BAIL, BAIL, BAIL. The America's Cup racing commenced at 6 pm local, not 7 pm, and it's already wild. There's 23 knots of breeze and some chop. Team New Zealand have been shipping water, and one of the crew has been attempting to scoop it out one pail at a time. Now a fitting near the outhaul has failed and New Zealand are essentially sailing on the jib. WHOA .... now the jib has carried away. Upwind you can sail on the jib alone, the main is primarily a trim tab, but it appears to have carried away when the boat nosed into a wave. Still no death rolls. And now the replacement jib has carried away. The postmortems are going to be interesting on this. New Zealand have had their boat taken in tow. Race isn't over until Alinghi finishes, no certain proposition in these conditions. Nice conservative spinnaker set, they'll probably throttle back and sail a proper but conservative course.

UPDATE: Read the rather bloodless official coverage here. Forgive me the impertinence, but the attraction of Laser sailing is in the capsizing and the moments of sheer terror. The ESPN coverage suggests that the America's Cup yachts are reaching their theoretical maximum performance. There's apparently still a bit of beta-testing left.