“This is such a tragedy. Andrew was such a wonderful husband, father, friend and one of the nicest people you would ever meet. The only solace I can find is that he died doing something which he loved. I have such fond memories of growing up sailing together as kids and then as adults. I will miss him so much. My thoughts and prayers are with Leah, their two boys and their family.”

Skipper Ben Ainslie summarises the reason behind entering: “It’s been a fantastic experience to race the AC45’s in the America’s Cup World Series, this was an opportunity to bring the boat to the UK to show the British public how dynamic and exciting these boat are. The J.P. Morgan Asset Management Round the Island Race provides the perfect opportunity to race the AC45 on an iconic course in Britain’s largest yacht Race”.

The current multihull record of 3 hours 8 minutes and 29 seconds has stood since 2001, held by offshore legend Francis Joyon. It was very nearly beaten last year by the Multi 50 trimaran Actual, missing out by just 1min, 28secs.

Ben continued: “I’ve had a few people comment about going for the Race record, in order for the team to have any chance of getting close the record we would need to have the perfect conditions. We’re aiming to get round as quickly as possible but the most important is to race safely and have great fun, whatever happens after that is an added bonus”.

It was only right and correct that the team will change to an all British crew for this one off Race and Ben is bringing in a group of experienced sailors. Mark Bulkeley (Head sail trimmer) and Matt Cornwall (Bowman) have a wealth of AC45 sailing experience competing for Team Korea and Artemis in the 2012 -13 America Cup World Series. Ben also won the World Match Racing Championship with Matt in 2010. The other two crew roles on board will be taken by Andrew Mills (Runner) and Mark Andrews (wing trimmer). Both sail as part of the British Sailing Team in the Finn Class and were training partners for Ben in the lead up to London 2012

The first America’s Cup was raced clockwise around the Isle of Wight in 1851. A race originally called the “100 Guinea Cup” which was won by the New York yacht America which gave rise to the America’s Cup.

Ben summarises: “The Round the Island is slightly different to the original Cup course as its counter clockwise and I will be racing against close to 1,900 other boats but never the less it will still be a fantastic opportunity to Race the new generation of Cup boats on the same waters over 160 years later”.

For J.P. Morgan this is a celebration of their commitment to the sport of sailing. Keith Evins commented: “We are very proud of our long standing sponsorship of both the Round the Island Race and Ben through his Olympic campaign and recently his new America’s Cup world Series team. It will be a fantastic spectacle for spectators and competitors seeing J.P. Morgan BAR racing around the iconic landmarks of the Isle of Wight.”

Watch Ben’s top tips for competing in the J.P. Morgan Asset Management Round the Island Race here:

Skipper Ben Ainslie reflected on the final race today, “To win the event we really needed to win the race today, unfortunately it didn’t happen for us. We struggled in the middle of the fleet. The conditions were difficult today but it was the same for everyone and we just weren’t able to quite get it right which is a shame and it’s frustrating for the team. But that’s sports, that’s life and you have to learn what you can from it and move forwards. I think we had more potential than where we finished, so we know we have to work harder next time round to get ourselves to the top of the fleet at the next event.”

Today’s fleet race was do or die, the overall event title was up for grabs with the top five teams all in contention to walk away with the trophy. The start once again proved to be a deal breaker, Matt Mitchell talked through the start and race for J.P.Morgan BAR, “We thought we had the right end of the start line, but it wasn’t to be. It’s been the story of the last few days, the starts have not been clicking for us, you try to pick your way through the fleet, but again you get dictated into your lanes and it limits how far you can get back up through the fleet.”

After rounding the first gate, J.P.Morgan BAR found themselves buried in the middle of the pack, but the crew didn’t give up constantly searching for opportunities to pull back places. For the boats at the front when it’s going well it racing looks easy, but on a day like today for the majority of the fleet it was a battle as Mitchell explained, “Having found ourselves once again with a deficit on the leaders you just have to keep blazing away and working hard until the end, We kept working away all the way to the end. We missed out on a few things and we know that small mistakes are pretty costly in this event and that was the difference today”.

The tricky conditions saw the lead change hands throughout the seven lap course. ORACLE TEAM USA, Team Energy, Emirates Team New Zealand and Luna Rossa Swordfish all threatened to take line honours, but it was Francesco Bruni onboard Luna Rossa Swordfish that finally secured a win, taking the lead on the final downwind leg, in front of adoring home crowds that lined the shoreline in Naples.

Four time America’s Cup winner J.P.Morgan BAR headsail trimmer Simon Daubney has enjoyed the experience with the team. “Sailing at these events with Ben has been great. We have a great bunch of guys and we’ve fought hard at every regatta. It’s good sailing with him, it was hard at the first event, he came straight from the Games so it was a big learning curve for all of us, but we sailed really well in the second event and we were really pleased with the result last October. Conditions were very different here and it didn’t go as we hoped that it would, but we’re still friends and we will live to fight another day”.

For the crew onboard J.P.Morgan BAR it’s the end of competition for this year, as the sailors prepare to shift attention back to the America’s Cup finals in San Francisco this summer. “It’s a little bit sad of J.PMorgan BAR today. It’s been a pretty cool thing we’ve had going on, we have a good boat and good bunch of boys to sail with. We have shown great promise at times, and the overall experience over the series has been awesome,” Matt Mitchell.

