Luna Rossa lead into final day after strong Saturday in Cagliari

Day one wasn’t entirely smooth for most of the teams gathered in Cagliari. The French boat nosedived at 30 knots, each of the British boats posted DNFs, and the Swiss never quite found their rhythm. All of which made the performance of one crew look all the more striking.

Luna Rossa's Women & Youth boat, helmed by Margherita Porro and Marco Gradoni, won two of the three fleet races and were dangerous throughout the other, finishing day one with a nine-point cushion over a chasing pack squeezed into a single point from second to sixth.

Day two brought less intense conditions: 13-16 knots to start, with more manageable 0.2 - 0.5m chop, and far less of the capsize risk that had defined day one. The challenge instead was keeping the AC40s on their foils as the breeze dropped through the afternoon.

GB1's woes continued today, the British boat sidelined again by technical issues, leaving Dylan Fletcher’s senior crew with just one race of six completed in the regatta so far.

Here's how day two unfolded…

Eighteen months ago Nathan Outteridge and Peter Burling were both on board Emirates Team New Zealand, defending the America's Cup in Barcelona. In race 4 in Cagliari, they were trying to do each other in.

Burling's senior Luna Rossa led down leg one, with Outteridge's senior Kiwis tucked in behind. By gate 3 the Kiwis had sniffed out better pressure on the right and slipped through into the lead. From there it was effectively a match race.

Multiple crosses up the next beat, split gybes at gate 4, neither boat able to shake the other. Coming down the run, Burling went for a cross, but had to bail at the last moment. One last clean gybe from the Kiwis and Outteridge slid across the line two seconds clear. "Luna Rossa kept us on our toes," Outteridge said afterwards. "It was a fun battle. It's pretty tricky out here."

The Kiwi B-boat took third, a full 37 seconds behind, while the Italian B-boat clawed back a respectable fourth after a rocky start towards the back. Tudor Team Alinghi, meanwhile, were 2km behind when the race was won – the start of a long afternoon for the Swiss.

Race 4
1 ETNZ 19.13
2 Luna Rossa +0.02
3 ETNZ W & Y +0.37
4 Luna Rossa W & Y +0.47
5 La Roche-Posay +1:32
6 Athena Pathway +1.48
7 Tudor Team Alinghi +3:12
8 GB1  DNS

Race 5 opened in mayhem. Four protest flags went up at the start as Tudor Team Alinghi cut across the Emirates Team New Zealand Women & Youth boat, forcing them off their foils. The umpires handed the Swiss a penalty, then a second down the first leg for not shaking it quickly enough.

That was just the beginning. La Roche-Posay took an early lead, which was then snatched by Luna Rossa's Women & Youth boat, before both leaders fell off the foils in the fickle breeze. The senior Kiwis, winners of the previous race, then rounded the second gate in first, as the Luna Rossa seniors and Athena Pathway scrapped behind.

But that order didn't last long either. On leg three Burling's senior Luna Rossa picked up a penalty for getting too close to Alinghi coming the opposite direction.

Into the gap surged Hannah Mills and Athena Pathway. By gate 3 they had 18 seconds on Burling’s crew. By the finish, 37 seconds on the rest of the fleet. Athena may have sailed more distance than most of the fleet, but posted the fleet's highest average speed and best VMG, finding breeze that the others couldn't. Some way to bounce back from yesterday's capsize and DNF.

"We've seen massive step changes in conditions," Mills said afterwards. "Yesterday was tough for lots of different reasons. We always had belief we could do it. Really proud of everyone to come back out today fighting."

The Italian Youth & Women nipped took second just half a metre ahead of the French, with La Roche-Posay handed a 20-second boat-on-boat penalty at the finish that dropped them from third to fifth. Meanwhile, Tudor Team Alinghi capsized during a gybe and had to retire from the race.

Race 5
1 Athena Pathway 20:18
2 Luna Rossa W & Y +0.37
3 ETNZ +0.40
4 Luna Rossa +0.55
5 La Roche-Posay +0.58
6 ETNZ W & Y +1:40
7 Tudor Team Alinghi +RET
8 GB1 DNS

For race 6 the wind was right on the 7-knot lower limit, biggest jibs up, and the boats were on the edge of touching down through every manoeuvre.

Emirates Team New Zealand's senior crew came out of the start cleanest and led around the top mark, but Luna Rossa's Women & Youth crew wouldn't let go. By gate 3 they had pulled the Kiwi cushion in to six seconds. With Burling's senior Luna Rossa, sat back in third, 44 seconds behind, a match race at the front began to emerge.

Outteridge picked the better side of the course off the next gate and stretched the Kiwi lead back to 21 seconds. But the Italians wouldn’t let the Kiwis break free, closing back to within seven seconds by the final top mark.

Once more the two crews split at the gate, and this time Outteridge picked the wrong side. The Kiwis sailed straight into a lull, the Italians snuck through, and Margherita Porro’s crew coasted across 11 seconds clear. "It was super hard. Very tough in shifty conditions, so we have to put our head out of the boat a lot of times," Porro said.

At the other end of the fleet, Tudor Team Alinghi were lagging well off the pace, where they’ve been most of the regatta. Just ahead of them, race 5 winners Athena Pathway only just held on for sixth, crashing off their foils on the final approach and drifting across the line a few seconds ahead of the Swiss.

Race 6
1 Luna Rossa W & Y 22:21
2 ETNZ +0.11
3 Luna Rossa +0.23
4 La Roche-Posay +0.46
5 ETNZ W & Y +1:09
6 Athena Pathway +1.47
7 Tudor Team Alinghi +1.53
8 GB1 DNS

Day two ended with Luna Rossa's Women & Youth on 55 points from a possible 60 – three race wins, two seconds and one fourth. With two more fleet races and a winner-takes-all match race final still to come on day three, the Italian B-boat is all but locked in for the decider. The interesting question is who joins them: Outteridge’s senior Kiwi crew sit second on 47, just three points clear of Burling's Luna Rossa A-boat in third.

Outteridge wasn't pretending it had been a comfortable afternoon. "It wasn't quite what the forecast had today," he said. "Just kept dropping all day and made it super challenging. We did a race on all the jib codes, which was fun, from the three to the two to the one. That was a really good battle in that last one. But unfortunately, we picked the wrong top mark."

"They're sailing really, really well. It's very impressive," Outteridge added of the Italian Women & Youth crew. "It's really healthy for the sport to have young sailors coming in with opportunities like this, keeping all us guys on our toes."

The Kiwis have a youth contingent of their own. Seb Menzies, fresh off a tough 49er Worlds, is logging hours few sailors his age will get on a boat like this. "It's been such good racing," he said. "I've had a lot of good battles with those Italian boats, which has been good fun."

Meanwhile, two days in, Sir Ben Ainslie's GB1 have completed just one race – a second-place finish that hints at what might have been. With another day still to come, it's hard not to wonder what the leaderboard would look like if the technical issues had let them race.

Day 3 of the Cagliari Preliminary Regatta starts at 15:00 CEST, with two fleet races followed by the match race final. Catch the action here.

Standings at the end of day two
1 Luna Rossa W & Y - 55
2 ETNZ - 47
3 Luna Rossa - 44
4 ETNZ W & Y - 39
5 La Roche -Posay - 38
6 Athena Pathway - 30
7 Tudor Team Alinghi - 29
8 GB1 - 9