SailJuice

Click Thru to new SailJuice site...

2008-11-25T10:57:00.005Z

Welcome to my OLD SailJuice Blog!

Chances are you found this site via a search engine such as Google, as this blog still seems to be doing well in the search rankings.

We've actually moved house, so try heading for www.SailJuice.com instead, where you'll see our new website.

Our blog is now based at: SailJuiceBlog.com

Regards

Andy Rice, Editor, SailJuice

SailJuiceBlog.com is the New Address

2007-10-20T09:48:00.000+01:00

The SailJuice Blog has moved to a new address, SailJuiceBlog.com

You might want to take a peek at my first post there, it's causing quite a stir...

Here's an excerpt:

"Olympic sailing is at a critical juncture. The IOC has handed ISAF the task of whittling down the existing 11 categories that will be represented at Qingdao 2008, down to just 10 for Weymouth 2012.

A game of musical chairs then.

An almighty blood bath, more likely. Have no doubt that this November in Estoril, Portugal, there will be more backstabbing going on than when Julius Caesar unwittingly strolled into the Roman Senate for the last time."

Read on for the rest...

Alinghi makes a peace offering

2007-09-21T13:09:00.000+01:00

"Tell you what Larry. If we promise to make this America’s Cup game a bit fairer, can we not go to court? Please?"

That’s the short version of a peace offering made by Alinghi yesterday. If you want to read the long version from Alinghi, it’s published below.

This is a massive climb down from the Defender’s original position. Clearly the prospect of going to the New York Supreme Court in just less than a month is getting a little too real for comfort.

So thankfully, sense has finally prevailed. Alinghi have backed down in a number of key areas. Though it seems none will ever be brave enough to say it in public, the other ‘legitimate’ challengers have a good deal to thank Larry and the Golden Gate Yacht Club for, in helping to get the 33rd Cup back on track as a true sporting contest.

While questions remain over the CNEV’s legitimacy as a true Challenger of Record (one of the GGYC’s primary objections), I hope Larry and the San Franciscans accept this peace offer from the Swiss, so that business of designing, building and sailing can continue without further interruption.

Here are those protocol amendments in full. They’re well worth a read, because they serve as a reminder of just what overarching powers the Defender had bestowed upon itself.

With regards America’s Cup Management’s (ACM) power to disqualify a competitor, this has been clarified to say that, should a competitor refuse to be bound by the Protocol, then they will have recourse to the Arbitration Panel without risk of disqualification until the Panel rules.

Secondly with regards ACM’s right to refuse an entry. The amendment is a restriction of ACM’s ‘ability to reject’ to an ability only on very specific grounds, which are: failure to comply with the Deed of Gift, a capacity issue within Port America’s Cup or a need to provide an equitable balance of competing nations. The SNG has made it clear that, should the GGYC abandon their legal action, they would be welcomed as a competitor for the 33rd edition and could shape the event along with the other challengers and the Defender during the ongoing Competitor Commission meetings.

A further suggested amendment point, on recommendation from the Arbitration Panel, regards the power of ACM to amend the Protocol and other rules. This has been changed to state that ‘any proposal to make any Protocol changes, related to the way in which the Arbitration Panel works, must be subject to its prior approval.’

In addition to this amendment, the SNG and CNEV have deleted the power of ACM to remove members of the Arbitration Panel. [what??!! This one had passed me by. I can’t believe ACM ever had the power to do this in the first place! It casts a different light on the ruling made by the Arbitration Panel a couple of weeks ago. A case of, ‘well, they would say that, wouldn’t they’, with ACM’s sword of Damocles hanging over their heads.]

Finally, the concern regarding ‘neutral management’ has been amended to extend the Fair Sailing rule to apply to all matters directly related to the regatta.

Following these changes, Ernesto Bertarelli made his plea to the GGYC and Larry’s team: "I would again appeal to BMW Oracle Racing to enter the 33rd America’s Cup as a legitimate challenger. It has been demonstrated that dialogue is possible for the better of this event and it should be noted by them that many areas of their concerns have been addressed.

"We would also like BMW Oracle Racing to consider that their action is hindering the opportunity for other teams to enter the competition, and harming the ability of existing competitors to generate sponsorship income and properly plan their challenge."

So, the ball is back in Larry’s court. It will be interesting to see how he plays it. Here’s hoping he enjoys his victory from Alinghi’s climbdown, and withdraws his legal proceedings accordingly.

Alinghi denies a stitch-up

2007-09-05T17:06:00.000+01:00

Some reassurances today from Brad Butterworth and Alinghi that they are not going to abuse their self-bestowed powers over the 33rd America's Cup to the extent that many of us have feared. There are certainly more questions that it would be good to get answers to, but today's statement is at least a step in the right direction. Enough to appease Larry Ellison though? I doubt it. Here is the Alinghi statement in full.

Earlier today, Alinghi, Defender of the 33rd America’s Cup, gave a progress report on preparations for the 33rd America’s Cup at the Société Nautique de Genève. This gathering marked the start of the 33rd America’s Cup campaign and a return to business after the August break. Brad Butterworth, team skipper was accompanied by Hamish Ross, general counsel and Michel Hodara representing America’s Cup Management.

The group announced several developments in the preparations for the 33rd America’s Cup. The first is that the design consultation period, due to start in mid September, will last for six weeks and will result in the definition of the class rule. The consultation will be facilitated by an expert consultant to ensure the views of all five challengers are represented. Secondly, Brad explained that the clear intention regarding the development of the rules is to have a “tight design box” in order to facilitate close racing.

“Our objective is to create a tight design box rule that will ensure the emphasis remains on sailing skill and exciting racing as we have recently seen during the 32nd America’s Cup, this together with large, visually impressive state-of-the- arts boats will help us achieve our vision for the next Cup,” he declared during the press briefing in Geneva. “We are keen to return the America’s Cup to the romantic era of J-Class size yachts, albeit updated with the very latest technology. This will create a superb spectacle and event for sailing fans worldwide.”

It was also announced that in the next few days there will be a Competitor Commission meeting to discuss the 33rd America’s Cup and elements of the Protocol, with the aim to mould this edition into an even greater success than its predecessor.

ACM also confirmed today that Valencia has been approved by the Spanish Council of Ministers and has now been officially ratified by all the Spanish Authorities for the 33rd America’s Cup. This completes all contractual proceedings regarding the venue for the Cup in 2009. ACM also confirmed that United Internet Team Germany has been officially accepted as the 5th challenger.

“Most of the team is now back from the summer break and we are pressing ahead with preparations for the next Cup in 2009, with a particular focus on developing the new class rule through consultation with the five confirmed challengers,” said Brad Butterworth, adding: “These new class rules will be released on 31st October 2007, 18 months before the first pre-regatta with the new boats, and two months earlier than initially planned.”

Brad took the opportunity to clarify and further explain aspects of the Protocol that have been misinterpreted over the summer period:

CLARIFICATION OF ELEMENTS OF THE 33rd PROTOCOL

It has been alleged that CNEV is a ‘sham’ and not a legitimate Challenger of Record?
A: The legitimacy of the CNEV is unquestionable. For the 32nd America’s Cup, Desafío Español represented the Spanish sailing community through the Federation and it was decided to create a new club that captured the essence of Spanish sailing. This new Club incorporates the America’s Cup spirit in Spain and is chaired by the Vice Chairman of the Spanish Sailing Federation. BMW Oracle Racing are attempting to undermine the challenge on two counts both of which are erroneous as there are several examples of clubs being formed specifically to challenge for the America’s Cup (including clubs from Australia, Japan, Germany, US and Canada) and of clubs holding regattas after submitting a challenge. Furthermore, the credibility of the Spanish Challenge is further underlined by the strong performance demonstrated during the 32nd America’s Cup with them advancing to the Semi Final.

What is the impact of the BMW Oracle Racing legal challenge?
This is a legal ambush by one party; the fact is we have six competitors, including Alinghi, lined up for the 33rd America’s Cup. It is a distraction for the America’s Cup and is totally self serving on their behalf. It is most damaging for teams that haven’t yet entered given that this climate of uncertainty created by the GGYC prevents them from gaining sponsorship and building their teams. The 32nd America’s Cup saw the best action on the water and that is what we want for the 33rd America’s Cup.

What is the reason that ACM can refuse an entry?
See AC 33 Protocol clauses 2.7 (d), 4.4
A: First of all a competitor has to fulfil the requirements of the Deed of Gift and the Protocol. Furthermore, ACM is the event organiser and this rule has been written because, as in other major sporting events, we have a limited number of entries available, however, if a potential entrant feels they have been unfairly treated there is recourse through the Arbitration Panel.

ACM can throw out any competitor at any time?
See Protocol clause 5.4 (b)(d)
A: No, ACM does not have the power to throw out a competitor at any time. ACM has the power to disqualify a competitor who refuses to be bound by the rules. Even in this extreme situation the competitor concerned would be entitled to appeal to the Arbitration Panel.
This is very similar to the obligations of any other global sporting event authority, including the IOC, FIFA and the FIA.

The officials are not independent?
See Protocol clause 5.4
A: The Protocol contains rules to ensure fair sailing and from a sporting perspective the 33rd America’s Cup will be no different to the 32nd. The key is what happens on the water and during the sailing competition will be in the hands of experienced officials, with a record of integrity, accredited by the International Sailing Federation (ISAF). The Challenger of Record can object to any senior (those with decision making powers) appointment if they believe the person is not neutral and the Sailing Jury will determine whether the appointment is neutral or not.

Why does ACM need the right to change the competition regulations from ‘time to time’?
See Protocol clause17
A: ACM administered the 32nd America’s Cup, arguably the best America’s Cup of all time and it needs the appropriate authority to run the 33rd edition. This is no different to any other global high tech sport where the governing body has to provide regular interpretations and clarification of sporting and technical rules in a dynamic environment.
The Challenger of Record or the Defender can object to significant changes and ACM could refer the proposed change to the Arbitration Panel.

The new Competitor Commission has no voting powers?
See Protocol clause 10.1
A: The Defender and ACM need to be in consultation with the challengers to ensure the next event is as good as possible and therefore it made sense to be present within this forum.
It should be noted that the Challenger Commission had no voting rights last time affecting the competition, only the power to recommend. The same applies to the Competitor Commission this time.

The late publication of the new class rules will not give the teams enough time and will provide Alinghi with an unfair advantage?
A: We have been thinking about changing the class since 2003, as a matter of fact Russell Coutts was a strong advocate for a new class of boat for the 32nd America’s Cup. The design team is now back and working after the summer break in preparation for the six week consultation period which starts in mid September. This consultation will lead to the definition of the new class rule which will then be released on 31 October 2007, 18 months before the first pre-regatta in the new boats, and two months earlier than initially planned. In order to facilitate the work during the consultation period and to ensure the views of all competitors are represented an appropriate expert consultant will be appointed to oversee the process.

How will the new class rules lead to ‘close and exciting’ racing?
A: It provides for all competitors to start at the same level. It is our intention to limit the parameters of the ‘design box’ for the new class as this will assist in achieving our vision of state of the art boats and competitive racing befitting of the premier event in international sailing.

Alinghi will gain unfair advantage through competing in the Challenger Selection Series (CSS)?
Our philosophy to reduce cost and encourage competition is to return to the concept of a one boat campaign per team for the 33rd AC. This is the best solution to actively reduce the costs by avoiding having to hire two full crews and produce and maintain two fully rigged boats. However at the same time the Defender needs to be able to gauge and develop its relative performance and therefore needs to be included in the series. The other choice was for the Defender to two boat test from the start of the campaign, which is expensive and less attractive from an entertainment point of view.

Nailbiting showdowns in Qingdao

2007-08-24T20:44:00.000+01:00

Whatever has been said about the concept of the Medal Race - and it has taken plenty of stick over the past year - it threw up some incredibly nailbiting conclusions in the Olympic Test Regatta in Qingdao.

On the final day, Paul Goodison (photo courtesy of OnEdition) scored a lowly 7th out of 10 in the Laser Medal Race, just holding off the 8th placed boat by three seconds. Goodison clinched gold by a point - and those vital three seconds - from Sweden's Rasmus Myrgren.

On the previous day, Stevie Morrison and Ben Rhodes potentially through away their 49er gold medal when they hit the windward mark while lying in fourth. Taking a 360 penalty was the last thing they needed in 15 to 18 knots, and a washing machine chop driven by a wind-against-tide scenario. Fortunately that same washing machine chop was causing problems for a few of their rivals. Down the final run to the finish, the Brits took four places thanks to a few capsizes - although they had a full wobble on through their own final gybe - before crossing the line in 4th place. It was enough to give them gold, again by a single point from the Spanish reigning Olympic Champions, Iker Martinez and Xabi Fernandez.

Even Ben Ainslie had to rely on the misfortunes of others in the Finn finale. There were capsizes in that fleet too, not least Ivan Gaspic's final-gybe capsize just 200 metres from the finish. He could have won gold, but that capsize relegated the Croatian out of the medal zone altogether. He finished 4th overall.

It was a phenomenal performance by the Brits, even by their high standards. Five golds and one silver across 11 disciplines. Not too bad by the antipodeans either, with the Aussies scooping two golds, a silver and bronze; the Kiwis were third overall with one gold and two silvers. For the full medal table and a good wrap-up report, look at ISAF's website.

Handbags at dawn

2007-08-23T14:05:00.000+01:00

An undignified response from ACM today, after the Golden Gate Yacht Club's shot across their bows yesterday. Sometimes it really is better to say nothing.

Here's one to start with. Michel Bonnefous claims the protocol is not "an attempt to control everything", although we've been offered no evidence to the contrary.

Interesting that there is no mention of the yacht club of convenience, Club Náutico Español de Vela (CNEV), in ACM's response, despite the CNEV's questionable status as a bone fide yacht club being one of the central tenets of the Americans' objections. You would have thought ACM might have taken this opportunity to leap to the Challenger of Record's defence. Because they're going to have to do that when they go to the New York Supreme Court. I hope BMW Oracle's lawyers have forgotten about that Optimist regatta from a couple of months back. Very embarrassing.

Also, an intriguing choice of words by Brad Butterworth in his concluding sentence, suggesting that BMW Oracle's "underhand tactics... shows disregards for all the legitimate competitors." Legitimate competitors. Hmmmm... Does this mean ACM will be invoking Clause 4.4 of the Protocol? "Acceptance of Challenging Competitors: ACM may, at its sole and entire discretion, accept or reject any entry received."

This is all getting very nasty. Can someone - maybe Peter Reggio, now that he's completed his tour of duty in Qingdao - organise a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors (sponsored by Louis Vuitton, for old time's sake) between Larry and Ernesto? It would save an awful lot of lawyers' fees, not to mention the dirty laundry that will be aired in public once this case hits New York.

Here's the ACM response in full:

The Société Nautique de Genève, Alinghi and America’s Cup Management are very disappointed that BMW Oracle Racing, through the Golden Gate Yacht Club, has followed through with its threat and officially filed legal proceedings in the New York Courts.

“ACM in good faith has proposed a protocol intended to advance the sport of America’s Cup sailing. Far from being an attempt to control everything, the new protocol has been written to make the 33rd America’s Cup even better: a new class of boat which brings the technology to state-of-the-art, exciting racing and an even higher profile and more professional event which befits the premier competition in sailing,“ said Michel Bonnefous, President ACM. “Our vision is to make the America’s Cup in 2009 comparable with the best sporting events in the World. This vision is shared by many Challengers from around the world, four of whom have now formally entered the competition, with others about to do so.

“Larry Ellison is holding the Cup to ransom for competitive gain by attempting to disrupt the preparations of the teams from Switzerland, Spain, South Africa, Great Britain and New Zealand, as well as many others who have notified of their intention to enter the competition shortly.”

“Ellison lost on the water in 2003 and in 2007, failing to secure a match for the America’s Cup,” said Brad Butterworth, Skipper, Alinghi, “He is now pretending to be the good guy, representing the interests of all stakeholders, whereas in reality they have gone to court to force an earlier private match on their terms without the involvement of other competitors.”

“While their legal teams are busy destabilising the 33rd Cup and the preparations of the existing challengers, they are simultaneously snapping up sailors left, right and centre. These underhand tactics make it particularly hard for the smaller teams who rely on sponsorship, which is very hard to secure under these circumstances, and shows disregard for all the legitimate competitors.”

Brits & Aussies bag some breezy Pre-Olympic Medals

2007-08-22T22:47:00.000+01:00

After a week of little or no wind, Qingdao finally came good for the first set of Medal Races today. With the breeze blowing a thankfully uncharacteristic 15-17 knots, it was a great day for the Brits, and a pretty good one for the Aussies too.

Despite a poor Medal Race for Ben Ainslie, the reigning Olympic Champion picked up right where he left off exactly a year ago, defending his Pre-Olympic title with relative ease. Ainslie went into the final with an 11-point lead over Croatian Ivan Kljakovic Gaspic, but found himself way down the fleet when he recrossed the start line thinking he had jumped the gun.

The Croatian at one stage managed to get enough places between him and the Ainslie to wrest the overall lead away from the Brit, but was overtaken on the final downwind leg and then capsized 100 metres from the finish line to end all hopes of a coup. Ainslie finished the medal race in seventh place but it was enough to hand him the gold – his second in Qingdao in what is his first Olympic classes regatta since the 2006 Test Event last August.

“I did a pretty good job of losing it out there today!” Ainslie admitted. “I had a terrible start but luckily I was able to dig deep and get back a few places. With it being only my first race in the Finn in a year I wasn’t really sure what to expect coming here, but I’ve been very happy with my performance this week. I’m sailing pretty well right now, but still have a great deal of room for improvement.”

Stevie Morrison and Ben Rhodes added Pre-Olympic gold to their World and European titles, although like Ainslie they too made a pretty good attempt at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. The Exmouth duo were in eighth place and out of the medal positions when they rounded the windward mark for the final time in today’s medal race.

But on the final downwind leg they managed to pick up four places – with a little bit of help from several of their competitors who capsized – and finished the medal race in fourth place, which was enough to hand them the gold by one point, ahead of reigning Olympic Champions Iker Martinez and Xabi Fernandez.

“We had a rough day today – there was a lot of wind out there,” said Morrison. “Several teams capsized during the race, but we managed to hold on to take the overall lead. We’ve made a fair few mistakes in this competition, so are a little bit surprised that we came out on top, but it’s really great to have won back to back golds at major events, and hopefully this is a good sign ahead of the Olympics next year.”

Skandia Team GBR also grabbed gold in the Women's RS-X division, thanks to a superlative performance by Bryony Shaw, and it was silver in the Men's 470 for Nick Rogers and Joe Glanfield. So, three golds and one silver for the Brits, and two more Brits in pole position for their Medal Races tomorrow. Australia took gold in both Men's and Women's 470 classes, and silver in the Tornado and bronze in the Women's RS-X. Robert Scheidt and Bruno Prada surfed their way to victory in the Star class, earning a gold for Brazil.

No surprises in the Tornado, with light-wind experts and double Olympic Champions Roman Hagara and Hans-Peter Steinacher winning the cat class from Darren Bundock and Glenn Ashby. The Austrians will start as favourite for the Olympic title this time next year - IF they qualify for the Games. Finishing 20th in the recent windy Worlds in Cascais, they have yet to secure a spot in the Olympics for Austria. The Tornado Worlds in New Zealand early next year give them a final opportunity to qualify for Qingdao. It's unthinkable that they won't achieve that, but stranger things have happened at sea.

