Britain sails to victory on tide of history

It was perfect, so perfect that it would have made Queen Victoria even happier in her favourite retreat. One hundred and fifty years after being told that Britain's best yachting thrust had been parried and then run through by the New York Yacht Club's marauders, it was all smiles in the Solent yesterday. Especially at the end.

Britain had apparently stuck with tradition by coming second in the race between the current America's Cup class yachts, though this time it was to the Italian challengers of 2000 in Prada, and it was only by the narrowest of margins. This time they fought back.

The team on GBR 52, skippered by Ian Walker, had led all the way round, but the spinnaker pole track ripped out of the mast in the latter stages. That allowed the Italians to stage a last–ditch attack and, after a neck–and–neck exchange of moves, the Italians lunged first over the line. Two seconds was the margin and Team New Zealand, in a much older boat, which won the cup in San Diego in 1995, was another eight astern in third after 55 miles and nearly five and a half hours of racing.

Also, in true America's Cup tradition, there was a row. Walker said the Italians had been "unseamanlike" in forcing them into an exclusion zone containing three lines of yacht moorings. "We were calling for water and they didn't have rights," he said. So, they also lodged a formal protest, the international jury agreed that they were rightly aggrieved, imposed a 20 per cent. time penalty on the Italians. The race went to GBR.

In a spectacle that had thousands ashore scrambling for every vantage point round the Isle of Wight and as many again in every shape and size of spectator craft, the America's Cup Jubilee staged a magnificent display. The sun shone bright, the sky was blue, the breeze was fair and it was one of those "I was there" days that those who were there will never forget.

Country pub car parks were empty as everyone flocked, clutching binoculars, to watch 200 yachts, including some of the world's most beautiful, race clockwise round the island on the same course on 22 August 1851 that triggered 150 years of rivalry and frustration.

First home was the 92–foot Stealth, owned by the Italian industrial magnate Gianni Agnelli and steered by Kenny Read. But her time of 4hr 48min 09sec was 43 minutes outside the record. Plugging one of the strongest tides in more than 100 years scuppered her chances.

The first J–Boat home was the 1934 Endeavour, escorted, as she had been all the way round, by a huge flotilla of adoring small boats. Here elapsed time was 6hr 1min 51sec. The march of time could not be avoided.

Whatever else, the pulling power of morning prayers at the Royal Yacht Squadron was formidable. And, to round everything off, there was a cricket match between the Royal Southern Yacht Club, from Hamble, and the Island Sailing Club on an exposed, muddy mid–Solent stretch of the Bramble Bank. It was the Island's day.