Dee Smith joins ETNZ

"Team NZ look outside the team to gain an advantage in San Fran.

In a bid to get back on top of their AC45 game, Emirates Team New Zealand have called on a San Franciscan to educate them, while the Koreans have turned to a Kiwi Olympian to steer them in the right direction.

Dean Barker's crew "failed to spark" in the last event of the America's Cup World Series on San Francisco Bay, finishing seventh in fleet racing and fourth in match racing.

So they've gone to Dee Smith, rated by many as one of the world's top tacticians, to clue them up on the nuances of the bay before the next ACWS event on October 3."

- Suzanne McFadden - Boating, NZ

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Bella Mente wins Mini Maxi World Championship

Nice to be brought back on board Bella for the Worlds this last week here in Porto Cervo.  Bella has been going though some growing pains the first few months in the water.  After working the project for  over a year this was my first sail on the boat.  I joined a fantastic crew and owner, Hap Fauth.   The after-guard included John Cutler as strategist, Ian Moore the navigator and I filled in as tactician.  We knew we had our hands full with the other boats including Ran that has won multi worlds.  

The series started with a coastal race around the fantastic islands here.  Shockwave jump out to a great start and lead the boats around 1/2 of the course.  we had a 3 boat tacking dual coming out of Boom Ally and Ran jumped into the lead that they would not lose.  As we came around one of the islands near the harbor, we slipped just past Shockwave.  We then watch almost the whole crew go swimming when they hit a rock very hard and the life lines broke.  We ended up second in the race for a good start to the regatta.  Boat seemed to go ok.

The next 2 days we sailed 4 windward leeward races in 10-18 knots, really perfect conditions.  We lead around every mark in the first 3 races.  By no means was it not hard boat were very close in speed and we just got off the line very well and was able to sail very clean.  The others had more problems with traffic.  In these races we had a 1,1,1,2.  Ran on the other hand had 4,4,5,1.  This gave us a good lead.

The next day was another Coastal that again counted 1.5 points.  Very light patchy conditions.  We had a fantastic start and Ran was over the line early and with all the traffic and light air they ended up very far behind.  We were in the lead, controlling the race, with Ran deep behind when the race was cancelled.  We all returned to the starting area to wait for some more breeze.  The RC forced in a race in even lighter air and gave us a course that was more suited for a Bucket Race.  Anyway, Ran got to the first mark first, the only beat of 1.5 miles, and we followed.  Shockwave went under the island with a code 0 to gain an inside overlap on us at the next mark.  This was hard as we could not get around her and ended up coming in 4th.  Ran wining gave us the tie on points.  

On the last day with 2 windward leeward races in the plan but even with lighter winds expected we boat had 12 points but we owned the tie break with more first places.  After 4 hrs of waiting at the dock for wind the races were cancelled and we ended up with the big win.