"Stop dragging your feet!" NY Court tells SNG

2007-08-22T22:13:00.000+01:00

The Golden Gate Yacht Club have moved a step closer towards getting the America's Cup dispute with Alinghi heard in court. Here is the GGYC statement in full.

The Supreme Court of the State of New York today granted an order sought by the Golden Gate Yacht Club (GGYC) requiring the Société Nautique de Genève (SNG) to promptly answer a request to speed up the legal process for resolving its proposed new rules for defending the next America’s Cup.

The San Francisco club sought the Court ruling alleging SNG is in serious breach of its fiduciary duty under the Deed of Gift that governs the Cup. It says SNG has accepted an invalid challenge from a sham yacht club, and is seeking to impose an unprecedented one-sided set of rules that hugely favor the defender to the detriment of all other competitors.

“We are very pleased with this ruling by the Court, because we believe the Cup will be irrevocably damaged if we don’t get SNG’s Protocol changed,” Tom Ehman, Head of External Affairs for BMW ORACLE Racing, the US club’s team, said.

“The new Protocol would give SNG’s team, Alinghi, radical new powers to control nearly all aspects of the event that are still unsupported by any explanation from SNG as to why they are needed,” he said.

Ehman said the syndicate whose challenge had been accepted by SNG, the Club Náutico Español de Vela (CNEV), was a shell organisation that had been formed only days prior to issuing a challenge and did not comply with the terms specified by the Deed of Gift.

“We would still prefer to negotiate a solution outside the court, but we see SNG as violating its responsibilities as Trustee, and we are fully prepared to go the legal distance if needed to stop the America’s Cup being subverted into a hopelessly one-sided event,” he said.

The Deed of Gift that protects the Cup as a perpetual sporting challenge is governed by a fiduciary trust established under New York law in 1887.

The GGYC court action also seeks a preliminary injunction to obtain critical information related to the club’s challenge under the Deed of Gift.

The American challenge is for a race next summer under the Deed’s 10-month rule. GGYC need to know where SNG intends to hold that competition and what the SNG sailing rules are. Under the Deed, the Swiss Defender is required to provide these important details to the Challenger.

GGYC filed a challenge on July 11th, and asserts that SNG must accept it. If successful in this motion, the GGYC case could be heard by the Courts as early as October 2007.

Epic Fastnet

2007-08-15T21:17:00.000+01:00

This Rolex Fastnet Race bears more resemblance to a Rolex Sydney Hobart than your average Fastnet. Broken boats, masts, sails and limbs have led to a high attrition rate, with almost 200 of the 271 starters having retired.

All epic stuff, and a far cry from the Fastnet of two years ago, when the fleet drifted around in Mediterranean conditions that barely topped 4 knots – until the Friday that is – when the small boats trickled into Plymouth on new breeze and a little 33-footer from France, Iromiguy, won the race on handicap.

It’s hard to see that happening this time. The big boats have had a dream run, and congratulations to Mike Slade and his rockstar crew on ICAP Leopard who smashed the course record. The 100-foot canting keeler completed the 608 mile course in just one day, 20 hours, 18 minutes and 53 seconds. Beating the previous record by an incredible eight hours and 50 minutes, ICAP Leopard crossed the finish line just before 9am this morning.

With Neville Crichton pulling Alfa Romeo out of the race on the first day, due to a torn mainsail, Neville’s going to have to stump up £5000 to the Ellen MacArthur Trust for losing his friendly wager with Mike. Well done to both owners for keeping a sense of humour and perspective over their high-level racing. Maybe Larry and Ernesto could settle their differences with a similar friendly wager? Chance would be a fine thing…

Meanwhile, behind the few fast boats which are safely arrived in Plymouth, the smaller yachts face a much tougher battle in the Celtic Sea, as the breeze has turned northerly against those yet to round the Fastnet Lighthouse. The best of Irish luck to all of them.

If there’s wind blowing in one part of the world, I suppose that means there has to be a lack somewhere else. Well, almost half a world away in Qingdao, China, there was a distinct lack of breeze. This is exactly the scenario that has been feared for the Olympic venue, although every day for the past week has been sailable, including one day where it blew 10 to 15 knots. So maybe it could come good for the Olympic Test Regatta. Let’s hope so.

The Finn, Tornado, 49er and the 470 men’s and women’s classes made it out to their respective race courses, but the Star and RS:X men’s and women’s fleets were confined to shore as race officials waited to see if the wind would eventually appear. In the end, only the Finns and 470 Women got a result.

We’ll have to wait another day to see how Ben Ainslie slots back into the Finn, a boat he hasn’t raced since winning this regatta exactly a year ago. “We waited out on the water for about three hours,” Ainslie explained. “I think the race officer wanted to see what would happen when the tide turned. It was the right decision to send us back in, so we’ll just have to hope and try again tomorrow.

“If nothing else, it was good to be able to get out and practice some more while we were waiting, so I don’t think today was a complete waste of time.”

In the 49ers, reigning Olympic Champions Iker Martinez and Xabi Fernandez won the only race of the day, while in the Women’s 470, Australia’s young team Elise Rechichi and Tessa Parkinson got the bullet ahead of three-time World Champions from Holland, Marcelien de Koning and Lobke Berkhout.

A bugger’s muddle

2007-07-30T19:17:00.000+01:00

Anything happen while I was away? Apologies for the lack of correspondence lately but I’ve been taking some post-Valencia holiday. I’ll really have to schedule my time better for the next Cup. After all, as we’ve discovered this time, when the side-show of the sailing has concluded you have at least another month of legalistic shenanigans and wheeling and dealing to get through.

This time, unfortunately, we’re looking at good deal longer than a month to unravel the mess created by the Protocol for the 33rd Cup. For a legal journalist this is probably about as exciting as it gets. For a sailing simpleton like me, this is all insufferably tedious. But it’s the America’s Cup, and it goes with the territory.

Ernesto Bertarelli and his gang came out shooting last week, taking pot shots at Larry Ellison’s plans to take the Defenders to the New York Supreme Court. As far as the Swiss billionaire is concerned, the matter should be dealt with in-house. “We have submitted this dispute, which is damaging to the entire sport, damaging to the America’s Cup, to our independent arbitration panel and we hope to have their resolution soon.”

Note the interesting choice of words there. “Our independent arbitration panel”. Oxymoron? Surely he meant to say “the independent arbitration panel”? There’s a big difference between the possessive “our” and the neutrality of “the”. Which perhaps says a lot about Alinghi’s sense of ownership of the Cup.

You can see why Larry has a problem with the Protocol, not least the Defender’s ability to appoint its own race officials. “No sports run officials like that,” said Larry. “Can you imagine Chelsea hiring the officials for the Manchester United game, but then also wanting the ability to change the rules at any time? It is the most bizarre Protocol we have ever seen.”

However, we have seen few – actually have we seen any? – public displays of support for Larry and the Golden Gate Yacht Club’s stance. The Americans claim they’ve had support from eight different challengers – and I could just about believe it. But public displays of support? None that I’m aware of. The Kiwis have been the latest to line up behind Alinghi, after Shosholoza and Team Origin. Apparently the Kiwis have been offered a sweetener of getting involved in helping Alinghi formulate the new design rule, giving them a vital few extra months of understanding of the new 90-footer rule before anyone else gets to see it. Richard Gladwell from Sail-World NZ has bagged a good interview with Dean Barker, which you’ll find here.

What of Alinghi’s announcement last week that each team will be permitted to build two race boats before the next Cup, but that teams will only be allowed to sail one at a time? Ernesto cited this as a cost saving exercise, which indeed it is, knocking a huge chunk off the wage bill if you can’t have two full sailing teams out race testing and training every day for two years.

Then again, it begs the question why Ernesto got in such a huff over Grant Dalton’s proposed nationality rule for the Cup had the Kiwis won it. Ernesto said way back in June: “If he was to win, that basically would put three-quarters of the people around this harbour out of work.” However, the new rules for the 33rd mean there is no need to have 34 sailors ready to man two boats. Now you’ll need just 20 or 21 to fill one of the new 90-foot beasts. So not everyone who was competing in 2007 is going to find room on board a boat in 2009.

Nevertheless, I like the one-sailing-team rule. The wage bill will be more affordable for the smaller teams. On the other hand - two boats to be built in less than 18 months? That’s definitely one for the big teams to enjoy.

Fellow blogger (and former America’s Cup navigator and electronics wizard) Mark Chisnell has an interesting analysis of this ‘two-boats-one-crew’ situation. He foresees a big step-up in instrumentation and telemetry programs to compensate for the lack of two-boat testing. In which case people like, well, er Mark Chisnell, will be in hot demand. Chizzy was too modest to put his own impressive CV forward on his blog, but no doubt his phone has already been ringing off the hook since Alinghi made their announcement last week.

Crikey! More than 500 words in, and I’ve neglected to mention a few other key facts, eg,

Venue: Valencia

Date: July 2009

Hooray to that. Great city, lovely people, and a two-year timescale. Full marks to Alinghi for time and location, and well done to the Spanish for securing the deal with a bargain basement price of just a sneeze over 100m Euro. Cheap at twice the price.

Oh yes, and the shock (not!) appointment of Russell Coutts to BMW Oracle Racing as, you guessed it, CEO of the whole shooting match. Now, Russell Coutts is not Chris Dickson, but you might have thought that for Larry it would be a case of once bitten, twice shy. Still, if you’re going to put that much power in one man’s hands, it might as well be Coutts. With Butterworth staying put as Alinghi skipper, this sets up an intriguing rivalry between these two great mates.

No one knows Coutts’s strengths better than his former tactician, so it will be interesting to see who gets the helmsman’s job this time at Alinghi. Who is best equipped to counter Coutts’s moves on the race course? My guess is that it will be an Australian. Either an old one – Peter Gilmour – whose latest victory in the Portugal leg of the World Match Race Tour suggests he’s still as good as any of the young guns. Or a young one – James Spithill – who negotiated with Alinghi last time but couldn’t reach an agreement over bringing his core of Aussie mates with him.

The day after winning the 32nd, when I asked Butterworth who else he rated from the last Cup, another name he singled out was Jes Gram Hansen from Mascalzone Latino. Perhaps the underrated Dane will get a call from Brad.

Wow, I’ve veered back on to sailing again! Hopefully that’s what the America’s Cup world will start talking about again soon. But I doubt it. There’s so much billionaire ego at stake now, it’s hard to see this going anywhere but the New York Supreme Court.

What a long-distant memory that one-second delta of the 32nd America’s Cup seems now. After Barker and Baird, now it’s the lawyers’ turn to enter the start box. It could be over quickly with an early penalty, but I fear a long and protracted dial-up.

It's a bugger's muddle. A field day for the lawyers, a disaster for the short-term health of the event. Longer term, this will become yet an other colourful chapter in the chequered history of the America’s Cup, but I can’t wait for it to be over so we can get back to the sailing.

Ainslie gets a wild card to China

2007-07-16T19:53:00.000+01:00

Ben Ainslie has been selected to represent Great Britain in the Finn class at the 2007 Olympic Test Event in Qingdao next month. This is effectively a wild card entry for the reigning Olympic Champion, who has barely set foot in a Finn since winning last year’s Test Event in China.

He’s had other things to do, what with being Dean Barker’s sparring partner and tune-up helm at Emirates Team NZ in Valencia. So Ainslie by his own confession is rusty. Indeed China last summer is the only time Ainslie has raced the Finn since winning the last of his four back-to-back Gold Cups in Moscow back in 2005.

This news will be disappointing but not altogether surprising for Ed Wright, who won last year’s European Championships, but has struggled to reproduce that form this season. He had a solid World Championship in Cascais last week, going into the Medal Race with a good chance of a medal and a shot at gold. However, he had a poor final race, finishing 8^th out of 10 and dropping to 6^th overall.

I didn’t get a chance to speak to Ed after that final race, but I did see Skandia Team GBR’s Olympic manager Stephen Park giving him a consoling pat on the back. Last week was Ed’s best chance to prove himself selectable ahead of Ben, but it didn’t work out for him. Ed is a mighty talented sailor but like Andrew 'Bart' Simpson four years ago, when Bart won a World bronze, Ed looks like another great athlete who was simply unfortunate to be born in the same era as one of the world's greatest Olympic sailors.

If Ben succeeds in repeating last year’s runaway victory in China, then that will probably be the Finn trials over, right there and then. If Ben finishes outside the medals, then the trials could continue, but it’s hard to envisage this happening.

Skandia Team GBR was on awesome form again, doing sufficient to qualify the nation in all 11 disciplines for next year’s limited entry Olympic Games, and finishing top nation in Cascais with a tally of two golds and four bronzes.

You get some idea of the team’s strength in depth when you consider that last year’s World Champions in the 49er and 470 Men’s classes will be going as tune-up for the British teams selected to race in China this year! 2004 bronze medallists Chris Draper and Simon Hiscocks had a sub-par Cascais regatta, finishing 9^th while Stevie Morrison and Ben Rhodes dominated this year’s Worlds to add that title to their European title earned at the end of last season. Meanwhile the 2006 World Champions in the 470, Nic Asher and Elliot Willis, go as training partners for 2004 silver medallists Nick Rogers and Joe Glanfield.

Sarah Ayton’s Yngling team, which won the Worlds last week, is going to China while Shirley Robertson’s crew is not down on the list as tune-up.

Here is the full list of Skandia Team GBR representatives for the Test Regatta:

Finn
Ben Ainslie
(tune-up/reserve boat – Ed Wright)

49er
Stevie Morrison & Ben Rhodes
(tune-up/reserve boat – Chris Draper & Simon Hiscocks)

Star
Iain Percy & Andrew Simpson

Laser Radial
Charlotte Dobson
(tune-up/reserve boat – Penny Clark)

Laser
Paul Goodison
(tune-up/reserve boat – Nick Thompson)

RS:X Men
Nick Dempsey
(tune-up/reserve boat – Leo McCallin)

RS:X Women
Bryony Shaw
(tune-up/reserve boat – Lucy Horwood)

470 Men
Nick Rogers & Joe Glanfield
(tune-up/reserve boat – Nic Asher & Elliot Willis)

470 Women
Christina Bassadone & Saskia Clark

Yngling
Sarah Ayton, Sarah Webb & Pippa Wilson

Tornado
Leigh McMillan & Will Howden
(tune-up/reserve boat – Andrew Walsh & Ed Barney)

GBR 75 tunes up against America

2007-07-16T16:20:00.001+01:00

GBR 75 went sailing for the first time on Saturday, and did some speed testing against a replica of the winner of the first America's Cup, the schooner America. Thankfully GBR 75 was a fair click quicker...

Thanks to ACM photo editor Carmen Hidalgo/ACM 2007 for her photos (captioned). All others non-captioned are from Carlo Borlenghi/ACM 2007, thanks too to him.

Mike Sanderson was there to oversee the test sail for the two days before the boat gets packed up and sent to the UK. There was a mix of sailors/support people onboard to assist with the test sail.

Now that Alinghi has announced a new 90-footer for the 33rd Cup, Hull 75 isn't perhaps quite such a sweet purchase for Sir Keith Mills' team as we originally thought. But every team has to start somewhere, and '75' will at least give the Brits some insight into the exquisite structural engineering that Dirk Kramers and his team at Alinghi put into Rolf Vrolijk's design.

It must be somewhat demotivating, however, to know that the yacht you've just bought will bear no resemblance to the new yachts that we have yet to learn more details of. It was hard to find a sailor in Valencia who would be openly critical of the state of limbo that the Cup currently finds itself in, but privately a number of sailors and designers have voiced their frustration at the lack of detail about the 33rd Cup.

Apparently, if the venue is to be Valencia again, then we'll know this to be the case by the end of July. Otherwise we could be in for a long wait while ACM weighs up bids from other competing cities in Europe. Hopefully the decision will come sooner than later, otherwise all the momentum built up from the great show of the 32nd Cup will be lost.

With the Golden Gate Yacht Club's counter-challenge last week to mock yot club, Club Nautico Espanol de Vela, followed closely by the sad confirmation of Louis Vuitton's long-rumoured withdrawal as the event's chief sponsor, these are uncertain times for the future of the Cup.

That’s not a Challenge. This is a Challenge. In 90-ft Multihulls!

2007-07-12T19:17:00.000+01:00

The Golden Gate Yacht Club has counter challenged the Spanish Challenge of Record, claiming the Club Nautico Espanol de Vela’s challenge to Alinghi is illegal.

I don’t know if the Spanish challenge is illegal or not – I’ll leave that argument to the laywers - but it was certainly spineless. By accepting the one-sided Protocol laid down by Alinghi last week, Desafio Espanol has effectively admitted that it has no real desire to win the 33rd America’s Cup. It is merely happy to be a participant, whilst handing Alinghi the tools for a 5-0 whitewash.

The Spanish team is to be applauded for having reached the Semi Finals of the recent Louis Vuitton Cup, but it appears that is the limit of its competitive instincts. In its desire to keep the Cup in Valencia it seems Desafio Espanol was prepared to sign almost anything that Alinghi demanded. The Spanish have sold the challengers down the river.

Today, BMW Oracle’s home club in San Francisco, the Golden Gate Yacht Club, sent its counter-challenge to the Societe Nautique de Geneve. The GGYC commodore Marcus Young wrote: “We respectfully submit that the challenge is invalid. Among other deficiencies, it is not from a bone fide yacht club, but from an entity organized in the form of a yacht club only a few days before the challenge was accepted by SNG and which has never had an annual regatta on an open water course on the sea or an arm of the sea as required by the Deed of Gift.

“It is also apparent that this ‘Challenger of Record’ has not performed any of the duties of the Challenger as contemplated by the Deed of Gift, but has simply delegated to the Defender the authority to determine all of the ‘conditions’ governing the match. This undermines the fundamental purpose of the Deed of Gift to preserve this competition as a Challenge Cup.”

And here’s the fun part.

The dates: “We name 4 July 2008 as the date of the first race, 6 July 2008 and 8 July 2008 as the dates for the second and, if necessary, third races.”

And here are the vital statistics for the boat:

Rig: single-masted, sloop-rigged

Dimensions:

Length on Load Waterline – 90 feet

Beam at Load Waterline – 90 feet

Extreme Beam – 90 feet

Draught of water (hull draft) – 3 feet

Draught of water (boards down) – 20 feet

So, a 90-foot catamaran perhaps, or a 90-foot trimaran, or what about a 90-foot skiff with trapeze wings spanning 90-feet from side to side? To be held somewhere in the northern hemisphere in just less than a year.

Plainly the proposal is ludicrous, but in so doing the GGYC has highlighted just how ludicrous some elements of the original Protocol document are. Take, for example, the fact that the Defender has granted itself the right to compete in every stage of the Challenger series, with the exception of the finals. Oh right, OK, so with the one-boat rule that is being mooted, that would mean the challengers’ boats are committed to three months of hard racing, with no opportunity for testing or development. Meanwhile the Defender is free to compete for a few races, assess relative speed against the challengers, then withdraw for a spot of chainsaw surgery and then enter a later stage of the Challenger series a couple of weeks further down the line. Rinse and repeat until boat is faster. How very convenient.

