San Francisco

What a race !! The score was 6 points for Team New Zealand and -1 for Team USA. Team New Zealand was expected to win the two races. Team USA was fast but significantly slower on the up wing leg. Each time Team New Zealand was able to close the gap, pass and then increase its lead on the up wind leg against Team USA. Today was different in many aspects. First the wind was at the upper limit (more on that later) which seems to favor Team USA. Second Team USA said they made modifications to their boat to make it more competitive in the up wind leg. Third Grant Dalton was not on the NZ boat (last time it was not on the boat, Team USA won the race). Team New Zealand took the better start and was leading at first mark. During the down wind leg, Team USA was able to...

Today was the first day of the America’s cup between Team USA and Team New Zealand. Everyone was anxious to see how fast against Team New Zealand’s boat Oracle’s boat would be. We guessed that the boats were close in speed and close they are… The first race was close and saw a change of leader happen twice (unseen until today in any previous races with the AC72s). The kiwis made no mistakes, sailing a very good race. The second race was also close but not as close as the first one. That’s two wins for the kiwis. The kiwis left no chance to the Americans. They show that they are fast and sail clean lines, a very hard to beat combo. They will be a lot of analysis and video watching tonight at Oracle’s base, they have to win...

I was rooting for the Artemis team today! Not that I don’t like the Luna Rossa team, it was just that I really wanted the swedish team to win. I didn’t want the italian team to win with a clean sweep. I didn’t get my wish, Luna Rossa sailed a perfect race and they deserved to win, but Team Artemis made several mistakes including two unecessary out-of-bound penalties. It’s also sad for the Artemis team. A win today would have been so right. Congratulation to Luna Rossa for winning the semi-final. They will race against Team New Zealand next Saturday. Like Max Sirena said: “We hope that our design changes can make us more competitive than last time we meet Team New Zealand”. Let’s hope so, otherwise it will be again a...

The first race with two boats of the Louis Vuitton Cup happened Saturday in San Francisco. It was Emirates Team New Zealand vs. Luna Rossa. Team New Zealand was the favorite, but the question was how good are those kiwis? The answer is those kiwis are fast, really fast. In a 20 knots breeze (close to the race limit), they beat Luna Rossa by more than 5 minutes. Here is the difference right after the start, Team New Zealand is foiling at full speed, while Luna Rossa is barely foiling. Team New Zealand was looking really strong on each leg of the race. To illustrate the difference between the two teams compare the boats positions in the images pairs taken at the same spot. After the tack, Team New Zealand gets its boat regaigning speed a lot faster than Luna...

A quick postcard from San Francisco on this 4th of July. The America’s cup opening day was today. While the races only begin on sunday (with no real elimination until August 6th). It’s was really fun to see all the sailors and the Louis Vuitton’s cup (brand new cup) and the America’s cup up close. Let’s the race begin.

I had planned the rise of the full moon to be over the Coit tower. It was a promising evening with no fog and a clear sky. I knew it was going to be tight in term of location. The moon would rise over the tower but I would be at the end of the pier to correctly line up the moon with the top of the tower. I had not planned to have a ship anchored on the other side of the pier. As the moon rose, the ship was blocking the shot. I did stay a little bit later and got new images of San Francisco at night to add to my collection of images. All the images presented here are available for licensing or as fine art...