Speaking of sponsor fulfillment and lessons learned...

I was in the 99 restaurant in Newport (over by the rotary) a few weeks ago, and noticed a beautiful, framed image from the Newport stopover during the last ACWS. The picture is of a fleet race start, and was clearly taken after Thursday, because ETNZ had a lot of clear panels on the wing.

At the time, I wondered why they didn't have a spare wing for each team, or at least the properly branded covers (they damaged their wing during the capsize and day-long righting attempts).

They took necessary panels from the wing of the Red Bull boat which was there for audiences to see up close ashore, stripped the Red Bull branded covers, and re-covered with clear skins.

As this mishap occurred on Thursday, their sponsors missed out on three full days (out of four) of televised coverage!!! Not to mention, eons worth of images (how many decades worth of AC pictures do we see walking around in Newport?).

Do you think they learned anything from that?

Mike