Saturday was a lovely day for Prada and the fans, but a terrible day for racing.

Race 1 of the best-of-9 series between Black Magic and Italy's Luna Rossa was postponed Saturday afternoon because the unpredictable wind on Hauraki Gulf dropped to practically nothing.

The race committee will try again Sunday to get in the first race, although the forecast again calls for light wind.

Black Magic and Luna Rossa, as well as a huge spectator fleet, bobbed gently under a blazing sun while the race committee waited 1½ hours after the scheduled start to see if the wind would fill in. It didn't even come close.

Three Kiwi sailors took off their shoes and sat in Black Magic's scooped-out transom, dangling their feet in the water and waving to passing powerboats. Pre-race nerves turned to boredom for other crew members on both boats, as they lounged on deck, stood with their arms crossed or ate lunch.

The forecast had called for 8-10 knots of wind, which would have been enough to get the race going. But the breeze was just 2 knots at the scheduled starting time of 1:15 p.m., and never got higher than 4 knots.

Less than four weeks ago, the wind and waves were so wild that the opening race of the challenger finals between Luna Rossa and AmericaOne was postponed one day because the race committee feared that one of the carbon-fiber racers could be severely damaged.

It was an anticlimactic finish to a day New Zealanders had been looking forward to with both pride and a touch of apprehension.

Because New Zealand didn't hold defender trials, the Kiwis hadn't been in an America's Cup race since May 13, 1995, when they completed one of the most dominating performances in Cup history, a 5-0 whitewashing of Dennis Conner off San Diego.

Eager to see these finals get started, thousands of spectators crammed Viaduct Basin Saturday morning to watch as the two yachts left their compounds.

A Maori war canoe led the flotilla out of the harbor, and a blast of horns from dozens of super yachts greeted the jet-black Kiwi boat, plastered with sponsor logos, as it was towed out.

The silver-and-red Luna Rossa (Red Moon) followed a few minutes later, to a tamer reception.

Luna Rossa, backed by the powerful Prada design house, beat AmericaOne in the dramatic Louis Vuitton Cup finals to guarantee that an American yacht won't be in the America's Cup final for the first time in its 149-year history.