“We would have love to have done a lot better in this event, but it shows a lot of promise and lot to build on for the future,” concluded Ainslie.

As if to confirm what I was saying in yesterday’s blog about how critical the start is in these quick fire races, today was a demonstration of just that. We managed to experience both sides of the equation today with two starts that placed us on the back foot and a third that saw the slimmest of advantages convert into a satisfying win. The margins at this level are so slim and so much hangs on your start.

Conditions were really tricky for the first day’s racing here in Naples and while it was great to be out there racing for real, the shifts and gusts off the shore made it really difficult to be in the right place at the right time.

Our match race against Energy Team was the first race of the day and having chosen the end that we wanted to start at, a shift in the breeze meant that this was no longer the favoured end. The result was that we were too early for the start.

Worse was that the French skipper Yann Guichard did a good job of blocking us out which left as struggling for speed as the gun went and our opponents scorched away on the first leg.

But one of the advantages of tricky conditions is that there is usually a way back into the race if you manage to anticipate the shifts and the gusts. If there’s one thing that experience teaches you, it’s to believe that these opportunities exist and to be patient.

Fortunately for us we managed to anticipate better conditions on the right hand side of the upwind leg which allowed us to take the lead by the top mark. A lead which we held onto until the finish.

In the first of the two fleet races our start was OK on timing but we struggled to break free from the pack and had to fight hard throughout the race. Fortunately we managed to haul ourselves back through the fleet to finish third which was a good recovery given how buried we felt in the opening stages.

The final race of the day was also a fleet race and here we managed to sneak our bows out in front of the competition at the start. The margin was tiny initially, around a metre or so, but it was enough to keep clear wind and help us accelerate to the first mark. We managed to pass Luna Rossa Piranha in the process which meant we rounded first.

From there on we were able to extend our lead throughout the race.

But as we’ve seen before, winning races is one thing, carrying this through to the end of the series is quite another. Often the final result comes down to the last day, Sunday. So while I’m happy about today’s result that puts us in the lead of the fleet racing overall, it is only by one point.

Sure, it is a good way to kick off our series, but it’s also further evidence of the small margins involved.

J.P.Morgan BAR Naples Racing Day 1 – Images by J.P.Morgan BAR

The racing here in Naples gets underway for real on Thursday but most of the teams have been afloat practicing for much of the week. With course marks and committee boats out on the water, at times it’s difficult to tell practicing from the real thing, certainly the racing can be as tight. It might seem strange to those that follow the AC World Series that we do quite so much practicing, but the fact is that this is still a relatively new format of racing and for some us, the light winds that are forecast present a new and different challenge.

For us at J.P.Morgan BAR, we’ve only competed in two events, both of them in San Francisco and both in pretty breezy conditions. So every practice session we can squeeze in makes a big difference to us. In addition, the weather for the rest of the week in Naples puts us in territory that we have little experience of in the AC45s. In up to 12 knots of true wind we will be using the big gennakers downwind as opposed to the code zeros that we used in the breezier conditions in San Francisco. We’ve only used this sail a couple of times in practice and still have a lot to learn.

The gennakers present a number of key differences for us as a crew, in particular handling. Unlike most boats that get harder to sail as the wind increases, the AC45s are almost the opposite. The gennakers are much larger than the code zeros and are therefore trickier to gybe. When the breeze gets towards the upper limit for these sails they do become a handful. We’ve had little experience of this so we’ve still yet to get our systems sorted on board.

Add to this the forecast sea breezes of around 10 knots or maybe a little more and we’re into the top end of these sails making it just about as difficult as it gets for the crew.

But there are other issues to get used to in these conditions. The larger, fuller gennakers also mean that we sail much deeper on the downwind legs than with the code zeros, so from my point of view I need to get to grips with a new set of gybing angles as well as knowing how to steer the boat through the gybe in order to keep the power on and accelerate efficiently out the other side. These may be subtle details, but some of the longstanding teams are much more familiar with this, so in a way we’re still playing catch up.

Then there’s the issue of judging the right angle into the bottom gate. Again, the bigger sails give you less freedom to steer where you need to, if you over stand the lay line into the gate it can be very difficult to sail high to get around the mark. Another area that requires a good deal of practice is the reaching start. Compared to a conventional upwind start these reaching starts are really difficult to get right and are so critical. If you get buried at the start you might get back to 2nd or 3rd with some good racing but you won’t win.

The trouble is that you have to have clear air at the start and that means being spot on the line as the gun goes. Any distance back and you run a serious risk of being blanketed by others. The new technology also means that the lines are very accurately monitored too so there is nowhere to hide. If you do get buried you can’t tack out into clear air either like you can in a conventional start, so these starts are absolutely critical.

Already we are seeing teams experimenting with different strategies for dealing with this, we certainly are. Assessing which end of the line will be best in certain conditions as well as refining how to ‘pull the trigger’ as we say and time the precise moment when we put on full power are just two examples.