The Club Nautico Espanol de Vela was quick to issue a rebuttal to the GGYC’s shot across their bow, protesting the validity of the original challenge, and assuring everyone that the Protocol guarantees a fair fight for one and all. With thanks to James Boyd’s translation of the original Spanish text on The Daily Sail: “We want to emphasise that the spirit which has presided over the negotiations with the Defender on the part of the CNEV has been one to create a transparent competition that is right and equitable for all the participants and for which joint instruments of management have been created which we hope contribute to a greater agility and effectiveness in the development of the next event.”

Phew, that’s a relief. Back to your beds and rest easy. The Spanish have got it under control. “Thanks for your concern, GGYC, but we’ll take it from here.”

90 Footers for the 33rd Cup

2007-07-05T15:58:00.000+01:00

So, the rumour was true! New boats after all: 90 feet long, lifting keels to get in and out of harbour, 20-ish crew, designed to a box rule and possibly limited to one boat per team.

Plenty more was said, but few facts came out of today’s announcement. It will be in Europe, possibly but not necessarily in Valencia, 2009 if Valencia, 2010 or 2011 if elsewhere in Europe. And Alinghi can choose to take part in the Challenger Series all the way up to – and including – the Semi Finals! Cheeky, but it seems Club Nautico Espanol de Vela were prepared to sign almost anything to secure the privilege of becoming the new Challenger of Record.

At the Challenger of Record press conference at the Desafio Espanol base, one journalist asked the Challenger’s representative lawyer if he had signed a blank piece of paper. His response: “I’m a prestigious lawyer. I’m nobody’s puppet!” Methinks he doth protest too much!

Anyway, more of the Protocol another time. On to the boats, although even here the details are sketchy. Brad Butterworth gave his reasons for a new class in the Cup. “Everybody seems to want a new boat that is bigger, more exciting, difficult to sail, and faster, which is the emphasis behind it. So now we have to come up with a rule for it, and that will need a bit of hard work.

“I think that the timing of the event has got to meet those requirements, so the rule can come out with enough time and everybody can start designing and getting their tools, and designing and building the boat. It will probably take about 20,000 man hours to build a ninety-footer - it all takes it’s time. That is why the window of when the event is has to be a bit flexible, from the sailing point of view.”

Brad said he had enjoyed the ACC boats, but that it was time to move on to “something more exciting. These boats have been fantastic but I think they have got to the end of their life and people are looking for something that is a little bit bigger, a bit more difficult and more exciting. The guys and designers feel they have had their run with these boats and the class rule and they are looking for something else to stimulate them and part of that is to go with a new boat.”

However, he ruled out the possibility of a canting keel, opting instead for a lifting keel. “The canting keel is a difficult option. We can do it a little bit better with this sliding concept; it is not better, just different. In the end the boats will be bigger, faster, and harder to sail – 90 footers that won’t have hydraulic, electric run winches. The guys will have to be athletic [he said with a grin that betrayed just a hint of self-mockery]. They will be tough boats to sail. We haven’t written the class rule yet; it will be put together and published over the next couple of months.”

The perception is that a new class plays into the hands of the richer teams. Just as Brad is fond of saying: “The America’s Cup is a design race.” On this occasion, no one will disagree with him, although he sees it as levelling the playfield. “I think any of the good teams will take it on. They all have good designers and people. I don’t think the rich will get richer; it will be tough for some to catch up if we limit it to this class.

“I think the rule will be reasonably tight, like a box rule, but obviously this rule is pretty complicated. It would be nice to open it up a little bit more. It will be encouraged to come up with new innovative ideas. This is a design contest - a technology race. I think that’s the way the Cup has always been, and we are going to keep it that way.”

Bigger boats for the 33rd? Surely not

2007-07-04T18:53:00.000+01:00

Now we’re into the intriguing limbo between the 32^nd

America

’s Cup, which concluded yesterday, and the 33^rd which begins tomorrow with the press conference where hopefully we get to find out things like where and when.

Most people are betting on Valencia 2009, but there’s another rumour in circulation that Alinghi have gone for a change of boats, that the next one might be contested in 100-footers. Speaking to Brad Butterworth today, he was certainly in favour of a change. He reckons that the predominantly light Mediterranean conditions call for something more powerful and dynamic.

Having said that, there has been no better advertisement for the ACC class than what we’ve seen over the past week. Would faster boats have produced such compelling match racing? It’s hard to imagine, so much as I’ve been an advocate of faster boats in the past, I have to admit I’ve been swayed by the appeal of slower boats.

Nothing in the Louis Vuitton Cup convinced me of the merit of these Version 5 boats in producing close racing on a consistent basis, but once we saw two evenly matched teams in The Match, these boats finally lived up to their promise of producing close contests.

However, if Brad thinks faster would be better (and by the way so does his best mate Russell), then that’s good enough for me. I will be amazed if we get a change of boats for the 33^rd, though. I think the stronger imperative right now is to have a fast follow-up to the Cup just gone, and that Valencia 2009 is the bigger priority.

A two-year timeline with the added expense and complication of a new class seems highly unlikely. And would be rather irksome for the Germans who are already well into construction of GER 101!

Bertarelli still alive - and kicking

2007-07-03T20:05:00.000+01:00

Bizarrely, there was no joint press conference for winner and loser today. Just the winners - Alinghi. I wonder why. Perhaps there was a clue in Ernesto Bertarelli’s final comment in the winner’s conference this afternoon.

“For us it was coming out alive or dead, and we came out of it alive with our leather shorts and our edelweiss, cuckoo clocks and chocolate factories. I think what Alinghi is a lot of what Switzerland is: a country in the middle of Europe which has had to survive; has had to deal with with its bigger neighbours; has had to be open to different cultures; three different cultures; welcomes foreigners who have contributed to the country and to its culture; a country that looks forward, to its technology, doesn’t have great natural resources, has to be inventive.

“I think the culture of Alinghi is a little like that. An open culture, friendly culture, very welcoming, bigger through diversity, and we certainly enjoy being able to meet and compete against people from different backgrounds and we would never lock anyone out of this competition. I never thought when we started, that we would be locked out of it. When I said that we were fighting for our survival, I didn’t know how right I was, and here we are. Alive and kicking. And I’m looking forward to continue.”

So, no love lost for the Kiwis there, then. In a half hour’s press conference, there was no praise for the losing team forthcoming from Alinghi’s representatives on stage - until TV journo Digby Fox prompted Ed Baird to give his appraisal of the Kiwi team. When Ed picked up his microphone, he looked like he’d been handed the poisoned chalice. “Well… I was going to pass that on to Brad because he has a lot more history there. I was part of the team in ‘95 when Brad was there as well. It’s been amazing to watch the team grow and develop.

“Certainly the team that’s now is substantially changed from that original group, but they’re showing great strength and prowess on the race course. They developed good skills in every area to a very high level, and we’re really proud to finish in front of them at this regatta. I’d like to congratulate them for really doing a great job. It’s not an easy event, there’s a lot of stress involved. At any moment disaster can strike. I think we’ve had two great competitors out there all week.”

So, some credit - after all - to the Kiwis. Because we didn’t get a chance to speak to ETNZ today, the media had to fall back on press releases and TV interviews for the Kiwi viewpoint. Here’s Grant Dalton. “All credit to Alinghi. They kept it close when we got past them on the first run they just kept on sailing the way they do and beat us fair and square in the end. I don’t think the margin today really matters. They still won it.” Magnanimous to the end, although whether he’s saying the same about Alinghi behind closed doors is another matter.

Here’s Terry Hutchinson’s review of his own team and the winners. “An unbelievable team effort. Dalts did a spectacular job. It was nice to be involved with a team that has the amount of character and heart that our team has. Deano did good work. It was good to be a part of a team that was defeated in the manner that they were to come and fight like we did. And it’s nice to be included in that and have some of the influence in that, and partake in the whole thing.

“Every now and then you need a couple of breaks to go our way, and in the last couple of races not one really ever went our way, which is a sign of the fact that Alinghi were doing a good job and going well. You can’t say enough about the calibre of that team. Hats off to them.”

Left is a long way round

2007-07-03T19:11:00.000+01:00

The leeward gate was a new feature of the

America

’s Cup. It proved the undoing of Emirates Team New Zealand. Today the Kiwis repeated the error from the previous race in choosing the left-hand gate and allowing Alinghi to take the right.

Although there were many key moments in the most epic race in

America

’s Cup history, it was this seemingly innocuous part of the course which would later lead to that dial-down and subsequent penalty against the Kiwis.

“The one that will haunt me until at least the next America’s Cup is the bottom gate,” Terry Hutchinson admitted. “We came into the bottom on a 138-135 wind direction. So we chose the left gate for the bias and a clean rounding, picked a nice pressure lane, the shift went our way, breeze went back a little right, and yet again they had a little piece of us.”

Brad Butterworth saw an opportunity and grabbed it, just as he had done in Race 6. “TNZ did a great job of pushing down [on the run]. Then they chose again to take the right-hand mark looking down. We did a nice job of delaying our choice until the end. It’s a big deal going round the right-hand mark, having to come round and tack without starboard rights.”

When ETNZ engaged Alinghi in a tacking duel, they were more than a boatlength ahead. At every engagement, however, the Swiss were tacking better and gaining a few metres. Eventually Hutchinson was forced to disengage and try to boatspeed around the left side of his opponent. It wasn’t enough. When Barker tacked on the layline he spun the wheel deep into a dial-down. They failed to keep clear of Alinghi and were given a penalty from which they would never recover.

Or would they? With gear failure on Alinghi’s spinnaker pole combined with a sudden windshift and drop in pressure, ETNZ nearly achieved the impossible, sweeping past Alinghi and completing their penalty oh so close to the finish line. Alinghi limped past to leeward, no one knew who’d won until the blue flag went aloft on the committee boat. It was Alinghi. By 1 second.

The 5-2 score does no justice to how tight this contest was throughout. As Grant Simmer said after Race 6, this America’s Cup was a battle of metres. Today it was a battle of millimetres.

Stay of Execution

2007-07-01T17:28:00.000+01:00

Grant Dalton didn’t manage to get the 50^th birthday present he would have wished for, after dodgy breeze put paid to hopes of contesting Race 7 this afternoon. Of course the alternative (Alinghi) viewpoint is that today’s postponement is merely a stay of execution for the Kiwis, as the Defender needs just one more victory to seal the deal.

Of course, winning three races on the trot is not insurmountable for ETNZ. Alinghi’s design coordinator Grant Simmer was part of the Australia II team which bounced back from 3-1 down to win the 1983 Cup, as Matt Mason reminded his team mates after yesterday’s morale-sapping loss. Ironically Simmer is one of those trying to prevent history repeating itself.

When asked whether he was surprised about how close NZL 92 and SUI 100 (pictured above in Race 5) were in performance, Simmer answered: “Obviously you always hope for a strong speed advantage. We’re quite happy with the performance of 100, but we weren’t so brash as to believe that boatspeed would win this event.

“The whole way since the last Cup while we’ve been racing the Acts, the teams have been learning together, learning and feeding off each other. That was always going to a lead to a contest that would be very close.”

Whatever Alinghi might say, I think the Defender has found it a bit of shock to find SUI 100 so evenly matched, but Simmer made the point that even a tiny edge could be the difference in this Cup. “This now is a contest of metres, metres to get you in a position where you can get a strong lee bow, or metres where you can get just across the other boat. It’s so close now, where every couple of metres you can gain up the race course is going to be significant.”

That’s what we saw in Race 6 when, even though the lead change took place on the second windward leg, it was SUI 100’s slight downwind speed edge that put Alinghi in position to secure the win.

Match Point to Alinghi

2007-06-30T19:11:00.001+01:00

So Brad, do you still think the America’s Cup is a design race? No one asked Brad Butterworth the question today, because we know what the answer would have been – an exasperated, how-many-more-times-do-I-have-to-say-“Yes!”

After today’s race, I have to admit that I think Brad is right after all. In today’s 7 to 10 knot breezes, on the downwind legs SUI 100 was just plain faster. There was nothing in it upwind, but on the first run Alinghi kept on sliding up behind NZL 92, and once they had pulled in front on the final beat, on the second run they just kept on sliding further away from the Kiwis to the finish.

In today’s conditions, the only weapon in New Zealand’s downwind armoury was superior gybing technique, with the Kiwi ‘inside gybe’ taking about 10 metres off every Swiss ‘outside gybe’. So down the last run Terry Hutchinson kept on trying to engage Butterworth in a gybing duel. After a while, Alinghi refused to play that game and allowed some big splits to open up. It very nearly opened the door to the Kiwis just before the finish, as they closed to within two boatlengths. However, one last roll-of-the-dice split went against the Kiwis as Alinghi came home 28 seconds ahead.

It was hard to fault either sailing team today. In yet another aggressive pre-start, both helmsmen achieved their teams’ objectives – thanks to the fact that ETNZ wanted the left and Alinghi wanted the right. The Kiwi weather team and afterguard won the battle of the first beat, their call for the left proving the winning solution. But the Alinghi afterguard made the better call for the second beat, choosing the right-hand gate and hooking into some better breeze far on the right-hand side.

The Kiwi mastman Matt Mason commented: “On the first run we thought they would pay for going to the right mark and we were laying pretty nicely into the left hand one, so we were happy to go there. We got back on to port and looked just fine the whole way across. There was a lot of what we call rubber banding, as we say, the breeze coming and going.

“We were comfortable until right at the end they got a little flick of right and came back and they were right back in the game. We wanted to send them out to that lay line, but the first time they came back they’d made a little gain and we couldn’t make our lee bow tack stick and that was pretty much it right there.”

Both teams are sailing at the top of their game right now, their sailing styles are becoming more similar as the regatta develops, but boatspeed was a critical factor to Alinghi’s success today. Design is still a big part of the America’s Cup – to that extent Brad Butterworth is certainly correct in his insistence about this – but more than anything this Cup is being decided on good old seat-of-the-pants racing skills. And that’s exactly as it should be. Just when you think you’ve seen all the excitement that you’re going to get from the 32nd America’s Cup, up pops another great race.

After some very one-sided contests in the latter stages of the LV Cup, now we’re finally seeing the benefits of the Version 5 rule changes and the series of Acts over the past three years. Full credit to ACM and Alinghi for setting the stage for such a thrilling showdown.

However, most neutrals in Valencia are rooting for the Kiwis simply because we don’t want the action to end – and also because they’ve taken their setbacks with good grace while Alinghi have had the whiff of sour grapes when things have gone against them.

After today’s match, Alinghi’s confidence will have gone up a notch. The Kiwis are talking a good game, but I don’t think they can take three straight matches off Alinghi. Possibly one, but not more. Anyway, I’m sure they’re not listening to me or anyone else who doesn’t share their enormous reserves of self-belief. Much better that they pay attention to Matt Mason’s words just as they crossed the finish line today. “I just said to the boys, Australia II were 3-1 down in Newport and we all know what happened there. So we’re not going to lie down. Far from it.”

Bloodied but Unbowed

2007-06-29T19:30:00.001+01:00

Today SUI 100 won a race in classic Valencian sea breeze conditions, a steady 14-17 knots, the exact conditions in which Alinghi had been predicted to be unstoppable. So all the pre-series hype about Alinghi having a massive speed edge is true then? Er, not quite. They won alright, but not for the reasons you might have thought.

We expected Dean Barker to make the most of the pre-start to try and rough up the Swiss before SUI 100 romped away up the race course.

Well, Barker certainly roughed them up alright, but in the ensuing drag race out to the right-hand side, there was little to nothing in it.

Heading into the start box from the right, Barker looked like he was taking Ed Baird into a conventional dial-up. Suddenly he spun the wheel to leeward and put NZL 92 to leeward and to port of the surprised Swiss. “Oh boy! He’s just done an Eddie-Baby to Eddie!” yelled AC race commentator Geordie Shaver. Barker had just pulled off a manoeuvre on the helmsman whose trademark is that very manoeuvre.

From there Barker chased Alinghi across the top of the start line and past the media boat, with Baird seeking shelter in the massed spectator fleet (see photo). The escape worked – to an extent – but the Kiwis still led back to the line, bouncing Alinghi away on to port just before the start.

The Kiwis accelerated, sailed a few lengths, then tacked up on the windward hip of Alinghi, using about a boatlength’s advantage to control the race. But then in a matter of seconds SUI 100 leapt forward, eradicating the Kiwi advantage in no time flat. “Here it comes,” was the feeling on the media boat, as SUI 100 rumbled forward ominously underneath NZL 92. But wait! The Kiwis were holding them. Indeed they held them all the way out to the layline, with the help of a small left-hand shift, and led Alinghi by 12 seconds at the windward mark.

It all went badly wrong for the Kiwis down the next leg, with one slightly ripped spinnaker exploding just seconds before the foredeck crew were ready with the replacement. Grant Dalton took the blow on the chin. “We have always emphasised reliability as an essential element of our campaign. Today that small tear in the spinnaker cost us the race. We had a little nick in the spinnaker which must have been a result of hoisting it. Just as we went to do a standard peel it blew out so that was the first problem. Then we starting hoisting but I don't think we had the tack on so we ended up with no spinnaker. That was a mistake.”

Once Alinghi swept past and into the lead, they never looked likely to relinquish it, although the Kiwis reduced the deficit from 28 seconds at the bottom gate to just 19 seconds by the finish. Ernesto Bertarelli admitted he’d been fortunate to win that one: “Yes, we were a little lucky there. But even if you rip a spinnaker it is because something has gone wrong. I don’t think it was ripped when they put it in the bag this morning. This race was won on the work on the foredeck. The guys did fantastic manoeuvres and we were being really careful to not overstep the line.”

One of the fun moments of the press conferences in recent days has been to ask Brad Butterworth, “So Brad, do you still think the America’s Cup is a design race?” The last time he was asked, a couple of days ago, he answered: “For the last time. Yes!”

Today, however, with no Butterworth present, it was trimmer Simon Daubney’s turn to put the Alinghi point of view. Surely they had expected to be faster than the Kiwis in today’s conditions? Apparently not. “We weren’t expecting to go out there in over 12 knots and blow their doors off. We knew that the ETNZ boat was a good all-round boat, and I don’t feel disappointed because I have always expected it to be a very close contest between two very fast boats. There is a narrowing of the advantage line all round… It doesn’t surprise us that the boats are pretty even.”

When I asked Dalton if he was relieved to discover that his boat was the match of the Swiss, he replied: “We never today thought for a second that we’d be at a disadvantage pace-wise, but even if you were – and you believed you were – frankly you’d be in trouble. So it’s the size of the dog in the fight, or the fight in the dog, whichever way round it is, you know? Emirates Team New Zealand is a team that can hang tough.”

Today, with the first big sea breeze conditions of the regatta, was expected to be a defining moment. It wasn’t. The Alinghi boat is not the rocketship that we had thought, and nor was the Kiwis’ crew work as flawless as we had believed. The 32^nd America’s Cup is still full of twists and turns. With the score at 3-2, I’m still none the wiser as to who’s going to win this one. And anyone who thinks they do know the answer, is an eejit.

A Tale of Two Grants - One Grimacing, One Grinning

2007-06-28T17:35:00.000+01:00

I hope you like today’s piece of art contributed by an anonymous SailJuice fan. Today the high rollers from Las Vegas were on tenterhooks, hoping that the protest against them amounted to nothing.

