Louis Vuitton Cup - Round Robin 2 - Day 3: Races cancelled due to strong winds

This might sound like a joke but unfortunately it isn't. All races in both the north and south courses were cancelled in the third day of Round Robin 2 because of extremely strong winds. They were consistently over 23 knots with gusts to 30 knots. After waiting for more than 2 hours for the breeze to subside, the race committee sent all boats back to Port America's Cup at around 4pm.

What is the reason of this abrupt change, following two weeks of very light winds? For all non-Spanish speakers it is time to enrich their vocabulary with "Poniente", a new Spanish meteorological term. Ponienete is the strong westerly wind blowing on the Spanish Mediterranean coast, coming from inland central Spain. It is not frequent in summer but it does happen once or twice a month during winter and spring and each time it can last for a couple of days. Today we had exactly such conditions and in the city's airport wind speed hardly dropped below 30 knots.

Today's cancelled flight 3 will be recovered tomorrow and take place together with the day's scheduled flight 4.