I guess the irony here is that while these starts may be new to this kind of racing, reaching starts are what thousands of club and amateur sailors have to deal with every weekend. Practice makes perfect whichever end of the scale you are at.

J.P.Morgan BAR Training Naples Day 3 – Images by J.P.Morgan BAR

J.P. Morgan BAR are 49 points from the current season leader ORACLE TEAM USA (Spithill), with Tom Slingsby taking on helming duties for the team at this event. It might seem like a big points gap, but with 40 points on offer for first place during the Super Sunday final race, one small mistake can mean a big difference on the leaderboard. The existing crew from the last event in San Francisco will remain, with one change for Naples, bowman Jan Dekker (RSA) will replace Simeon Tienpont (NED) who will remain in San Francisco to work on the ORACLE TEAM USA AC72 programme.

Racing will take place right by the shore giving the spectators a chance to see these wing sailed catamarans up close as nine teams battle it out for overall victory in Naples. The AC45 is one of the most technologically advanced sailing boats in the world, the fixed wing provides incredible acceleration and speed but they are not an easy ride for the crew onboard.

Simon Daubney, four time winner of the America’s Cup, J.P.Morgan BAR headsail trimmer talks through the realities of racing onboard an AC45, or the slave ship as he refers to it: “You’re hiking out the whole time, and constantly re-adjusting the wing and sails in order to go as fast as possible. For the front three guys these boats are like little slave ships really, they keep everyone pretty busy”. Click here to watch videos of the crew explaining their roles

Practice racing will start on Monday 15th with the Championship Racing starting on April 18th, during the four days of racing the nine teams will compete across both Match and Fleet Racing disciplines. The overall titles for both the Naples event and for the 2012-13 America’s Cup World Series will be decided at this event.

To view the full racing schedule click here

For skipper Ben Ainslie, Naples is an opportunity for the team to secure the teams first win, “First and foremost we’re really looking forward to getting racing again, it’s going to be interesting to see what kind of conditions we will have in Naples. We’ve been doing some practice sailing in San Francisco, which is predominantly windy, and we might face some lighter conditions in Naples and that means we’ll have to adapt quickly.

We have a crew change with Jan (Dekker) joining us a bowman for this event, I think a lot of teams will have similar changes onboard as they manage the work that continues on the AC72 programmes. The event was a great success last time and everything is very close to the shore so the public will really feel a part of the racing. As a team we made real progress during our last event in 2012, so we really want to build on our performance. This is our last opportunity to show what we are capable of this season so we will be working very hard to achieve an overall podium position at the end of it”.

The Team has recently launched their new blog site www.jpmorganbarblog.com.View in-depth profile videos on each crew member and their role, as well as learning about the story of the team so far and the ‘First Timers Guide’ to AC45 racing explaining the different racing formats and scoring systems. This is the essential place for all the latest team news, interviews, photos and behind the scenes videos. The page also includes a guide to the AC45 giving you an inside view of what it takes to successfully compete on these Racing machines.

Watch the Team’s journey so far:

J.P.Morgan BAR crew list Naples
Ben Ainslie (GBR) – Helm
Simon Daubney (NZL) – Headsail trimmer
Matthew Mitchell (NZL) – Floater
Kyle Langford (AUS) – Wing Trimmer
Jan Dekker (RSA)- Bowman

The nine teams for the America’s Cup World Series Naples are (with skipper and points earned in the 2012-13 season championship):

ORACLE TEAM USA SLINGSBY (Tom Slingsby) – 165 pts.
Luna Rossa Piranha (Chris Draper) – 121
Artemis Racing White (Charlie Ekberg) – 120
J.P. Morgan BAR (Ben Ainslie) – 116
Energy Team (Yann Guichard) – 102
Emirates Team New Zealand (Dean Barker) – 100
Luna Rossa Swordfish (Francesco Bruni) – 71
China Team (Mitch Booth) – 43
HS Racing (Roman Hagara) – 0

Ben’s knighthood marks the culmination of over twenty years dedicated to the Olympics and the pursuit of gold. With four gold medals and one silver, in 2012 after his fourth gold medal Sir Ben Ainslie became the most successful Olympic sailor of all time.

Speaking outside the Palace after the ceremony Sir Ben said,

“It’s been a great day,  there were lots of familiar faces here today including Lord Coe, Catherine Grainger and David Weir so it was great to cacth up with some old friends and also very proud to see all the people there who have done some amazing things.

For me, it is probably the proudest moment of my life and its even more special to be able to share it with my family and friends.  It’s a huge honour and a day to remember, but life moves on to the future and the next project and challenge. For me it’s the America’s Cup, it started in Britain in 1851 and yet we have’t won it and that’s something I feel is missing from our maritime history so it would be great if we can achieve that.  We have a lot of great sailors in the UK so I hope that we can win the Cup, that’s the next challenge”.

Ben’s visit to the UK is just a pit stop between training with Oracle team USA in San Francisco ahead of the America’s Cup finals this coming September. Before this Ben will return to Europe to compete in the next America’s Cup World Series event with his team J.P.Morgan BAR.  It will be the final event of the 2012/13 series.

www.jpmorgan.com