From the start of race 4 - here is the distressing truth:

The penalty was a joke - this is the factual evidence - I was on the water listening to the radios and saw what happened:

1. whether Artemis were at fault is dubious at best
2. The umpires penalised Artemis 25 s before the start
3. It was supposed to be a VMG penalty
4. the umpire in the booth was not accustomed with the buttons so fucked up on pressing the buttons to indicate a vmg penalty
- Umpire Mike Martin who would normally press the buttons was awol (apparently with the band "red hot chilli powders " in a rib on the water)
5. The woman replacing Mike Martin in the booth fucked up by not knowing the button sequence - after pressing the SWE penalty button you then have to press either the VMG button (as in this case) or the boat on boat bot penalty button)
6. in a panic she pressed the SWE penalty button and then realised that nothing had happened so instead of pressing the VMG button pressed the SWE button again which completely cleared the penalty.
7. It was a total kiss up - the penalty was supposed to be a vmg penalty which would have penalised Artemis by approx. 2 boat lengths on the first reach - they started 4 boat lengths ahead of LR so should have still been leading at mark 1
8. the penalty was so late it was a joke and it was eventually signalled as a boat on boat penalty (due to it being signalled so late after the start), instead of a vmg penalty
9, Artemis were completely screwed by the umpires - and that's the way it is
10. When the umpires realised they had fucked up WHY didn't they just abandon the race at mark 1 and do a restart ??
10. Artemis could have protested the race afterwards but the honour of guys like percy and TT decided that it just wasn't worth it.

CONCLUSION: Umpire's you fucked up and deprived us of a possibly the best race so far, #pleasedon'tfuckupagain

#sailonbart

It's also become painfully clear that, as catsailingnews pointed out and others have mentioned, the course is really poor tactically. It's virtually impossible to pass upwind unless you get a really lucky shift or really lucky puff. Otherwise you're forced to follow your competitor to stay out of the current.

Any ideas on why Oracle added 2.5kgs to the spinpole support strut?
I light air I can see some advantage of having extra weight up front, but I cant see how such a small amount would make any difference to performance (its 0.002% of the total weight!)

Any ideas on why Oracle added 2.5kgs to the spinpole support strut?
I light air I can see some advantage of having extra weight up front, but I cant see how such a small amount would make any difference to performance (its 0.002% of the total weight!)

Wow, is that what this is all about? 5 ADDITIONAL pounds of weight? Don't they want their boats to be lighter? (that was rhetorical)

I think they had to add weight... so.. somebody thought that this was the best place for it...

Arguably the best place would be half in the bows and half in the transoms. This would increase moment of inertia and reduce pitching.