Grant Simmer was simmering, not to say seething, when he walked out of the jury room after today’s mammoth hearing over what appeared a pretty trivial matter. Alinghi had won the protest, the Kiwis lost it, but to judge by the looks on the faces of Grant S and his grinning rival Grant D, you could have been forgiven for thinking the decision had gone the other way.

The Kiwis might have lost the protest, but they had tied up three of Alinghi’s sailors for more than five hours of soporific toing and froing between the two sides, while Dean Barker was sitting up at the swanky Foredeck Club just a hundred metres away, enjoying a couple of glasses of wine with his luncheon. So it was protest lost, but job done, as far as the Kiwis were concerned.

It all centred around some TV footage of Alinghi bowman Pete Van Niewenhuyzen who was raised to the top of the mast to fix a halyard after SUI 100 crossed the finish line yesterday. The Kiwis filed the protest after watching TV footage of one of the customary post-race measurement checks. The measurers asked both teams to lower their mainsails, without the assistance of a man aloft, to demonstrate compliance with ACC Rule 31.6.

The Kiwis lowered the mainsail without a man aloft, to the satisfaction of the measurers. The Alinghi team asked the measurer who had boarded SUI 100 if they could raise a man up the mast to fix a halyard (which wouldn’t be put under tension) to the mainsail, for safety reasons, to prevent the sail from being damaged if it came down uncontrollably. The measurer on board agreed to this request.

However, one interpretation of the TV footage of Van Niewenhuyzen could be that he gave the head of the mainsail a good kick just as the halyard lock was being released. A more charitable interpretation would be that in the rolling seaway the bowman was being thrown around, and that he was simply flung into the mainsail.

Clearly at least one member of Bryan Willis’s Jury was dissatisfied with the outcome, as the protest was dismissed by a majority – not a unanimous – decision. “This is not a clear cut case,” Grant Dalton said. “The fact that the Jury did not reach a unanimous decision points to that.”

The Jury left it to the discretion of the Measurement Committee to take “appropriate steps to satisfy itself” that yachts are in accordance with the Class Rule. “That means the Committee can have another look, if it chooses, at what we all saw on the television coverage yesterday,” said Dalts, the sly old fox.

Today was a huge distraction for Alinghi, who appeared to rise to the bait, but tomorrow’s forecast for a strong, steady sea breeze gives the Defender an excellent opportunity for revenge – provided SUI 100 proves as unstoppable as the hype around this boat.

Baird and Bilger back on form

2007-06-27T19:31:00.000+01:00

Ed Baird answered his many critics with a peach of a start today, defending the right and winding SUI 100 up to speed, bang on the line and pointing high as the gun fired. Dean Barker and the Kiwis were happy to take the left, based on the weather call from ‘Clouds’ Badham that a shift was coming from that side. However NZL 92 was just a touch off the line at start time, and Baird did a good job of living on the hip of the Kiwis.

The gain line swung back and forward but never quite turned in Kiwi favour. That half-boatlength advantage off the start line stood the Swiss in good stead, and that left-hand shift just wasn’t coming. Alinghi dragged the match all the way out to the port layline. Terry Hutchinson commented: The way the breeze was off the start line, we didn’t see it staying right so long, and it only came left with a minute to the lay line. That was frustrating.”

Strategist Murray Jones painted the picture from the Defender’s perspective: “We got a last minute call from Jon Bilger, our weather man, to take the right and Ed did a fantastic job in the pre-start, so we got a beautiful start to the right of Emirates Team New Zealand. We eventually managed to get better boatspeed and that was really the race won as we managed to hold all the way out to the layline and capitalise on that.”

So Ed Baird redeemed himself after a good start, and Jon Bilger made up for yesterday’s oversight when the Kiwis hooked into that big right-hander up the first beat of the epic Race 3. Ed was even allowed to make a media appearance (his first for weeks) at the Alinghi base press conference. Having won today’s race by 30 seconds and levelling the series at 2-2, the Alinghi helm was asked who had the momentum now: “One of the interesting things about momentum is that it is usually viewed very differently from the outside than it is experienced from the inside. I think what we are trying to do is put ourselves in a position to win every race and so far we are doing that. A couple of things haven’t gone our way but all we can do is to keep trying.”

After being strangely quiet about his helmsman over the past few days, Brad Butterworth was full of praise today: “I think Ed has been sailing the boat very well and you can’t ask for anything else. He has done all that has been asked of him, upwind and downwind he was pretty happy. He has been having a pretty good time, and hasn’t won all the races but for no weakness of his. I think he is going to get stronger as the regatta goes on.”

Today’s victory was certainly an important morale booster for the team, and a momentum blocker for the Kiwis. However, ETNZ have put a flea in Alinghi’s ear with a protest due to be heard tomorrow morning over whether or not the Defender is capable of lowering the Alinghi mainsail without sending a man up the rig. Alinghi were asked to demonstrate this after the race following a spot check by the measurement committee.

Alinghi weather spotter Murray Jones explained: “They elected to do a random measurement check on our boat today. One was to ensure that the mainsail can release off the main halyard lock without any assistance. So with the big waves we asked the guy whether we could put the halyard on loosely so the whole thing didn’t fall down and break battens and damage stuff when you actually do release it. So we tripped it off and that was that.”

All of which sounds fair enough, but have ETNZ spotted something that the measurers missed, or are they just trying to ruin their opponents’ day of rest? Could be some mind games going on here. Despite today’s loss, the Kiwis are feeling increasingly bullish about their prospects. Terry Hutchinson, on being asked if he agreed with Butterworth’s assessment of race 3 as being akin to a lottery, fired back: “No! He loses a race because of spectators and because of windshifts. That would be like me saying we lost the race today because the wind went right.”

Clearly, Hutchinson and his team mates draw strength from Alinghi’s extraordinary reaction yesterday. “It probably tells you they’re bunched.” Bunched? “Tense, nervous, high anxiety, all those things. They are the Defender and they have a lot to lose. Anything that helps put the pressure on them – happy to have it on them.”

“I think they’d probably prefer a 14 knot regatta with small shifts. That plays to their strengths.” Unfortunately for Hutchinson, that is more or less what the weather forecasters are predicting for the next two races scheduled on Friday and Saturday. Valencia may be returning to conditions closer to what Ernesto Bertarelli had in mind when he selected the venue, and when Rolf Vrolijk designed SUI 100, so hard questions will be asked of the Kiwis in the coming days.

Viva Las Vegas!

2007-06-26T21:19:00.001+01:00

Call it a lottery, call it tiddlywinks, call it Las Vegas, Race 3 of the 32nd America’s Cup was one of the all time greats. With the wind blowing 7 to 9 knots in an enormous swell, and the breeze shifting through 20 degrees or more, this was a hair-raising rollercoaster ride in slow motion.

We witnessed another great pre-start, with Ed Baird getting the better of Dean Barker on this occasion – or did he? On the face of it, bouncing the Kiwis into a tack with just 10 seconds to the start, while SUI 100 launched off the line at speed – 8 seconds ahead – looked like an early victory to the Swiss.

But a few minutes later it became apparent that Barker had been prepared to bet his shirt on winning the right. When NZL 92 hooked into a 20-degree right-hand shift with a knot more pressure, the Kiwis were launched. Barker’s start didn’t look so silly after all.

However, it was a big right-hand shift that also proved the Kiwis’ undoing as they approached the leeward gate still well in the lead. What was meant to be a ‘one-and-in’ to the right-hand mark suddenly became a downspeed drift. When Richard Meacham briefly fell overboard, it only exacerbated the problem, and in the moments of crisis the spinnaker got caught up in the jib sheeting system.

Alinghi rounded behind the same mark and sailed up the inside of the wounded Kiwi boat. I won’t go into the nitty gritty of the next leg, but we saw some spectacular match racing moves, particularly from Alinghi who converted a 1:02 deficit at the bottom to a 15 second lead at the top.

On the run to the finish SUI 100 was looking faster downhill, but Brad Butterworth seemed happy to let the Kiwis to break to the right while Murray Jones up the rig put his faith in the left. With more than a kilometre of lateral separation, this was high-stakes dice-rolling. However it was Adam Beashel’s faith in the right that paid off as the Kiwis crossed the finish line 25 seconds ahead of Alinghi. What a race!

And what reactions afterwards.

I’ll start with the less surprising one first, from Adam Beashel who gave the Kiwi reaction to racing in conditions that were perhaps not ideal but which contributed to one of the greatest races in 156 years of the Cup. “Thanks to the race committee for getting the race underway - as we would have hoped for them to get a race underway today. There was enough breeze to go most of the time, and it was shifting around a lot.”

Compare and contrast with the Alinghi response.

First from pitman Dean Phipps: “We have worked for four years towards having an even boat race, and you could have played tiddlywinks today and had the same result. Just tossed the coin. Should have stayed ashore, I guess.”

Next from trimmer Simon Daubney: “This one was a little bit of a raffle, a little bit of a lottery. We were pretty surprised the race went ahead as it was anyway 15 minutes before they had abandoned the start for a 30 degree difference of the breeze at the top mark, and even on different ends of the start line had up to 20 degrees difference.

“So we were thinking that was a smart move to postpone it - and all of a sudden there seems to be a big rush to get a race off a minute before the time they are allowed to. And there is this big rush to go out there and sail around in those shitty conditions, which is pretty disappointing really after you work so hard for those little gains and to try and improve your performance.

“On a day testing at any time like that you think ‘hopefully we won’t be sailing in these conditions,’ so certainly you wouldn’t spend too much time working away at them.’”

And now this from Mr Alinghi himself, Ernesto Bertarelli. “It was a very strange day, we waited two hours to start that race and honestly the Race Committee starts the race a second before the time limit on a situation which was no better than it had been for the last two hours - high volatility, unpredictable wind which is why we waited….we took a good start because we forced TNZ to tack away, we were leading at the start but then there was the 20 degree shift. I mean, you can’t beat a 20 degree shift from nowhere. We were at one point 400 metres behind and I think we raced the boat really well.

“The boat is very fast and even in light conditions like that we came back, we had a nice race, were in front and then on the last leg it’s impossible to control, when you gybe too often you pay a lot for the gybe but anyway the guy that is behind is going to gybe away. I think we raced well but we were just unlucky.”

Alinghi refused to believe that ETNZ had been anything other than lucky being bounced to the right into that 20 degree gift from the heavens. Daubney commented: “I’m not too sure about their weather call. If they had a clear call that the wind was going to go 20 degrees right on the first beat then that it is certainly something that our weather team hadn’t picked up. So maybe it wasn’t a lottery and maybe their weather team did better than ours but we certainly weren’t expecting that much of a shift and that much of a velocity change.”

Now, bear in mind that when Adam Beashel gave this answer he hadn’t heard any of the Alinghi reactions over at their press conference at the Defender base. So I think this is a pretty honest reaction from Beashel. Sounds to me like the Kiwis knew the ‘lucky dice’ had been loaded in favour of the right. “For us it was switching back and forth quite a lot – early on there was a lot of call to the left but as things got closer, it all started to even up.

“Clouds [ETNZ weather expert Roger Badham] and ourselves on the boat just before entry thought there was a pretty big right-hand shift to come and it was called so it nearly became a ‘must win right’ for us, and Deano did a good job of winning that right-hand side. It was a little downspeed, it would have been nice to be a little quicker but we were hopeful that the right was going to come. And it came as we expected so it all turned well for us.”

So, maybe there was a little skill involved today after all. After today’s reactions from the Defender, Alinghi are sounding a teensy bit Whingi. Mr Bertarelli described today’s race as “a little bit of Las Vegas, which is why I don’t think the race should have happened”. After today’s thriller, the rest of Valencia is singing: “Viva Las Vegas!”

Team Spirit v Boatspeed

2007-06-25T19:55:00.000+01:00

If Emirates Team New Zealand fail to win this America’s Cup, it won’t be through lack of team spirit. One of the advantages of coming through the challenger series is that they have had to take a few knocks along the way. Provided you can take those knocks then you’ll be the better for it – you know, the ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’ theory.

Alinghi have had not had the same ‘luxury’ of the LVC rollercoaster ride. So when the Defender suffers a setback like yesterday’s extraordinary example of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, they’re in new territory. It asks much tougher questions about team spirit.

According to a friend who watched the race from the Alinghi base yesterday afternoon, the atmosphere turned ‘funereal’ the moment that NZL 92 nudged into the lead. Word is that Brad got out of the wrong side of bed yesterday morning, and that the goings-on out on the race course only exacerbated an already bad mood.

Perhaps this accounts for his lapse of concentration up the second beat, and his colourful choice of language in encouraging a wayward spectator craft to vacate the field of play. “Get that fxxxing boat off the fxxxing course” certainly got his point across, but offended the ears of some who heard his tirade over the live television feed.

The man sounded rattled, even if at this stage he was in the lead. It was also interesting to note that once ETNZ pulled into the lead, Brad had removed his customary wraparound sunglasses and there was the ever-so-slightest look of concern on his usually more relaxed features. Brad is the coolest cat in the Cup, so you have to look hard for any signs of worry, but I think they were there.

It would be fascinating to know who his old mate Russell Coutts is rooting for in this intriguing match. Coutts is in town doing some commentary for New Zealand TV, and without mentioning Ed Baird’s name, he noted the “poor lee-bow tack” made by Alinghi. Baird could and should have tacked closer to NZL 92’s lee bow, and if he had, it just might have just given the Defender a hope of holding the lead.

Baird is not a like-for-like replacement for Russell Coutts. To be fair to Baird, who is? However, Alinghi have always seemed confident that they could defend the 32nd Cup without the most accomplished helmsman in the world, but after yesterday it didn’t look so likely. Whatever Coutts might feel for Brad and his other old muckers (Jones, Phipps, Daubney & Fleury) on board Alinghi, a part of him must also be hoping that the Defender fails without him. Conversely Ernesto Bertarelli would love to prove that Coutts wasn’t quite so crucial to a successful defence as perhaps Coutts would like to believe. It will be fascinating to see who gets the last laugh here.

Returning to the question of helmsmen, one wonders if there is the same level of support for Ed Baird as Dean Barker enjoys in the ETNZ camp? While ETNZ team members give praise to Barker for his starting ability or his momentous piece of precision steering at the turning point of yesterday’s match, it’s hard to think of a time when any of Baird’s comrades have been similarly effusive with praise for their helmsman. In fact it’s hard to think of a time when Mr Ed has even been mentioned. It would be easy to read too much into this, but there just isn’t the same sense of team spirit emanating from the Defender as you get from the Challenger.

It’s a shame Mr Ed hasn’t been available for comment at any point in the past few weeks because he’s always good for a quote. It seems like the Alinghi philosophy is to put a protective wall around their helmsman, to shield him from the glare of the media. Does this cotton wool approach really work? ETNZ seem to take the complete opposite view, with Barker appearing in front of the media every time the Kiwis lose a race. The media admires that courage, and it helps take the sting out of the media’s tail when a key player does front up to answer the hard questions. You could argue that keeping Ed out of the spotlight only increases the pressure on him and the rest of the team.

This all makes it sound terribly gloomy for the Defender’s prospects, but for my money they are still the clear favourite. A chance meeting with one of the Luna Rossa afterguard today confirmed my (and almost everybody else’s) view that SUI 100 is the superior toy. Based on his observations from the two informal race days between the Italians and the Swiss, my Luna Rossa friend said the boat looked awesome in “stability conditions” as he put it, ie in 10 knots or more. He believes there is something special going on with that boat, perhaps the non-canting keel that caused such speculation a few weeks back, but which seems to have fallen off the media’s radar screen of late.

From a Kiwi perspective, at least the breeze looks set to be light tomorrow, and with an easterly sea breeze expected to veer round to the south-east, Dean Barker will most likely be fighting hard to defend his starboard entry advantage. From what we’ve seen of the starts so far, Barker should have no problem doing that, and NZL 92 looks to just about be the match for SUI 100 in the softer stuff.

It’s unlikely to be so light for the remainder of the series, however. Today for example, it was stinking hot and blowing a solid 18 to 19 knots all day. When one of those comes along, SUI 100 will be a hard machine to stop. The boat’s one weak spot seems to be that it takes a while to get rumbling out of manoeuvres – whether out of the start, out of a tack or a gybe. It’s a chink that the Kiwis will be keen to capitalise on.

Everything about the Alinghi campaign seems focused on straight-line speed, from the team’s self-confessed 95% focus on testing and development at the expense of boathandling practice, to the choice of Baird over Holmberg as the faster straight-line helmsman. Which means that the Kiwis’ best chance is to engage the Swiss speedsters in as much manoeuvring as possible, both before and after the start. Throw them off the boatspeed game.

Brad Butterworth continues to insist that the America’s Cup is a design race above all else, but it is up to Dean Barker, Terry Hutchinson et al. to prove otherwise. That good old seat-of-the-pants sailing can be the deciding factor of the 32nd America’s Cup after all.

Brad does a Torben

2007-06-24T19:10:00.001+01:00

The turning point in today’s match was very reminiscent of the penultimate match of the Louis Vuitton Cup Finals. Just as Luna Rossa tacked ahead and to leeward of Emirates Team New Zealand in that match, so Alinghi did the same today – not quite tacking close enough to NZL 92 to be able to give them dirty air and allowing Dean Barker to eke his way into the lead.

Just a couple of minutes earlier, AC radio commentator Geordie Shaver made the observation that Brad Butterworth was doing “the Corral”. After rounding the left-hand gate mark, Alinghi crossed ETNZ by more than two boatlengths to reclaim the right-hand side.

Butterworth could have placed a tighter cover on the Kiwis but elected for a looser cover further to the right. This is Geordie’s “Corral”, where you’ve got enough confidence in your superior boatspeed that you just herd the opposition in the general direction without actually hurting them. It’s the slow death approach, except on this occasion it was Alinghi that was suffering a slow death.

Asked what went wrong at that point in the race, Alinghi runner grinder Rodney Ardern said: “That’s a good question! The waves were a bit more choppy from the spectator wash and we seemed to lose a bit of speed. We checked the rudder and keel and couldn’t see anything, but we didn’t feel that good up that second beat and they closed in on us and took the lead.”

ETNZ mainsheet trimmer Don Cowie reckoned the Kiwis responded quicker to a slight drop in the breeze. “I think we might have changed gears a little quicker when the light patch came in,” he said. It certainly seems like the New Zealand crew are capable of getting their boat up to full pace more quickly than Alinghi. The trouble is, NZL 92’s full pace is not quite up to SUI 100’s full pace. The Kiwis are talking a brave game of it being a one-design race out there, but that’s not how it looks from the outside.

Dean Barker has fully removed those lingering doubts that existed all those weeks ago about his inconsistent starting. He sailed a blinder of a pre-start against Ed Baird today and crossed the start line bang on the money, while Alinghi took another three seconds to cross. Ed Baird is sporting a back pack that powers up his fighter-pilot heads-up display in his sunglasses. It gives him a visual map of the boat in relation to the start box, but it didn’t seem to do much for his time on distance today.

So for the second time in two races Dean Barker scored a peach of a start with lots of lateral separation from Alinghi, and yet less than five minutes later he was bounced away to the right. Strategist Ray Davies admitted: “We had a bit of a plan that if we could start to the right and continue for two or three minutes we would have been happy with that.

