A big win for the United States and some finger pointing by Team UK dominated the opening day of sailing in the America's Cup World Series in Auckland.
Team UK have problems in the America's Cup World Series in Auckland. Photo: PHOTOSPORT
American Magic made the biggest impact on the water with two wins from two races, including a close defeat of Team New Zealand.
But off the water, Team UK are making the most noise - calling for intervention from officials to rescue their sinking campaign.
Day one on the Waitematā Harbour produced some lop-sided match racing.
Team New Zealand could not be caught in the opening race of the series with Te Rehutai showing superior speed over Luna Rossa to finish 3 minutes and 13 seconds ahead of the Italian challenger.
The team then suffered a reversal with a 12 second loss to American Magic.
Tauranga helmsman Peter Burling said the loss was still encouraging.
"We had a few little issues in the second race but to be actually able to claw back into a position where we could have won the race was something that was incredibly pleasing for us," Burling said.
"I think that showed how tough the guys are on board to keep fighting in those situations where it's not quite going our way."
On Friday Team New Zealand are scheduled to face Team UK twice.
But the British entry is struggling.
A mechanical issue with the system that lifts the monohull out of the water saw the Brits limp home against American Magic on Thursday.
A pre-start penalty in their next race against Luna Rossa was compounded when more issues with the foil cant system forced retirement.
The system is used by all boats but is the intellectual property of Team New Zealand.
British skipper Sir Ben Anslie said his team may not even compete on day two of racing and needed help from other teams and officials to solve the foil cant system issues.
"It's ours today but it could easily be one of these other teams in the next round or in the challenger series or in the Cup and I think it would be a shame if that ends up deciding this series so we've been trying to work together but I think it isn't resolved yet and if we can't resolve it then at the very least we need to have some form of redress for teams that through no fault fo their own are not able to race," Sir Ben said.
Luna Rossa did not waste an opportunity to get more familar with Course C, continuing to race against the clock once Team UK had retired from Thursday's clash.
However, it is the first race - the loss against Team New Zealand - that was on helmsman Francesco Bruni's mind.
"We were not very happy at the end of the first race, the distance between us and Team New Zealand was big but we know we can do a lot better than what we did on the first race," he said.
"I'm going to go and watch all the videos and try to learn as much as we can from the first and the second race."
American Magic didn't not have any problems out on the water on day one but sailor Andrew Campbell is not reading too much into his team's early dominance.
"For sure there are points on the race track where all three of these other boats are faster than us and we need to be faster than all three of them at all those times so we're studying hard to make sure we can figure out how to make adjustments to our platform to make sure it can beat all three other teams on the water every day."
Results from the three days of World Series racing determine where the teams will be seeded for Sunday's Christmas Race.
Racing in the World Series is scheduled to resume just after 3pm on Friday with Luna Rossa and American Magic up first.
