The best-of-9 series, tied 1-1, is scheduled to resume Saturday.

The race committee postponed Friday's race 1 hour and 25 minutes after its scheduled start of 1:15 p.m., local time.

For a race to begin, a breeze of at least five knots over a 10-minute period must be measured, and its direction must be relatively constant. But during the 85-minute wait, the wind on the Hauraki Gulf was stronger than five knots for just a few minutes and the direction shifted dramatically.

The boats were already on the course when the race was postponed at 2:40 p.m. While their boats bobbed around in the placid waters, crew members relaxed.

AmericaOne skipper Paul Cayard lay down on the deck, his hands behind his head. Other sailors chatted and laughed, waiting for the race committee's decision.

America's Cup sailors use some sophisticated technology to gauge the speed and pressure of the wind -- anemometers, barometers and birds.

Until 10 minutes before the race, the yachts are allowed to receive data from their weather boats. After that they're on their own. Instruments on the mast feed data into a laptop computer on board.

Sometimes, though, crew members use other sources.

"They'll watch the way birds are flying," Bob McDavitt of the Metropolitan Weather Service of Auckland, said Friday. "They'll see what helicopters are doing in the sky because, quite often, the choppers need to face the wind to steady themselves so that tells you what the weather is like that high in the air."

Better sailing conditions were forecast for Saturday, a northerly breeze from 10 to 20 knots.

The series had been scheduled to begin last Tuesday but was delayed for 24 hours by heavy seas, strong winds and a rainstorm that limited visibility.

It did start Wednesday, when Prada won by 24 seconds in moderate winds that ranged from 10 to 14 knots.

The sailors awoke Thursday to rain and lighter winds. The rain stopped, but the third race was delayed by 65 minutes until the breeze picked up. Prada appeared headed for another victory, leading by 1:49 after the first of six legs.

But AmericaOne came back to win by 1:33 in a race in which the shifting winds caused problems for sailors and spectators.

Because three legs of the race must be sailed as directly upwind as possible and the other three directly downwind, the committee had to change the course as the wind shifted after the race began.

That meant boats in the spectator fleet which originally were outside the course ended up in the middle of it before being ushered away by boats assigned to that job.

However, skippers Paul Cayard of AmericaOne and Francesco de Angelis of Prada each steered their yachts into the spectator fleet once, a move that may have hurt Prada because of the wash kicked up by the wayward boats .

Barring further postponements, Races 4 and 5 will be held Sunday and Tuesday. No racing is scheduled Monday, with the sixth race set for Wednesday.

If the series goes to nine races, it would not end until next Saturday, Feb. 5.