Word: saile
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...Skipper John Bertrand committed the cardinal sin of leaving his opponent uncovered. Liberty Helmsman Dennis Conner took the left side of the course for his own and by the first mark had opened a 29-sec. lead. It looked to many as if he had the race in his sail...
Having smiled on Conner on Tuesday, God was in a different mood for the fifth race, the next day. Just 45 min. before it was time to summon the yachts to the start, Liberty suffered a broken jumper strut, a hydraulically powered device that angles the mast to increase sail power. As a fast motorboat rushed a new part from dockside, New Yorkers Tom Rich and Scott Vogel struggled 60 ft. above the deck to cut away the faulty strut. The damage was repaired 12 min. before the start, but Liberty still had to raise a jib, and its crew...
...winds were again around 20 knots for the second race. Just before the start, as Australia II jibed to block Liberty, a 24.6-knot gust smacked the challenger, snapping a pin that holds the mainsail to the halyard and dropping the sail 18 in. Despite this handicap, Bertrand beat the U.S. yacht on the first upwind leg by 50 sec., a remarkable margin that displayed his boat's inherent speed. Unable to match his opponent in tacking duels, Bertrand decided to go off in search of a breeze. Left alone, it was Conner who found the wind...
...last-ditch effort, as Bertrand made his final rounding of the windward mark more than 3 min. ahead, Conner tried to sail over his opponent, get to leeward of Australia II and force it to head back up to windward. He was about a minute too late. By the end of the race, in constantly shifting winds of up to 19 knots from the southwest, Bertrand led by a whopping 3 min. 25 sec. The series was tied 3-3. From London to Perth, the betting was on Australia...
...stored inside it was hit by true-eyed artillery men of the Venetian Republic, firing near by from the Hill of the Muses? Or that in the 19th century, the seventh Earl of Elgin would carry down from the hill pediment statues and one maidenly caryatid, all doomed to sail in ships made of wood to a foreign place not loved by thundering Zeus, the British Museum...