Louis Vuitton Cup - Semifinals - Day 2: Preview

Good morning from sunny, and hopefully stable, Valencia. The Louis Vuitton Cup semifinals started yesterday with extremely shifty and unstable winds and during the hour and a half that lasted both matches, winds went in speed anywhere from 4 to 15 knots and direction from 270 to 90 degrees, often within a question of minutes.

Luna Rossa and Emirates Team New Zealand played the shifts better than the rivals and pocketed the first point. Still, this is a 9-race series, the following days can be full of surprises and one match doesn't make the semifinal. One point is interesting though, BMW Oracle's inability to spot the winds correctly, twice in a row, first with Emirates Team NZ and then with Luna Rossa. Their boat is definitely faster than the Italian but that was not enough.

The other race was much clearer and unless the kiwis make some astonishing blunder it shouldn't be extremely difficult.

Today, the order of the two matches rotates as do the entry sides in the prestart box. The first match, starting at 3pm, will be Emirates Team NZ against Desafío Español, while Luna Rossa and BMW Oracle will face each other 10 minutes later, at 3:10pm.

Weather forecast
The weather forecast from the event organizers seems promising today, but yesterday's forecast also did and turned out to be quite a different pattern. In any case, they expect the gradient breeze to move to the northeast overnight and then veer towards the east and southeast throughout the afternoon. Wind speed will build through the afternoon, starting at 8-10 knots and reaching 12-14 knots as sea breeze develops.

Here is the forecast by Chris Bedford, BMW Oracle meteorologist, as always, courtesy of the BMW Oracle Blog.