“We were more than happy with where we started. Dean did a great job of starting at pace and with heaps of separation and normally you would be able to last a long time with that sort of range. We were a bit surprised that we got spat off there and with Alinghi making more of a gain it was a little bit of a surprise for us!”

Asked what they could do next time to neutralise Alinghi off the start line, Cowie responded: “We’ve got to work a little bit harder as the trimmers – that’s me and Louie [jib trimmer Grant Loretz] – getting the boat locked in and off the start line. We’ve got to make sure we know what the pressure is off the line.”

I think Cowie is being hard on himself. The Kiwis are sailing their boat beautifully, they’re hardly putting a foot wrong, but SUI 100’s extra little edge is getting Alinghi out of jail. Today’s result will have done wonders for Kiwi confidence, but Alinghi is still looking the more potent package.

Ugly but Effective

2007-06-23T18:49:00.000+01:00

If the America’s Cup was won on artistic merit, then Alinghi would have lost badly today. SUI 100 looked so ungainly bashing through the nasty slop and chop, giving the foredeck crew a good dousing every time they ventured up to the bow.

Normally when a boat looks bad, it sails bad, but the dreadnought-bowed Defender defied convention, hobby-horsing upwind every bit as quickly as the much steadier, smoother running NZL 92.

Downwind the boat looked very pacy, with the Alinghi crew extending their lead on both offwind legs. From the outside the signs look very ominous, SUI 100 appearing to live up to the pre-race hype about being a rocket.

The sailors read it quite differently, though. ETNZ pitman Barry McKay sounded a little relieved after the race to have discovered that SUI 100 was good, but not invincible. “It’s not a rocket,” he said. “There’s been a lot of mystique around it. It’s a good boat, but it’s not out of this world. It’s game on.”

Brad Butterworth offered a similar view from the Alinghi perspective. “I think the boats are much the same speed – we caught some nice waves downwind but they are pretty much the same. I think that getting the left-hand side of the course was key. We got that, managed to get the other boat to tack away, and that was it.”

That was very much the ETNZ analysis of the race too, with McKay putting today’s loss not down to any boatspeed differences but simply down to Alinghi getting bow forward into the first windshift. “We came off the line in good pressure, and as you guys can probably see, we took a bit of gauge and moved forward a bit, but then the breeze went left 10 degrees and went soft. That made it a bit hard for us and we had to roll out [into a tack]. They dug into the left-hander and tacked back, and that was the race right there, I guess.”

So, the boats are even for pace then…

I’m not entirely convinced.

SUI 100 showed a couple of bursts of speed offwind. Alinghi grinder Matt Welling suggested it might have been surfing technique rather than raw pace. When I asked him where he felt more comfortable compared to the Kiwis – upwind or downwind – he said: “You would have to say after today, downwind, but it’s very difficult to judge downwind performance on a day like today. Ed [Baird] caught some real nice waves, and you can pick up a couple of boatlengths really quickly.”

Grant Dalton was one of the few to betray any sense of a speed deficit. “We learned that there was not much in it as far as boat speed is concerned. NZL 92 was able to hold SUI 100 upwind and they seemed to have an edge downwind. However, it’s difficult to be definitive about boat speed after today’s race. The shifts we experienced were way bigger than just boat speed. We have got to concentrate on just getting each shift as best as we can and if we can do that we’ll win.”

So, it looks like the dire predictions of a 5-0 whitewash by Alinghi could be unfounded after today. Both teams are talking about a good even fight. The Defender still has the edge however. SUI 100 is not a steamroller, but it is a very fast hobby-horse. Alinghi confirmed their status as pre-series favourites today.

Luigi's new assistant race officer

2007-06-23T10:24:00.000+01:00

Apparently principal race officer Peter ‘Luigi’ Reggio is none too happy about having to hand the starting horn for Race 1 of the 32nd America’s Cup over to supermodel Petra Nemcova.

You have to have some sympathy for Luigi. It’s not exactly clear what the Czech model’s connection with the America’s Cup is, and maybe someone like Dennis Conner or John Bertrand would have been a more fitting figurehead for the role. Or possibly Russell Coutts, with his strong connection to both teams on the starting grid...;)

Then again, I’m sure Luigi will cheer up when he gets to meet Ms Nemcova in the flesh. Dennis-Petra-Dennis-Petra…. Who would you get to fire your starting pistol?

Meanwhile, no 18th men listed on the crew lists for today’s big match. What a big waste of one of the most unique elements of the Cup. How many top-grade sporting events allow a spectator access to the field of play, to be a part of the action? It should be compulsory for teams to take their passenger. It makes no difference to the performance of the boats, so where’s the problem?

A nice quote from Brad Butterworth yesterday, being asked to compare the Cup now with 20 years ago when he was calling tactics for a young Chris Dickson, as part of New Zealand’s ‘Plastic Fantastics’ campaign. “I could move around a bit easier - I was 27 then! The difference between what I know now and I what I knew in Fremantle…we were beaten by Dennis Conner, and I could not understand how he could beat us because he was so relaxed, but he was faster and smarter.”

The battle between the two tacticians in this Match will be fascinating. You couldn’t find two more different characters. Butterworth, the most laid-back man in Port America’s Cup, and Terry Hutchinson the intense and focused American carrying Kiwi hopes of “bringing the Cup back home”. Different personalities, but very similar racing styles however. Don’t expect any of the Torben Grael throw-caution-to-the-wind style of tactics, but a much, much tighter game.

Hutchinson commented yesterday: “I suspect you’ll see us do the same kind of things we’ve been doing up until now - looking for subtle little gains, and capitalising on them. With Alinghi I think you’ll see the same thing - taking small gains during the race.”

Writing at 11am in Valencia, there’s a strong element of northerly in the breeze right now, which is pretty unusual, but it looks like 3pm start time should be a go. D-Day has arrived.

Baird to steer Alinghi, but Kiwis win starboard entry

2007-06-22T18:05:00.000+01:00

Alinghi confirmed the worst-kept secret in Valencia with the announcement that Ed Baird is to steer SUI 100, with his boss Ernesto Bertarelli standing just behind him, working the runners.

Talking of runners, Alinghi’s hope of being able to move their top-mast backstays forward next to the mast was knocked back by a new Public Interpretation yesterday. Today Alinghi fired back by asking for a further interpretation over the practice which was commonly seen during the challenger series, that of moving the slack runner from the leeward side of the yacht forward and to windward of the boom to reduce windage.

Chief measurer Ken McAlpine said that this too was prohibited, with the caveat that it is permitted for “the runners, having been eased, to be secured against the boom using a secondary tensioning device, to avoid movement and damage while racing and to protect the crew from injury”.

So the upshot is that Alinghi’s hoped-for advantage in this small area has been negated, although the overall feeling around Valencia is that the Defender will still go on to dominate this series. I’m not so convinced of Alinghi’s invincibility. The Kiwis’ crew work will be better, and their boatspeed is well proven across the wind range. The Swiss have done surprisingly little sailing over the past few weeks, with the boats spending a lot of time in the shed. They’d better be sure of that speed edge that SUI 100 is reputed to have.

With Terry Hutchinson winning the toss (Dean doesn’t like tossing the coin) and opting for starboard entry tomorrow, coupled with a light forecast for the first two matches over the weekend, the Kiwis have an excellent chance to take an early lead in the series.

SUI 100 is the Weapon of Choice

2007-06-20T22:03:00.000+01:00

So Alinghi have selected SUI 100 as their weapon of choice. Speaking to part of the Kiwis' design team Marcelino Botin earlier today, he sees SUI 100 as more 'downrange' compared with SUI 91.

Also, although most pundits reckon the Swiss boats are a bit beamier than NZL 92, but the Spanish designer (with a South African accent picked up from his business sidekick Shaun Carkeek) believes otherwise. "Our boat might be a bit narrower at deck level, but I think the Alinghi boats might be even with ours at waterline, or maybe narrower." In any case, he sees Alinghi as potent package whatever the weather.

Meanwhile, I've done a short interview with Dean Phipps, Alinghi's pitman (pictured above). You can find it at my website. Click this link to take you through to SailingTalk.com. Here's a short excerpt from the interview.

SailingTalk.com: How do you rate the competition? What are their strengths?

Dean Phipps: New Zealanders are passionate about sailing, and the guys on Emirates are great sailors. We respect them, we’ve sailed round the world with half of them, we’re looking forward to the challenge. The crew work has been flawless, Dean is starting really well, and he’s got stronger since Adam [Beashel] came on board; it looks like he’s just gelled the whole back of the boat together. They’re going to be a tough nut to crack.

Click here to gain access to the rest of the interview, and more America's Cup interviews in the coming days...

Alinghi and the Top-Mast Backstay Controversy

2007-06-19T21:10:00.000+01:00

Remember that Mascalzone Latino aberration from a few weeks back? When the Italian team discovered that they had been sailing illegally every time they clipped or unclipped their top-mast backstays from the mast during a race? Well, top-mast backstays are right at the centre of controversy once again, and this time it’s Alinghi causing all the trouble.

If you’ve been reading the Public Interpretations from the Measurement Committee over the past few weeks (and I don’t blame you if you haven’t – because this is dry stuff), then you’ll have noticed that someone has been asking some pretty bizarre interpretations of the Cup class rules. That someone – it became clear today – was Alinghi, who it seems still hasn’t quite found the answer to the question that it dare not ask.

It centres around whether or not it is legal to tuck the top-mast backstays along the side of the mast when they are not being used (ie upwind when all they do is create extra drag). Views differ about how much drag they create, but the consensus seems to be that an absence of top-mast backstays could amount to about 20 metres per windward leg (ie not far short of a boatlength). That may not seem significant, until you think back to just how close for speed NZL 92 and ITA 94 were in the LV Cup Finals. And look what a big effect a small speed edge had on the outcome.

So this stuff is worth fighting for. Today Alinghi won a first-round skirmish against the Measurement Committee (click here for an explanation), but it still doesn’t mean the Defender has secured an absolute answer that it is OK to use the top-mast backstays in the unprecedented way that Alinghi would like. As head of the Jury Bryan Willis pointed out today, the rule has been sloppily worded, which makes it very open to interpretation. Which means that as things stand, Alinghi could go out and race with its clever top-mast backstay arrangement, but that the Kiwis could bring a protest to bear. Expect more back-room toing and froing between Defender, Measurer and Jury before Race 1 on Saturday. This is not done yet.

Then again, perhaps it’s all academic, because word out of the Luna Rossa camp is that Alinghi was a fair click faster than the Italians in their informal racing a week and a half ago. If there is any truth to this, then it is worrying stuff for New Zealand because despite that 5-0 scoreline in the LV Finals, ITA 94 was more or less a benchmark for NZL 92’s speed. These tidied-away top-mast backstays would be the icing on the cake, although you get the impression that Alinghi would do just fine with or without them. That outing against Luna Rossa has given Brad Butterworth and his gang an enormous amount of confidence.

On the other hand, the past couple of weeks have seen the Defender blow up around half a dozen spinnakers during training, and the boathandling continues to look shoddy by comparison with the Kiwis. We’ve all heard of sandbagging to disguise your true boatspeed, but sandbagging to disguise your true boathandling abilities? That’s a new one! It’s inconceivable that Alinghi could lose the America’s Cup because the team can’t tack or gybe the boat.

Testing Time for the Kiwis

2007-06-12T16:22:00.000+01:00

Wrapping up the Louis Vuitton Cup Finals 5-0 against Luna Rossa has brought some unexpected benefits for the Kiwis. Not only has it given them more rest and recuperation time, but the team is now using the extra days for some intensive two-boat testing between NZL 92 and NZL 84.

Grant Dalton says they’re not looking for any magic gains in this final period, but checking in on a few things that they discovered in the Hauraki Gulf at the beginning of the year and validating them in the conditions off Valencia. Yesterday the two boats enjoying a stonking day out on the water, the wind blowing a steady 16 knots, although today has been a lot softer.

It looks increasingly like Valencia won’t be providing the rock-solid sea breezes that might be expected at this time of year. This America’s Cup could well call for a good all-round boat, and so the Kiwis will welcome strong days like yesterday to help get the most out of their narrow hull, which seems optimised for sub-12 knot conditions.

There’s no doubt Dean Barker and the crew can sail the pants off NZL 92 when the breeze is up. Look what they did to the Spanish in the final match of the Semi Finals. But the slightly beamier Alinghi boat looks well set up for the breeze, and it will be immaculately sailed. So the Kiwis need to find that extra something. At least now they have this window of opportunity.

Dalton commented: “In some ways we’re just checking in on some of the things we did in Auckland. And because we stayed in Auckland as long as we did, and with the help of private individuals flying the boats up here, it allowed us not to get into the situation that maybe Luna Rossa found themselves in after the Semi Finals where they were still looking at configurations for the first time and evaluating them.

"We’re just re-evaluating things that we think we already know, but in the conditions of Valencia, with a lot more spectator chop at the top mark, and the wind is quite sheary here. It was a good sea breeze today [Monday], but we’ve seen some quite light sea breezes. So we’re just rechecking things here from Auckland.”

Will the Kiwis' last-minute tweaks be enough for the mighty Alinghi? Most pundits around Port America’s Cup are predicting a 5-0 whitewash in the Defender’s favour. Boathandling still isn't going to plan, however. Today in just 7 knots of breeze, one of the Alinghi boats ripped another spinnaker (remember last week's torn kite against Luna Rossa) during two-boat training today. Both boats were using standard rigs with jumper struts, which are quite often the culprits where torn kites are concerned. Maybe it's time to consider the jumperless rig sitting in the Alinghi shed! It would at least cheer up the sail repairers.

Still, a minor setback in the scheme of things. Simon Daubney sounded pretty confident when I spoke to him last week. If you haven’t already downloaded the interview, click here to read what the Alinghi trimmer had to say.

Will boatspeed be enough for Alinghi?

2007-06-10T19:15:00.000+01:00

Alinghi’s crew work hasn’t looked all that slick in their informal races against Luna Rossa this past couple of days. By their own admission, the Defenders have not spent as much time as the challengers on race training, preferring instead to focus on testing and development in pursuit of a small speed edge, in the belief that boatspeed will prevail in the America’s Cup.

However, if the Kiwis can keep it tight, then maybe they can negate any Alinghi speed advantage – if indeed there is one. I spoke to Alinghi trimmer Simon Daubney last week. To get the full interview, sign up to my newsletter over at SailingTalk.com.

Below is an excerpt from the interview. Asked how he thought Alinghi was going in comparison to NZL 92, the three-time Cup-winning said this: “Every time this America’s Cup question comes up, I have no idea where we are in relation to the other team. All I do know is we’ve done more testing and they’ve done more racing, not just this year but over the past few years.

“And so if we end up with a speed advantage, that would be attributed to us putting more emphasis on testing than they did. If we end up screwing up our crew work or going around the leeward mark with our spinnaker still up, then maybe we put our emphasis in the wrong place! In the last few weeks we’ve been practising a lot on our crew work and doing our racing, and it’s been tough to watch these guys go out there doing full-on racing, so we’ve been doing our racing.

“Last time Team New Zealand made the mistake of having the boat in the shed doing a lot of development during the last Cup while we were out there sailing a boat that had been in the water for a year. It sounds wishy-washy, but the fact of the matter is that seat-of-the-pants sailing, getting to know the boat, is still a huge part of this.”

Click here to get the rest of the interview…

Luna Rossa races Alinghi

2007-06-08T17:11:00.000+01:00

Luna Rossa had their full A-boat crew out for racing against Alinghi today, with James Spithill steering and Torben Grael doing the tactics. On the Alinghi boat it was Ed Baird steering and Brad Butterworth calling tactics, adding further fuel to the rumour that Baird has been given the top job ahead of Peter Holmberg. The truth of that rumour we won’t know until the Defender announces its helmsman the day before the America’s Cup Match.

The pre-starts were quite aggressive, and in one start Spithill managed to get the hook on Baird, forcing Alinghi to tack off on to port near the committee boat and make a downspeed start to the right. On this particular start the boats never re-engaged, separated by several hundred metres as they sailed up opposite sides of the course.

After about 15 minutes of sailing they turned back down again to pick up a tow from their chase boats to the bottom of the course. It looked to me like Alinghi would have been quite far ahead at that point.

That’s when I headed in, so I didn’t see subsequent races between the boats, although word came back that Luna Rossa was well ahead in another match where they used spinnakers. Alinghi ripped one of theirs, putting them further behind. Apparently Alinghi's tacks and gybes were looking a bit ragged, as they did in the informal racing against the Kiwis a couple of weeks ago. Crew work will definitely need to improve before they meet Dean Barker and Co, who look more and more slick with every race.

As usual, very difficult to make any hard conclusions about performance. Luna Rossa was using ITA 94 but not sure which Alinghi boat we were looking at. Judging by the aggression in the pre-starts, the best guess would be that it was the older SUI 91.

The Battle for Europe

2007-06-07T18:09:00.000+01:00

Some sore heads in the Kiwi camp this morning (thanks by the way to local SailJuice fan ‘Anonymous’ for his comment on yesterday’s piece, seems like the Kiwi camp partied long and hard last night!).

Such was the release of pressure yesterday in the Kiwi team as the champagne corks started popping, it was almost as though they’d won the America’s Cup itself. One of the senior management team commented at the team barbecue last night that they’d done the job they came here to do. What? Surely the job is only half done?

Yes, the Kiwis had a right to party after winning the Louis Vuitton, but the real job has yet to begin. Hopefully a gap of two and a half weeks before the America’s Cup is enough to reset Kiwi ambitions for the Cup, and put victory in the Louis Vuitton Cup into perspective.

Meanwhile, the Kiwis must be beginning to wonder if they’ve got any fans in the world outside of the North and South Islands. A couple of days ago Desafio Espanol went out training with Alinghi. Let’s not forget that the Spanish have given the Kiwis their toughest challenge to date, holding them to 5-2 in the Semi Finals, with a boat – ESP 97 - that some pundits believe is the fastest design of any challenger team.

Today the vanquished Luna Rossa team put out this announcement: “Being the only semi-finalist still working here in Valencia to not have raced against Alinghi, after they raced Emirates Team New Zealand two days before the Louis Vuitton Cup Finals and also against the Spanish Team during the Finals, Luna Rossa will race the America's Cup defender Alinghi tomorrow.”

It is not in Patrizio Bertelli’s commercial interest to see the America’s Cup head south, nor is it in Desafio Espanol’s. There is a fear that if Emirates Team New Zealand win the Cup, that they will take the event back to the dark ages, to a corner of the world that offers nothing like the same commercial opportunities that Europe has opened up, and to re-establish strict nationality rules that would benefit the Kiwis more than anyone.

The Kiwis have as yet been tight-lipped on what plans they have for the Cup should they manage to wrest it away from the Swiss, so it might be unfair to suggest this is where they would take the event. But that is certainly the fear, and is the reason why the likes of Spain and Italy are breaking one of the unwritten rules of the America’s Cup in agreeing to tune up against the Defender.

At last Dean smiles!

2007-06-06T20:22:00.000+01:00

Dean Barker punched the air as he crossed the finish line of today’s decisive race, the first skipper to have won the Louis Vuitton Cup with a clean sweep. He even smiled. In fact he smiled a lot, as did the rest of the Kiwis, who did enough smiling and backslapping to make up for the past two months of tight-lipped stoicism that we have seen until today.

