it's not going to be very pleasant for sailors and spectators, but let's get it done."

Thats the kind of **** they should have been saying all along.

Did you see the 15 knot upper wind limit and the 1m wave limit?

That came out when they thought BMWO was at a time disadvantage because of a broken mast.They were probably trying to pressure them. Now BMWO has the wing. My guess is Alinghi just screwed themselves. I hope so.

I would be very surprised if Alinghi dont have a wing program going as well.

Don't they have Duncan MacLane on board,if so, I'd think that's a gimme.

That is what Steve Clark says.

It's getting awfully late in the process to bring out a wing. I think BMWO is really pushing the ragged edge to get it tested and the boat shipped to Valencia...probably on purpose.

Bad Butterball said emphatically that "No we will not have a wing sail"

I dont believe they dont have a wing before they are doing the pre-start manouvers and CZ is sailing with soft sails.

I should have put this here...the NOR that Alinghi released yesterday is going to end up back in court on several issues. While they may have "conceded" to Valencia (they really had no other legal option but to agree with Valencia), they've put in several real zingers in the NOR.

While we were busy marveling in amazement at the Death Spar, SNG released their NOR yesterday for the match that has several big points of contention... they limit the wind speed to 15 and the sea state to 39 inches ... anything over that and racing is canceled. They also put back in the rudder measurement issue and stipulate that the BMWO boat must match exactly the dimensions in their challenge (which the NY court has already said they can't do). They also wrote in the possibility for them to have a second "mast" and have a boat of 120' in load waterline length instead of 90' (which means they could put a stick off the stern, call it a "mast" and load up their boat with needed ballast water should the court determine this week that they can't add and remove ballast while underway). There is also some wording that leads one to believe that they are going to challenge where the BMWO wing constitutes a "sloop" rig as per the challenge document.

This thing is going to continue to get uglier.

Not uglier, that is not possible. It is just going to keep us waiting.

But Feb 8 is like set in stone right?

So far, yes. Alinghi is strangely contending that BMWO is asking to delay the match but I think they're jumping to a wishful conclusion there. To my knowledge, BMWO has never indicated they wanted to delay the match. The fact that it took them less than a week to repair the boat from the dismasting last week AND install a wing AND go sailing is a good indication that they think they're ready.

However, anything could happen...I don't see how the match could be delayed at this point but you never know what new surprise is waiting around each corner.

It is probably just part of using language as a weapon. Say something repeatedly and it sticks, suddenly it becomes the thruth.. Nasty stuff.

I find the quick repair after the dismasting a bit worrying though.
If they have'nt found the cause of the dismasting there is always the possibility of it happening again.

But who knows if Alinghi isnt building a wing of their own, they kept the building of the cat a pretty good secret.

I'm pretty sure that BMWO at least has a decent idea of what happened with MOFAM - they just don't release every detail to the general public. We might find out after the race - who knows.

What BMWO doesn't have time for is to be careful. I think you saw how confident they were with the construction and implementation of the wing today. They even did it in front of the TV cameras for the whole world to see.

I expect that it'll probably be out of sight today - pushing her to the limits.

With 260 sensors laminated into everything (including the mast) and recording 26,000 datapoints a second (and 2 GB of data every day) I can't imagine that they don't have a really good idea about what happened.

My guess is that they may have pushed the mast over the limit on purpose. They already knew that they were going to install the wing this week. So what's the harm in pushing the mast over the theoretical redline. It just confirms what the engineering data indicated what would happen. The question is did it break in exactly the manner as predicted?

Hey! You're alive!

Sounds like a very, very, risky not to say reckless way to confirm their engineering. I dont think they want to risk their own life or the boat itself by breaking a mast on purpose.