Having beaten Luna Rossa by 22 seconds, condemning the Italians to a 5-0 exit from the Louis Vuitton Cup, Barker looked like a man who had banished his demons. He has taken a first important step towards making amends for the humiliation of that 5-0 defeat at the hands of Alinghi four years ago.

“I’m just rapt,” he said. “I can’t say enough about the guys on the boat - the whole team. It’s been a really tough journey. The round robins didn’t start our way, losing that match to Mascalzone. But I’m proud the way the team has bounced back and grown as we have come through.”

In terms of score line, the 5-2 defeat of Desafio Espanol in the Semi Finals has been the Kiwis’ toughest test so far. “The Semi Final was great. On reflection we will look back and say that racing Desafio and dropping two races to them has actually made us a much stronger and better team.

“I don’t think anyone on the team ever dreamed or believed that we would get through the Finals against a team like Luna Rossa in the way we did. It was certainly flattering but we never ever felt it was a comfortable series, it was always very tight.”

Barker paid tribute to Grant Dalton’s unique brand of management. “Anyone that knows Grant knows his work ethic - he pulls everything together, starts first in the morning, last to leave in the evening. He is 120% committed to making the team successful and that rubs off on all the guys. His drive and determination gets you through the sheer hard work.”

This is Barker’s second go as skipper of Team New Zealand, but he says there is no comparison between the team then and the team now. “There are fundamental differences in this team to the team that lost the Cup in 2003 under the leadership of Grant Dalton, Kevin Shoebridge and what those guys have done.

“They were the dark days of 2003 and even 2004, the key decisions which put this team back together, hard work and the money to be able to push the go button for the challenge. In terms of what will happen, we have got a lot better, I’ve got a huge amount of confidence in the team and the guys on the boat, we have managed to step a level for the final. The challenge is now to stay focussed and take another step going into the America’s Cup.”

Is Torben just too Nice?

2007-06-05T19:11:00.000+01:00

Is Torben Grael just too nice for match racing? In the second cross of today’s match the Brazilian Magician on Luna Rossa had his foot on the Kiwi boat’s throat. He should have finished off the job, by tacking hard on the Kiwis’ leeward bow, forcing them off to the left again.

By his own admission in this evening’s press conference, Grael thought the breeze had already gone as left as it was going to, so he wanted to protect the right. Maybe by tacking far to leeward of NZL 92 he wanted to encourage the Kiwis to follow him over to the right and fall into Italian bad air as the breeze shifted right. That is the only possible defence for Grael’s unconvincing tactics.

As it was, the breeze went further left than Grael had expected, allowing Dean Barker not only to live on ITA 94’s hip but to move forwards and climb out from there into a controlling position which he would never relinquish. Not for the first time this series, the Kiwis couldn’t quite believe their luck, as ETNZ windspotter Adam Beashel commented afterwards: “We were surprised they tacked to leeward there, it’s not what I’d have chosen, but that was their thinking…” The result was a 52-second win to the Kiwis, who used marginally better boatspeed to extend once they were in front.

Poor old Torben really didn’t want to be sitting in that press conference this evening. Every time he finished answering a question he put the microphone back down like a hot potato. And at the end of the conference, he couldn’t get out of there quick enough. No wonder, as he was asked more or less the same question four or five times. We were no more enlightened as to why he chose to tack so unaggressively under the Kiwis than before the press conference had begun.

Here’s an example. Asked if it would have been possible to tack closer under the Kiwi bow, he replied: “We definitely could, but we felt we were on a leftie and wanted to defend the right side which we thought was good, and take the position which we thought was safe. They hung out with a nice leftie with pressure and they made a huge gain in a short period. From then on it was quite difficult for us to come back because we weren’t in a strong position to do so.

“It’s hard to predict those things - the right came, but it came late and we couldn’t benefit from it. Knowing what happened now, I would go closer, but it’s a hard situation there, you have to decide right then on the information you have, and with the information I had I felt I was doing the right thing.”

You can be sure that if the tables were turned, Terry Hutchinson wouldn’t have been nearly so gentlemanly. He would have tacked on the opposition’s face and bounced them away. You can’t fault Torben Grael’s record in fleet racing – five Olympic medals says it all – and normally no one can read the wind better than this man. However, in the past week, Grael’s legendary windspotting skills have eluded him on a number of occasions.

Luna Rossa won the roll of the dice off the start line today, picking the right side and moving to a four-boatlength lead at the first cross. Fair enough, it worked on that occasion. But if the Kiwis had found themselves in that position it would have been game, set and match right there. Using good old, hard-arsed match racing skills.

In James Spithill, the Italians have one of the sharpest shooters in town, but Torben’s softly-softly tactics are not giving Spithill the ammunition to hurt the Kiwis. When the Kiwis have the faster boat, there’s even more of an imperative to fix bayonets and get stuck into some hand-to-hand fighting. Time for Torben to turn nasty.

Lady Luck eludes Luna Rossa

2007-06-03T18:02:00.000+01:00

James Spithill delivered pretty much everything that could have been asked of him in the pre-start today. Dean Barker allowed himself to be carried into a long luffing match that took both boats way above the start line.

At one point, things were starting to look a bit desperate for the Kiwis, and eventually Barker bit the bullet as he bore away deep on to starboard gybe. Spithill responded by turning sharply inside the Kiwi boat and still controlled the situation.

As both boats recrossed the start line and gybed on to port, the Italians seemed happy to leave the Kiwis to their own devices, opting to focus on a fast, full-pace start off the middle of the start line as the gun fired.

The flustered Kiwis were probably relieved to have been let off the hook so easily, although they were very downspeed at the committee boat. The Italian dominance of the pre-start had given them a boatlength’s advantage in the early stages. In some ways it was a close replica of what happened in yesterday’s start but with the tables turned. The difference was that Luna Rossa never got to exert that boatlength’s advantage.

Within two minutes of the start, the Kiwis’ higher track in slightly better breeze from the right had neutralised the early Italian advantage. Another two minutes later, and the Kiwis had fully reversed the situation as they pulled ahead to a boatlength’s lead.

Kiwi strategist Ray Davies later admitted: “As the old saying goes, it is sometimes better to be lucky rather than good. The breeze went our way and in a few moments it was difficult for them to come back at us.”

Torben Grael knew he was in trouble and was reluctant to tack over to engage the enemy, suspecting he already knew the answer. However, as the port layline drew uncomfortably close, he called for a tack and got the answer he had been dreading.

At the first cross, NZL 92 was more than a boatlength ahead. It was game, set and match from there. The Kiwis extended around the track and crossed the finish 450 metres ahead, winning by 1 minute 38 seconds.

So, what lessons for the Italians? They have a right to feel a little sorry for themselves, because the wind dealt them no favours off the start line today. But in the land of no excuses, which is the America’s Cup, questions have to be asked of the weather team and the afterguard.

One member of the Italian afterguard, Ben Durham, commented: “Hindsight is a good thing – we took the line bias and were hoping we were going to be able to take over. I think over the last three days ETNZ has done a better job of getting off the line and getting it up to speed well and getting the first shift. I think they are all areas that we can do a bit better in.”

In both their starboard entry pre-starts, the Italians have happily conceded the power of the right. On both occasions the left has failed to produce the goods. In today’s pre-start Spithill was holding all the aces. He could have taken the right but preferred to start closer to the wind on the pin-biased line.

They were unlucky, and they deserved better. But maybe the Italians need to be looking further up the track before the start. Winning the start is not sufficient. You have to be winning the race two minutes after the start, and that is what the Kiwis are doing so well.

The day’s rest tomorrow does the Italians a massive favour. It slows down the Kiwis’ momentum and gives Luna Rossa a chance to take stock and regroup. That said, it’s very hard to see them coming back from this. It’s not that they’re sailing badly, it’s just that the Kiwis are sailing with ruthless efficiency. And they’re getting faster. If Luna Rossa couldn’t capitalise on their dominance over New Zealand in today’s pre-start, then when can they?

Right place, Wrong speed

2007-06-02T17:07:00.000+01:00

You can’t fault James Spithill and the Luna Rossa crew for their ability to win the favoured side of the start. Spithill pulled off a high-risk manoeuvre on port across the bow of the Y-flag-waving Kiwis in today’s pre-start. The Italians got away with it, and claimed the power of the right.

What they failed to do, however, was hit the start line at full pace. The Italians were downspeed today, as they were yesterday, while Dean Barker and the Kiwis had wound NZL 92 fully up to speed as the gun fired. Luna Rossa put in an early tack to the right, which was where they wanted to be, but they had paid a high price to win that supposed advantage.

Luna Rossa's navigator Michele Ivaldi commented: "The turning point was at the start, we wanted the right a little more strongly than yesterday. Team New Zealand and Deano did a good job in making us pay for the right. We had the side but we paid with some boat speed crossing the starting line."

Within 20 seconds of crossing the line, New Zealand was already a boatlength up and Barker rolled into a tack to shadow the Italians on the right. The ensuing drag race confirmed the findings of yesterday’s race, that there is very little to choose between these boats for speed.

Nor was there much to choose between one side of the course or the other. Torben Grael found nothing on the right to get him back into the race. When the Italian finally tacked to face the music, the Kiwis were ready, and started pouring the pain on to their rivals as they herded the match out towards the starboard layline.

By the top mark the delta in the Kiwis’ favour was 25 seconds. Barker never allowed a glimmer of hope that the Italians might get back into this race. Emirates Team New Zealand finished 40 seconds ahead, and moved to 2-0 ahead in the series. Even after today’s emphatic victory, though, there’s very little to choose between these teams. It looks like it’s all about the start and the first cross.

In the first two races the Italians have won the positioning they wanted, but at the expense of start-line acceleration. If they can address that problem, then they could give the faultless Kiwis a run for their money. NZL Strategist Ray Davies said today: "It was an awesome day, one of the best days we have had on board – it was all working really well. Terry was on fire, he was sailing really confidently." The Italians need to win tomorrow to prevent Kiwi confidence from gaining further momentum.

Luna Rossa wrong to give Kiwis the right

2007-06-01T19:27:00.000+01:00

It was surprising how easily Luna Rossa gave up their starboard entry advantage in today’s opening match of the Louis Vuitton Cup Finals. Dean Barker can’t have believed his luck as he went into an early dial-up expecting a full-on punch-up with James Spithill, only to find the Italian boat quite happy to concede the right in favour of the left-hand side of the start.

In the last minute it looked as though Spithill wanted to get eleventh-hour aggressive with Barker, but if that was the case, the Australian left it too late to inflict any damage on the Kiwis up near the committee boat. Come start time, it was NZL 92 that was fully up to speed on the right, ITA 94 still recovering from two downspeed tacks and yet to wind up to full pace.

The Italians accelerated well and looked fast enough, but Torben Grael never found that left-hand breeze which he had been banking on. “It wasn’t a normal situation synoptically but we expected to start on the left, and on a split wanted the right. We were happy with the start, but it went further right than we expected, and so did the pressure. We gained a little back on starboard but close to the top mark there was an extra ‘rightie’ and that was quite painful to us.”

So for once, unlike in the Semi Final matches against BMW Oracle, the Italians’ nose for the best breeze eluded them and it was the Kiwi weather team and afterguard that called it right – wanting the right, winning the right and proving that right was the right place to be. However, despite a 10-degree shift in the Kiwis’ favour during that first beat, the Italians kept a very tight game. The biggest delta of the whole match was 12 seconds at the first mark, and at the finish the Kiwis won by just 8 seconds. Today's race revealed very little difference in performance between two boats that have surprisingly different hull shapes.

Although boatspeed differences were almost imperceptible, it did look like Luna Rossa might have the smallest of edges upwind in the 12 to 13 knot breezes. While the New Zealand team sailed impeccably, there must be a slight fear that the Italian boat has the edge in the classic sea breeze conditions that we saw today.

In some informal but intense racing against Alinghi two days ago, the Kiwis again were holding the right-hand side during a right-shifting breeze but the Swiss team was able to match or gain on the New Zealand boat from the disadvantaged side of the beat. Then again, both teams were using their older boats, SUI 91 and NZL 84 respectively, so it’s difficult to read too much into these test matches. However, there are signs that the Kiwi boats are fast, but perhaps not quite fast enough. Lighter breezes would suit ETNZ better.

What would have come as some relief to the challengers is that while Alinghi’s raw boatspeed looked very good, Defender boathandling looked very shoddy. The Swiss will have to up their game for the America’s Cup, because the boathandling that we saw from the Kiwi and Italian teams today was excellent.

Three into One doesn't Go

2007-05-25T18:21:00.000+01:00

I don’t think it was with any great regret that the management of BMW Oracle Racing accepted Chris Dickson’s resignation yesterday.

It would have been a very uncomfortable three months for everyone concerned, if the former CEO, skipper and helmsman had stayed the full course of his contract.

The question that we wanted answered at the press conference yesterday in the team’s plush cinema was whether they would ever again place that much power in the hands of one man.

Kiwi journo Peter Montgomery asked Laurent Esquier: “In the 21st century, is it too much for one man now to whistle, dance and do a jig on a five-cent piece all at the same time? Can one man do everything? Should you have a separate CEO, a separate skipper?”

The answer, which was a little surprising considering what had just happened in the Semi Finals, seemed to be: “Why not?”. When Paul Cayard tried to do this with Il Moro di Venezia in 1992, he said ‘never again’. Peter Gilmour came to the same conclusion a few years later. It might have worked for Dennis Conner a few decades ago, but not in the modern era.

Having the CEO make the decision about whether or not the helmsman (ie himself) was up to the role of steering the boat, was what ultimately torpedoed BMW Oracle. Surely they wouldn’t make the same mistake again? Would they?

Frowning into the Finals

2007-05-23T18:54:00.000+01:00

So it’s farewell to Desafio Espanol after the Kiwis romped away to a 500-metre victory, on a lumpy playing field that bore more resemblance to the Hauraki Gulf on a rough day than the more serene conditions we tend to associate with the Mediterranean.

As you watched the body language of the two teams when they crossed the line 1 minute 18 seconds apart, you could have been forgiven for thinking that it was the Spanish and not the laconic Kiwis who had won the day. There was not even a flicker of emotion as the New Zealanders booked their ticket into the Louis Vuitton Cup finals. Not that the Spanish were anything like as exuberant as on previous days, but there was still plenty of hugging and handshaking going on between the crew whose regatta had come to a sad but happy end.

The thing is, the Kiwis aren’t in the entertainment business. The only form of entertainment appreciated by their demanding fans back home, is winning. Shows of exuberance seem to be interpreted as signs of weakness. When a question went up to Terry Hutchinson on the stage in the press conference about the lack of Kiwi emotion, Dean Barker sitting two seats away from me let off a ‘harrumph’, as if to say, ‘what sort of question is that?’

Hutchinson, an American who has learned to curb his own emotions when sailing with the taciturn Kiwis, said the lack of visible emotion was down to “a sense of relief. I think the Spanish team was a very dangerous team for us to pick. We were always prepared for a full nine-race series, so it’s a sense of relief. We try to be as flatliner as we can be with a win or a loss. The feeling was much the same as it was when we crossed the line behind the Spanish three days ago. Don’t expect us to do any cartwheels, because that’s just how we are.”

Hutchinson looked drained up on stage, and admitted as much. “I haven’t slept in about six weeks. It might be the nature of the beast when you’re standing there looking at potholes of wind and wondering how you’re going to get past them next time.”

He also revealed some of the Kiwis’ reaction to the shock dismissal of BMW Oracle from the competition a few days earlier. Asked whether or not the Kiwis had picked the right Semi Final opponents in the Spanish, Hutchinson caused a bit of a stir in the audience when he answered: “If you had have known how the whole thing was going to play out [ie BMW Oracle going down 5-1], I don’t think we did. I think when you looked at it on paper and our past results against the Spanish team, we chose what we thought was the right thing for us. We were fully expecting to be punched a couple of times and get knocked down a couple of times and knew that we were going to have to get back up from it.”

So, what did he think went wrong with the American team’s surprise demise? “That’s a tough one, it’s hard to know the dynamics within the team. For sure Luna Rossa raised their game and statistically when you look at the Round Robins, the first cross percentage and leads at the top marks, BMW Oracle was further down that list than you would have expected. It was interesting to see Luna Rossa get stronger and sail better, but you also have to question if BMW raised their game to match Luna Rossa. The scorecard would suggest they didn’t. It certainly wasn’t what any of us were expecting to see.”

Asked afterwards about the difference in team dynamics between the Kiwis and BMW Oracle (which had just as many New Zealand passport holders on the boat as ETNZ), Hutchinson commented: “I think we have better team chemistry, it’s one of those intangibles, you can’t put a dollar figure on it, but it’s something you feel every day you go to work.” The sailors on NZL 92 may not smile much, but they’ve got team spirit in spades. And they’ll need it when they front up to the slippery Luna Rossa in a week’s time.

Spanish ready for a breezy battle

2007-05-22T18:24:00.000+01:00

Yesterday was a reserve day, today was blown off with too much wind and 2-metre waves outside the breakwater, and tomorrow there is a fear that the wave state might still prevent racing, even if the breeze is forecast to be a little lighter.

That means the continuation of the Semi Final between the Kiwis and the Spanish might not get going again until Thursday, the last scheduled day of racing. There is a reserve day down for Friday, but there’s no way the Kiwis would want it to go any further.

When the spectator fleet comes out in force on the weekend, Desafio Espanol seems to find an extra gear. Their weekend racing record is excellent so Dean Barker must get the job done by the end of the working week.

If the two teams do get racing in the stronger breezes that are now blowing in Valencia, you’d think the Kiwis’ boathandling would see them safely through. But Desafio coach Eddie Warden Owen doesn’t see it that way. “In the two crucial gybes in Sunday’s race, the Kiwis made mistakes, they gybed too fast, they weren’t sure what we were doing, and our guys really handled it very well.

“We put them under pressure. When you’re behind, it’s pretty hard to pass. I say to the guys, ‘Get round the windward mark first, it’s very hard for someone to pass you.’ In practice racing, if you get a boatlength ahead of your B boat it rarely gets past. I say: ‘Treat the opposition like the B boat, what would you do against the B boat? Feel confident, relaxed, he’s the one that’s got to get round the outside of you.’

Also, Warden Owen reckons ESP 97 really comes on song in the stronger winds. “We like the breeze, our boat performs better up the wind range. The Kiwis are pretty comfortable in the light stuff, it looks like they’re optimised down the wind range and we’re optimised further up the wind range. Stronger breeze suits us quite well.”

So, while most of us watching in Valencia keep on thinking the Kiwis need just one more race to close out the series, the Spanish are determined to continue defying expectations. Warden Owen says the team’s confidence is growing by the day, and Karol Jablonski is proving more consistent in the pre-starts than Dean Barker. There could be more surprises in store.

Alinghi sells SUI 75 to the Brits

2007-05-21T16:49:00.000+01:00

Alinghi has sold its wonderboat of the 2005 Louis Vuitton Act Series, SUI 75, to the new British challenge for the next America's Cup, Team Origin. Although SUI 75 was originally thought to be a bit of a dog in Auckland (with Russell Coutts's team opting to sail the tried and tested SUI 64 to win the 2003 Cup), in its revamped Version 5 mode SUI 75 was a pure thoroughbred.

Alinghi dominated the match racing and fleet racing in 2005 with this boat, and SUI 75 was still a very potent weapon against the challengers' 2006-generation boats such as USA 98 and ITA 86. Only the Kiwis' NZL 84 could possibly claim to be faster.

So Sir Keith Mills's new team has made a very smart purchase. Ian Walker, tactician of +39 Challenge, says that one of the great benefits to the Italian challenge of buying hull no. 59 off Alinghi was that it gave them an insight into the way Alinghi likes to structure the internal workings of its boats, and many of those ideas were subsequently incorporated into +39's new boat ITA 85. Understanding an ACC boat's structure is arguably more important than understanding its hull shape, although in SUI 75 Team Origin will gain a great insight into Alinghi's thinking in both these areas.

New Zealander Mike Sanderson, who passed up the chance to defend his Volvo Ocean Race title to become team director of Origin, commented: “This is a really important step for Team Origin; buying our first training boat of the calibre of SUI 75 means we are tapping into one of the fastest training boats around. We are also able to get hold of it without delay - meaning that we can push forward our planning and be on the water here in Valencia as early as July 2007.

"We are continuing our progress in buying a second top quality training boat and other necessary assets to progress team preparations.”

Off to Disneyland

2007-05-20T19:33:00.000+01:00

Chris Dickson fronted up to answer the media’s questions this evening. He congratulated Luna Rossa and paid tribute to his own team BMW Oracle Racing.

“We’ve had a very strong team with a huge amount of depth in the sailing team, in every area. I look back on this week, on Round Robins 1 and 2, we had no glaring weaknesses. We were outclassed by Luna Rossa in a number of areas this week. If there was something glaringly obvious we’d have done something about it.”

He also thanked Sten Mohr for stepping up to the helmsman’s job today, a job which he said was a thankless task for the Dane. “We call it a ‘hospital pass’ in rugby, when the ball is coming your way but you know you’re going to get hammered.”

So why offload the job to Mohr? It turns out it wasn’t Dickson’s choice. “The decision to take me off the boat today was Larry’s decision and that was his call to make, he’s the owner. “Nobody did a bad job on our team. Our friends across the fence, at Luna Rossa, did a much better job.” Asked what advice Dickson would have the Italian finalists, Dickson replied with a smile: “I don’t think they need a lot of advice, and they certainly don’t need it from me.”

So, what future for BMW Oracle and what future for Chris Dickson? “The future for the team is that Larry is committed to having the team continue. That was decided some time ago. The future for myself is I signed up for this campaign and we’ve got a bit of wrapping up to do for a few weeks, then I’ll be quietly heading back to New Zealand and taking my family to Disneyland on the way home, probably. And life goes on.”

Click here to hear more of Dickson's valedictory press conference

USA out, Italy in, Spain alive

2007-05-20T17:05:00.000+01:00

A great day for Italy and Spain, Luna Rossa booking an easy place in the Louis Vuitton Cup Finals and Desafio Espanol proving the match of the Kiwis in every department, winning a thrilling match by just 15 seconds.

Every time the Spanish win, they celebrate like they have just won the America’s Cup, such is the spirit in the team. Fortunately they have a day’s rest to get their heads together and contemplate the possibility of taking another match of New Zealand on Tuesday. It is by no means beyond the bounds of possibility.

Having witnessed Luna Rossa trounce BMW Oracle 5-1, the Spanish must be beginning to believe that the unthinkable really can happen against New Zealand. There is very little to choose between these teams in terms of boatspeed. On these 3.3 nautical mile race courses, when the breezes are steady and moderate, there are few passing lanes. Which loads a lot of responsibility on to the helmsmen in the pre-start.

This is where Chris Dickson came unstuck against James Spithill (pictured), and where Sten Mohr fared little better today in another pre-start where the young Australian dictated all the terms. Dean Barker is doing OK, but Karol Jablonski is certainly causing him some problems. Even if the Kiwis do get through, they must be seriously worried by what they’ve seen of Spithill this past week.

So too must Alinghi, who it is rumoured are going to use Ed Baird in the America’s Cup Match. However Baird’s strong suit is not in the pre-start, but more around the race track where he’s considered a more consistent bet than Peter Holmberg.

There is a view that Alinghi has enough pace to get round the challenger on pure boatspeed and that Baird is the man to do that for the Swiss. Is it as simple as that anymore, though? James Spithill has always been considered a class act, but sailing a boat that was always a little off the pace. That no longer seems to be the case.

Luna Rossa are becoming increasingly comfortable with their equipment and their set-up, and it’s hard to see anyone getting the better of Spithill if he maintains this sort of form in the pre-start. If the Italians can maintain this upward trajectory they are going to be very dangerous indeed, a threat to challengers and defender.

Dickson off the Boat, Mohr steps up to the Wheel

2007-05-20T10:48:00.001+01:00

Chris Dickson is off the boat today. Gavin Brady has taken over as skipper, with B boat helmsman Sten Mohr stepping up to the wheel. Larry Ellison is on board, to see his team racing for the last time... or to contribute to the beginning of a remarkable comeback for BMW Oracle Racing.

The last time Sten Mohr (pictured) steered USA 98 was in that disastrous race against China Team. If the American headstay foil hadn't blown up that day, the Americans wouldn't be in this predicament now. They'd have won the Round Robin and would have enjoyed the pick of their opponent in the Semi Finals.

But that's all water under the bridge. This is Mohr's big chance and it's going to be fascinating to see how he stands up to a James Spithill that's firing on all cylinders. The Danish match racing specialist joined the team last year as a test driver and sparring partner for Dickson. He used to sail with Victory Challenge.

A statement from BMW Oracle says: "The team has always built the sailing squad on the basis that there are two people for every position on the boat and it was felt necessary to bring some fresh blood in off the bench."

Chris Dickson said: "We brought our best package into the Semi Finals, but we have not achieved the results we were hoping for, so in my capacity as CEO I fully support any moves that will give us a choice to win." An interesting choice of words, "fully support" implying that Dickson was pushed rather than volunteered to step away.

One last sting in the Scorpion’s tail?

2007-05-19T19:54:00.001+01:00

Chris Dickson reputedly has the tattoo of a scorpion on his shoulder. The scorpion is fabled as a creature that commits suicide by stinging itself to death when surrounded by fire.

Today Dickson was trapped by a bush fire of young Aussie James Spithill’s making, as Luna Rossa chased USA 98 into ‘coffin corner’, the left-hand boundary of the start box from which boats rarely escape without penalty.

As Spithill harried USA 98 past the pin-end start mark and into the ‘zone of no return’, in a bid of desperation Dickson gybed around and tried to get across Luna Rossa bearing down on him on starboard gybe.

The aggressive young Aussie could have whacked USA 98 amidships, and the umpires judged it as a red flag penalty. BMW Oracle was adjudged to have gained advantage from the manoeuvre, and so the Americans were obliged to take their 270 turn immediately.

If the first penalty was born of desperation, the second penalty situation seemed born of frustration. Just seconds after the first incident, as both boats crossed the line on port tack with ITA 94 to windward, Dickson jerked the wheel to leeward, resulting in USA 98’s stern scoop swinging up to windward and thwacking into the side of ITA 94.

Both teams waved their Y flags frantically, James Spithill turning around with two fingers held aloft to the umpires (palm facing OUT, before you ask), demanding two penalties. Spithill got his wish and Dickson got his second penalty.

It was game over from there. Four boatlengths ahead, Luna Rossa tactician Torben Grael didn’t throw any of his 2.7km splits into the equation but played a much tighter covering game, to the relief of fluttering Italian hearts. The added bonus for the Italians is that they seem to have negated the Americans’ downwind speed advantage.

So where to go for BMW Oracle from here? One more defeat and the fires will consume BMW Oracle. However, another trait of the scorpion is that you trap it under a glass, it goes completely still, pretending to be dead when really it is waiting for its moment of escape – and revenge. Does Dickson have one last sting in his tail for Spithill?

Stirring Stuff from Wachowicz

2007-05-19T10:43:00.000+01:00

It’s not often that a sailor will get applause out of an audience as cynical as a bunch of sailing journalists, but Matt Wachowicz managed it at last night’s press conference. The American navigator on Desafio Español 2007 said spirits had never been higher in the Spanish team, even if they were 1-3 down against the Kiwis.

“I think you need to realise we’re a young team,” he said. “And we set our objectives realistically in the beginning. We accomplished our number one objective which was to make the Semi Finals. The day we did that, we sat down and we made a new goal and that was to go out and do our best to win a race in the Semi Finals.

“Two days ago, we accomplished that goal. So now we need a new goal. And it’s not just as simple as saying the new goal is going to be to win one more race. Our new goal is to win more than one more race. As I’ve said in the past, we believe every day when we leave the dock that we can win.”

When the team goes out today against New Zealand, there will be no shortage of motivation in the Spanish team. “It just is not a problem for us - every day that we are here is just such an incredible feeling. We are in the Semi Finals, and we are so happy to be racing. You should come on board and see it - win or lose, the guys have never been here before and we look forward to racing every day.

“We know we can give them a fight every time, and they know if they make one mistake, or slip up once, we are gonna jump on them and go past them. We are not worried about motivation or losing streaks, tomorrow we are going to go out there to win - that’s the way we see it.”

To listen to Matt Wachowicz in full, click here.

BMW Oracle eclipsed by Luna Rossa again

2007-05-18T19:03:00.000+01:00

A month or so ago, we media types were talking about how there was not one - but two places up for grabs in the Semi Finals, such was the perceived weakness of Luna Rossa at the time. Word on the street was that the Italians were struggling in pre-Act 13 training against the likes of Areva Challenge. The question was which of the 2nd tier teams would be joining the dead certs – BMW Oracle and New Zealand – as the other two teams in the Semis.

How wrong could we be? Now 3-1 up against BMW Oracle after another intriguing match in steady moderate breezes, they appear to be the equal of Americans in almost every department. Even the superior downwind speed of USA 98 was not in evidence today, with Dickson throwing everything but the kitchen sink at James Spithill down the final run but failing to unsettle the Italians who held their nerve for a 23-second victory.

It’s difficult to criticise a team that has just won, especially when the team tactician has five Olympic medals hanging around his neck, but why did Torben Grael put a small but comfortable lead at risk up the final beat by allowing yet another of these massive splits to develop?

We’ve seen some big separation between these two teams over the past week, but nothing like the 2.7 kilometre split that we saw today, with Grael going right and Gavin Brady taking the left. When they came back together at the middle of the top of the course, the Italians had gained one, maybe two boatlengths on the Americans. All that risk for that?

Then again, the Italians did round the final mark sufficiently far ahead not to be overly troubled by BMW Oracle down the last run, and the Luna Rossa gang looked more than a little happy when they crossed the finish line. In fact, maybe a little too happy. As Tom Ehman comments in his BMW Oracle blog: “At dock-in just now, the Luna Rossa fans next door worked a bit too much at being boisterous and exhuberant. I think that gives us all more motivation to go after them even harder tomorrow. No doubt we will come out swinging.” You’re doing well, Luna Rossa, but you haven’t won it yet. The Italians need to keep a bottle on their emotions for a few days longer.

Meanwhile, it was back to business as usual for Dean Barker and the Kiwis, after a solid win against the Spanish. Actually it was a pretty special pre-start by Barker as he pulled a ‘steel balls’ move on Karol Jablonski to win the right-hand side of the box, which he subsequently used to effect a ‘push’ on the Spanish boat, upsetting and slowing his opponent’s final approach to the line.

It was job done for Barker at that point, as strategist Ray Davies explained: “The emphasis was on being first off the start line and we put a little pressure on Dean to pull one out of the bag, and he did for us today. Certainly that half a boatlength lead was where the race was controlled from. We were able to set up to the left of the Spanish and there was never any right-hand shift they could come back on.”

The Overdogs get a Whipping

2007-05-16T20:42:00.000+01:00

What another fantastic day’s racing off Valencia. We probably wouldn’t have thought so, were it not for the fact that it was the perceived underdogs in both matches who led from start to finish. But when you’ve got Luna Rossa leading BMW Oracle and Desafio leading the Kiwis, you’re just waiting for someone’s wheels to fall off and for the lead to change.

Well, all credit to the Italians and Spanish, as they held the overdogs (is that the opposite of underdogs?) at bay. Perhaps we’re going to have to revise our perceptions of underdogs and overdogs. The fact is, BMW Oracle haven’t led Luna Rossa round any mark of any of the three matches thus far in the Semi Finals. That is an incredible statistic, and a very worrying one for the American team.

James Spithill is pouring on the aggression in the pre-start and is getting the better of Chris Dickson. Luna Rossa have won every start and BMW Oracle have been forced to fall back on searing downwind pace to haul them back into the game. It can’t help that Dickson is without his No.1 choice bowman, Brad Webb, who had to pull out a couple of days ago for some knee surgery. No doubt Kazuhiko Sofuku is every bit as able a bowman but he’s not had the benefit of honing his skills and communication with Dickson and the rest of the crew during the past few weeks of competition.

Having said that, Dickson lost today’s pre-start battle to Spithill long before the start gun fired. After being one of the most consistent pre-starters of the Round Robins, Dickson just doesn’t seem to be able to match the finesse of the young Australian. Of course as any good helmsman should, Spithill pays credit to the guys in front of him. “I’m feeling pretty comfortable just because I’ve got confidence in the guys - it feels like we have got a real strong team and the guys are really digging it in on the handles.

“When you’ve got that kind of belief it gives you that extra boost in yourself. The guys have pretty much said to me ‘put the boat wherever you need to and the sails will be there’ and they have delivered. So it’s full credit to those guys.”

Spithill probably has a brief to inflict as much damage on the opposition as possible in the pre-start, as does Karol Jablonski for the Spanish. When you’re the perceived underdog, it’s the best chance you have of winning a match race.

Look how dangerous Jablonski was against the Kiwis today, sticking a penalty on Barker. It’s what the Spanish thought they needed to beat the Kiwis, although actually they didn’t need it, because they led NZL 92 all the way round the track, a mighty confidence boost for a team that had never beaten in the Kiwis in any of their nine previous outings.

Both the Americans and the Spanish made a mode change to their boats last night. Of course, no one ever says what they’ve done or why, but when Spithill was asked his opinion on what might have changed on USA 98, he replied: “The rudder. That would be my guess.” A real guess? Or a little psychological dig at Dickson’s starting perhaps?

While there was no perceptible difference to the speed of USA 98, ESP 97 appeared finally to be able to match NZL 92 for pace upwind, an area where the Spanish had seemed to be a click off the pace. From being very much the fourth of the Semi Finallists, Spain is improving by the day and is not going to be the pushover that New Zealand fans might have hoped for.

At last, after a wobbly start, all is coming good in Valencia. The sun is shining, the wind is blowing, we’re up to date with the schedule, and every one of the four dogs is having its day. Keep the good times rolling.

Dickson back from the Dead

2007-05-15T19:42:00.000+01:00

A week ago Gavin Brady voiced the confidence that BMW Oracle Racing have in their boat USA 98. “I’ve personally never been on a boat where we feel we’re the only people that could screw it up for 98.”

The first two matches of the Semi Finals seem to bear that out, as Chris Dickson turned on the afterburners down the first run to reduce a whopping 58-second deficit at the windward mark to just 20 seconds by the leeward gate.

If the Americans ever manage to get comfortably in front, it’s hard to see Luna Rossa being able to match the awesome pace of USA 98.

But credit where credit is due, because both the Luna Rossa navigator Michele Ivaldi and his USA counterpart Peter Isler said it was also about picking good lanes downwind. And BMW Oracle found the better lanes of breeze today, as well as being faster.

“It is not all boat speed,” said Isler. “We are happy with USA 98 all around the course, the oscillations and puffs gave more opportunity for the trailing boat to look super fast than on a typical sea breeze day where it is more persistent. Gavin (Brady) and Eric (Doyle) did a great job calling the wind, it was good tactics on board and good sail trim. Boat speed is in play, but we have been playing the runs well.”

Overall, both afterguards sailed a tighter match today compared with yesterday’s freestyling all over the race course. However, the onshore conditions were much more predictable than yesterday so the passing lanes were fewer too. The first part of the final beat saw some close tacking until… both boats broke off from battle to go off chasing better breeze on their side of the course. Back to weather gambling again!

At one point the lateral separation across the course was more than 1.5km, with USA on the left, Italy on the right. What was amazing was that when they converged again at the top of the course, they were absolutely neck and neck, to the point where Dickson could initiate a luffing match.

James Spithill held his nerve to round the final mark 14 seconds ahead, but four or five seconds of that slender advantage were swallowed up by the difference in quality of spinnaker hoists. As usual it was the American boat that looked slicker.

Dickson was now able to put all sorts of pressure on the Italians, and when Grael opted to swap sides with USA 98 to claim the tactical power of the right, you got the sense that this was the Brazilian’s final weapon in his ever-depleting armoury.

Boat for boat, and manoeuvre for manoeuvre, the BMW Oracle team is just too strong for Luna Rossa – with the exception of the pre-start where first blood definitely went to Spithill. By far the stronger finishers, however, are the Americans, and they won by 13 seconds today.

Asked why BMW Oracle seem to make it so hard on themselves, why they’re always starting on the back foot, Isler laughed in reply: “It’s more fun and more spectacular! It is certainly harder on the heart, but with a great crew and boat, coming back is all part of the scene. Sometimes you are not going to come off the line first or get the first shifts so you have to have that ability if you want to win the Cup.”

It’s certainly highly entertaining stuff, and Dickson and Co warrant an Oscar nomination for the cliffhanger scripts they’ve been writing these past two days. Long may it continue. While the Americans are busy making Hollywood movies, the Kiwis are writing the text book on how to match race. And text books are very worthy but very boring, which is why I haven’t written about them today. I’m sure that will suit Dean Barker and his team just fine. They’d rather do boring than nailbiting any day.

Breakaway tactics see Luna Rossa topple BMW Oracle

2007-05-14T19:16:00.000+01:00

Two more contrasting styles in match racing you could not have hoped to see today. With the wind blowing off the city for the opening matches of the Louis Vuitton Cup Semi Finals, the fluky, shifty conditions made it a tough call as to whether afterguards should be chasing the best breeze or defending position on the race course.

Luna Rossa and BMW Oracle Racing seemed to favour the former – chasing the breeze at the expense of tactical positioning – while Emirates Team New Zealand never allowed Desafio Espanol room to breathe. The Kiwis were all over the Spanish like a rash, and while it never meant Dean Barker could put any sort of comfortable distance between him and Karol Jablonski, at least it meant he won the race.

The Italians and Americans, on the other hand, were playing a much faster and looser game, rolling the dice for a six and hoping for the best. Luna Rossa tactician Torben Grael is notorious for going for the big gamble, and quite often makes it pay.

When you’re the perceived underdog, as Luna Rossa are considered to be, it makes even more sense to break away from your opponent. The more separation you can create from your superior rival, the less significant any differences between boatspeed and boathandling become.

Which begs the question why the BMW Oracle afterguard were playing the same game of rolling for a six. USA 98 is considered to be one of the fastest – if not the fastest – boat among the challengers, and no one can match the slick crew work of the BMW Oracle crew.

So, why didn’t they do as the Kiwis did, and keep it tight on their opposition? Peter Isler commented at the press conference after racing: “The one thing that was clear was it was a very shifty day, and you had to try to connect the dots with the puffs. It looked like a day where you had to throw away some of your classic match racing tactics and keep a more open mind.”

The American team put their faith in the right, and it didn’t pay off, as they trailed Italy by 52 seconds at the top mark, an immense delta at this level. However, when Torben Grael took Luna Rossa back to the centre of the track downwind, it opened the door for USA 98 to charge down the right in a big puff of breeze, and suddenly that 400 metre deficit was down to zero again.

We were back into a full-on match race as Dickson tried to bully James Spithill out of his approach to the left-hand gate, but the Italians showed some good high-pressure boathandling to hold their nerve and protect the left-hand exit while Dickson made a dive for the right. At this point tactician Gavin Brady could have taken the fight back to the Italians with an early tack, but instead the Americans plugged on right and the Italians went left again. Within a matter of minutes the Italians had extended the gain line to 400 metres, and this time they held the lead comfortably to the finish.

Isler said the crucial moment came at the leeward gate when the Italians successfully defended the favoured left-hand mark. “That engineered a split that you don’t want to happen on a day like today. Had we gone back over immediately we’d have been four boatlengths behind. How would it have played out then? A bit more of a dogfight maybe?” Yes, it probably would have been, and with the great benefit of hindsight, BMW Oracle would have stood a much better chance of beating Luna Rossa.

The pressure must be beginning to tell on the American camp. After all, this is not a one-off. BMW Oracle could have played a tighter match to the Kiwis last Wednesday in the final decisive match of the Round Robins. By opting for a big split they lost out to Emirates Team New Zealand then, and they have done it again today against Italy.

In shifty conditions it’s a tough call knowing how to juggle priorities between best breeze and best tactical position. However, for a team that's so well equipped for close quarters combat, it’s surprising to see BMW Oracle try to fight their battles with inaccurate long-range weapons rather than getting stuck in to some hand-to-hand fighting. It will be interesting to see if Dickson, Brady and Isler decide to fix bayonets next time.

Will Jochen pick up where Jesper left off?

2007-05-10T20:05:00.000+01:00

There’s little getting away from the fact that 50m Euros for an America’s Cup campaign that produced just two victories – against China Team – represents absolute failure for United Internet Team Germany in the Louis Vuitton Cup. So, small wonder that Danish skipper Jesper Bank fell on his sword today at a press conference.

A double Olympic Champion in the Soling class, Bank comes across as a thoroughly decent human being in public, but the German team always seemed riddled with internal politics and infighting, and for that Bank must take a good chunk of the responsibility.

Germany’s first foray into the Cup might not have looked so bad if South Africa’s first campaign had not looked so good. With less than half the budget, Shosholoza finished 7th in the table and were light years ahead of Germany in every department.

One of the things that Shosholoza seemed to get so right was in committing to build a Version 5 boat and giving the team a good technical platform to work from. Not only that, but gaining that boatspeed advantage so early in the project helped boost the confidence of an inexperienced sailing crew. That was a luxury never afforded to the Germans as they hobbled round the course in the woefully slow GER 72.

It seems that is a lesson not lost on UITG head Michael Scheeren who said the team would build a new boat as soon as possible in the new cycle for the next America’s Cup. “The most important criterion for success in the America’s Cup is time - we have learned that. Therefore, we have decided to commission a new boat now. We will discuss the future with our sailors, who have been part of this campaign, in the next weeks.”

In light of today’s announcement, it explains why Bank looked close to tears at times in the skippers’ press conference yesterday. When the conversation got on to nationality rules, and whether there were any suitable homegrown candidates who could skipper a German team, Bank pointed in the direction of the Alinghi base and suggested there was someone over there who could do a good job. He was talking about Jochen Schuemann.

Schuemann is an old friend and rival of Bank’s from his Soling days, and is one of the most successful Olympic sailors of all time, with three Golds and one Silver to his name. But as we saw with Thierry Peponnet’s withdrawal from the skipper’s role for Areva last year and now Bank’s resignation from UITG today, Olympic Champions are not necessarily born to the role of America’s Cup skipper.

Schuemann learned about America’s Cup challenges the hard way in 2000 where the only thing to smile about with Switzerland’s first entry into the Cup was the syndicate name, the unfortunately titled ‘Be Happy’ campaign. Of course, as a key part of Alinghi’s 2003 whitewash of the Cup, Schuemann has since seen how a campaign should be run. But does that qualify him as the most appropriate candidate to lead Germany into its second Cup challenge? Possibly, but not necessarily. It will be interesting to see if Schuemann is prepared to pick up where his dear departed friend left off.

Barker puts Dickson in Detention

2007-05-09T18:38:00.000+01:00

Did you know Dean Barker and Chris Dickson both hail from the same school in Auckland? Neither did I, until today when I received a timely press release from the Westlake Boys High School. Actually Desafio tactician John Cutler is also from Westlake, but he’s standing on the naughty chair after his Kiwi salute to Vasco Vascotto a few days ago.

Anyway, it was Dean Barker’s turn to be headboy today, with Dickson given litter-picking duty in the playground. Dickson had the better of the pre-start and used his advantage to claim the left.

The Kiwis rolled off the line with USA 98, but after a couple of tacks, when Emirates broke way to the right BMW Oracle didn’t follow and carried on ploughing a lonely furrow to the left. By the time NZL 92 flopped back onto starboard, the lateral separation was massive.

At this stage the gain line gave a three boatlength lead to the Americans, but as a right-hand shift came in, the dial started spinning rapidly in Kiwi favour, and two minutes later they were almost 250 metres ahead. It was game, set and match from there.

The pre-race favourites lost it so badly that conspiracy theories are flying around Valencia. But it was just a bad weather call. The Americans wanted the left, won the left, and lost from the left. Which means that the Kiwis got to choose Spain for the Semis, while BMW Oracle faces a tougher challenge in Luna Rossa.

Not only will the Americans be ruing missed opportunities in today's match, but they will also regret that headsail foil breakdown against China Team all those days ago at the beginning of RR2. Looking at how sloppy the Spanish were today, winning the Round Robin is a definite ticket through to the LV Finals for ETNZ, although we shouldn’t read too much into the home team performance.

After a big night out on the town celebrating yesterday’s passage to the Semi Finals, the Spanish sailors’ complexions were matching their sickly green boat this afternoon. We can expect better in the Semi Finals, but it’s hard to see Spain causing much trouble for New Zealand.

What they said in the press conference:

Dean Barker, Skipper, Emirates Team New Zealand, on the dangers of choosing:
“It’s always tough in any match racing event when you have the opportunity to choose, because the top four teams are there because they’re fast. You choose your poison, and we’ve made the choice to race Spain.”

Chris Dickson, Skipper, BMW ORACLE Racing, on whether winning the Round Robins was worth fighting for:
“I think it’s certainly worth fighting for. That’s why Emirates Team New Zealand were out there, and that’s why we were out there. The bad news is we lost a boat race, the bad news is we don’t get to choose our poison. The good news is we don’t have to choose.”

Francesco de Angelis, Skipper, Luna Rossa, on the value of proper racing compared with in-house racing:
“With due respect to my team mates, when you race another team it is more valid, because you have things at stake. When you race your own team, if you make a mistake you can restart the exercise. When you race a team officially, you have one chance and that’s it. It’s a totally different game, and I’m sure that in racing you always learn and grow. I am not surprised at the set-up for these Semi Finals, and I’m sure that the guy who comes out of this will be a stronger competitor.”

Karol Jablonski, Skipper, Desafio Espanol 2007, on being chosen by New Zealand:
“There is no easy choice, and those teams are very strong, sometimes you choose the team that you are comfortable against but then you lose against them. Dean made the right choice. It gives us the opportunity to pay them back, so I thank you now for choosing us. It’s great for us to race New Zealand. We are really looking forward to race.”

You Lose, You Schnuss

2007-05-08T19:29:00.000+01:00

Magnus Holmberg was looking pretty dejected in the media zone after racing today. Hopefully the tobacco schnuss jammed under his top lip was helping to dispel the pain of missing a place in the final four of the LVC.

When the Kiwis made that disastrous start, the door briefly flew open for the Swedes to shut Spain out of the Semi Finals. However the Swedish gybes always looked ragged (not to mention hard work for bowman Pepe Ribes who shimmied up to the end of the spinnaker pole after every gybe) and maybe that’s why they gybed away from the right-hand side down the run with three minutes of sailing still left to do.

They didn’t want to take on the Kiwis in a simultaneous gybing situation on the layline. That was a battle that Team Tough was bound to win. So when the Swedes peeled away, the Kiwis held on and benefited from the better breeze for another two minutes before gybing, and that was the difference.

However in the Swedes’ defence, let’s not forget that this was a late campaign, and it was the highest-finishing one-boat campaign (ahead of the two-boat Mascalzone challenge). So it’s not all bad for the Swedes.

Holmberg commented: “At this moment I can’t see that much we could have done differently. Maybe we could have cut down the build time and got the boat earlier, but then again we got a boat that was really fast and rock solid. “I’m sure that when we sit down and evaluate the project we’ll find things that we could have done differently.

"But under the circumstances where we were last spring, I think we’ve made some pretty good decisions. I think fighting for one of the Semi Final spots with one of the smallest budgets is quite awesome, actually.”

Tactician Stefan Rahm sounded like he felt a bit robbed. “Right now we are probably one of the four teams that should have gone through - maybe. All the teams have been pressed by us, both in the pre-start and around the race course.”

What was surprising was that it was boathandling that seemed to let the Swedes down at crucial moments, and that’s something they should have been able to nail with the in-house training in their old boats. Where the team scored highly, however, was in the boat SWE 96, a credit to the Frers design team and Killian Bushe and his boatbuilding team.

Don’t be surprised to see the boat invited for some training with the eventual challenger a few weeks from now. Rahm said: “Together with Mascalzone I think we have a boat that is quite similar to Alinghi, both in terms of acceleration and volume in the bow which is fairly similar, so that might be something the challenger can learn from.”

Big Teams get off the Hook

2007-05-08T16:06:00.000+01:00

Big news today was Spain earning a Semi Final spot in the Louis Vuitton Cup, even if they did lose to BMW Oracle. In the other matches there were some real upsets in the starts, although by the finish all the big teams had ground down the opposition to keep a clean sheet.

Jes Gram-Hansen (pictured above) made amends for his hiccup against BMW Oracle yesterday with an epic pre-start battle against James Spithill and Luna Rossa. After an early dial-up with Luna Rossa controlling the right, Gram-Hansen pulled off a ‘steel balls’ manoeuvre to seize the power of the right from Spithill.

Two more dial-ups later, with Spithill trying to bully his way back into the right side of the box, but Mascalzone sought refuge by gybing around the committee boat and making a perfect start off the right-hand end.

Spithill got a bit greedy in his bid to chase down Gram-Hansen, and started a boatlength off the line, handing an early advantage to Mascalzone. It didn’t take long for ITA 94 to grind down the opposition with equal pace and superior pointing ability, however.

Luna Rossa seemed to have it all wrapped up, and then there was a late charge from Cameron Dunn (who steers the course after Gram-Hansen does the start) to bring the chasing boat back within striking distance. Unfortunately it was all too little too late, with Luna Rossa scraping the win by 7 seconds.

If Spithill got a little greedy, Dean Barker was positively gluttonous in the pre-start against Victory Challenge. The Kiwi tried to get the hook on Magnus Holmberg from deep in the box, and seemed to forget there was a start time to think about. By the time they’d given up on the hook, they tacked off to the right and started almost 25 seconds late across the line, while the Swedes started on the gun.

Tony Rae, who does runners on the Kiwi boat, commented: "Deano wasn’t very happy with himself today but it was a judgement issue and he realised that the timing was out and it put us a long way back, but we chipped away to get as close as possible at the top mark. I’m sure the Spanish weren’t very happy with us with that start."

Victory did a good job of holding off the Kiwis until the Swedes gybed off into the middle of the run, with Barker holding out to the right-hand side. The Swedes handed the lead to the Kiwis at that point, NZL 92 enjoying the better breeze, and once Barker rounded the leeward gate 10 seconds ahead, that was the race in the bag.

Still, some hard questions for Luna Rossa and New Zealand where time-on-distance in the pre-start is concerned. It’s hard to recall Chris Dickson having made those sort of mistakes over the past few weeks.

I managed to get a word with Peter Isler about BMW Oracle’s stunning start against Mascalzone Latino yesterday.
Click here for the Peter Isler interview…

And here’s Jes Gram-Hansen’s view on the same start, a rare aberration from one of the big discoveries of this America’s Cup. At 35 years old, he’s not exactly a young gun like the 27-year-old Spithill, but he’s every bit as confident, aggressive and consistent as the young Australian.
Click here for the Jes Gram-Hansen interview…

Victory gets away with 'The Hugo'

2007-05-08T10:50:00.000+01:00

Everyone’s been talking about the Victory Challenge chase boat drop yesterday, or as Tom Ehman suggests in his BMW Oracle blog, the ‘Hugo Drop’ ('no strings attached and has to be picked up afterwards')...

The Hugo was a beautiful move (click here to see Pierre Orphanidis’s photo sequence), albeit done in panic by the Swedish foredeck crew who just plain ran out of time as the leeward mark approached at 12 knots. The mastman took a knife to the halyard and the whole thing fluttered gently to the surface, a spontaneous advert for the Corum watch brand emblazoned on the spinnaker.

Santiago Lange, the Argentinean Tornado Olympic medallist who does traveller for Victory Challenge, admitted: “Our arrival at the leeward gate didn’t go well. One minute from the layline there were two gybes to go. We had to make the decision to lose it but it is actually quicker to execute a good manoeuvre than to dump the spinnaker. For sure in the meeting today there will be a lot of questions about what went wrong.”

Certainly when SWE 96 crossed the finish line just 7 seconds ahead of the fast-closing ESP 97, Magnus Holmberg’s gesticulations (no, he wasn’t doing a Cutler) to his team mates at the front of the boat were not the gesticulations of a skipper delighted to have just won the race. The Swedish gybes were looking distinctly shaky at times, and the more the polished Spanish team through gybes at them, the more vulnerable the Swedes looked.

Just after the Hugo, the Spanish hoisted a red flag and, even though the big 490 square-metre Corum jellyfish didn’t get in their way, it was surprising they didn’t see it through with a protest that evening. Navigator Matt Wachowicz said: “It’s obvious that they did it for tactical reasons, they showed absolutely no intention of recovering it, they cut the lines and threw it over - and it’s not illegal.”

Actually Peter Isler from BMW Oracle reckons it is illegal, so it seems there is some confusion about this situation, but the Spanish probably didn’t see it through because it probably wouldn’t have got them anywhere. It’s only a few days ago since the Spanish protested Mascalzone over those naughty backstays, and so there is a risk the home team might start coming across as litigious moaning minnies.

Even so, with so much at stake – a place in the Semi Finals – you could have understood them trying it on. They’ll just have to hope that Victory don’t do the unthinkable, and beat Emirates Team New Zealand today.

+39 breaks its duck against Shosholoza

2007-05-07T19:01:00.000+01:00

After so much promise in the fleet racing of Louis Vuitton Act 13, +39 Challenge really haven’t impressed during the Round Robins. The new Version 5 rig that was brought down by Germany during the fleet racing, broken into three pieces, was a massive setback for the team.

Every rig in the fleet is designed to twist for improved aerodynamics, and with the +39 rig patched up for the Round Robins, Iain Percy says it has lost that twisting ability, and the boatspeed is suffering accordingly.

However, today the team finally posted its first win from Round Robin Two, and against the giant killers on Shosholoza. It was all won on the start, with Iain Percy rolling off the line faster and directly ahead of the downspeed RSA 83. From there it was a calm and controlled covering job by Percy and tactician Ian Walker.

In other matches, the team’s lack of practice has really let them down. Today they sailed like a Semi Final candidate - although of course for +39 that horse bolted long ago.

Maybe Walker’s beard was the winning factor. After all, fellow Brit and Olympic medallist Ben Ainslie never shaves once an important regatta is underway, and it doesn’t seem to do him any harm.

Apparently Walker’s reasons for growing a beard are more out of a desire for anonymity, however. “I’m growing a beard so nobody recognises me,” said Walker this evening, embarrassed at +39’s lack of performance until today. “It’s not coming off yet, we’ve still got to beat Germany and China Team!”

No Excuse to Lose...

2007-05-07T13:33:00.000+01:00

A feeling of invincibility is growing around USA 98. BMW Oracle seem very comfortable with their new boat, far more so than they ever were with USA 87. One of the lynchpins of the Americans’ enormous design team, the Argentinean maverick Juan Kouyoumdjian, says he’s very happy with the USA 98’s performance compared with the Kiwis’ boats for example.

Here’s a comment about NZL 92 from an interview with Juan K on Kimball Livingston’s blog. “At the risk of being wrong - we haven't sailed against them enough to really know - I'd say the boat lacks a touch of speed. That team can compensate with rigs, sails, sailing talent, but if you give that boat to any of the second-tier teams, you won't see them going any faster."

Tactician Gavin Brady is pretty impressed too: “What I like about 98 is the effort the builders put in to building it, she’s built down to the lightest tolerances ever seen, which maximises our stability.”

Brady believes this is the best boat he’s ever sailed on. “The first thing you do is you jump on a boat and work on minimising your weaknesses. It might have a really good fast mode or really high mode, but you don’t often get both. The nice thing with 98 is she seems to have both.

“My feeling is, if I was racing 98, and asked myself how I’d exploit her, well, she’s quite a formidable boat – she goes high, she goes low, she accelerates, she doesn’t stall. She’s an all-round nice boat. I’ve never seen it all come together before so nicely, the whole package, it’s four years of a lot of money, a lot of development, good people.”

The way Brady puts it, the boat is almost an extension of skipper Chris Dickson. Remember, Brady walked away from the team a couple of years ago because Dickson moved him off the wheel. Now that Brady’s back, he seems more than happy to operate in the tactician’s role while Dickson continues to steer.

“USA 98 has options, has modes, and one of the biggest features is Chris Dickson drives the boat extremely well. He’s very dialled in right now. I don’t think anyone is steering their boat as fast as Chris.

“He’s very confident with the boat. 98 is one thing, but having Chris Dickson drive it is the number one factor, it’s that package. He has a really good feel for the load on the rudder, that relationship is quite special. I’ve personally never been on a boat where we feel, we’re the only people that could screw it up for 98.”

Click here to listen to the whole MP3 interview with Brady in its entirety. It’s about 8 minutes.

Brady looks forward to speed testing with the Kiwis

2007-05-06T19:00:00.000+01:00

Gavin Brady was on typically chatterbox form after today’s race against +39 Challenge. Brady is always good for a quote.

From what Brady said this afternoon at the media zone, he’s more interested in racing the Kiwis to be able to compare boatspeed rather than gaining that top spot in the Semi Finals, which would give the winner the option of picking their opponent.

Here’s a clip of what he said about the much anticipated race-off between the Kiwis and BMW Oracle: “I think it’s pretty important. Both teams are going to be full on in that last race, because we’ve only raced them once with our best equipment. We’ve raced them in flat water in 8 knots of wind. So it would be interesting to see some different performances in maybe more wind and choppier water.

“We haven’t seen the best of USA 98 yet, and I’m sure they feel the same. We need to see our mode against theirs. We’re going to have a couple of days off, and then we want to see how we mode our boat against the boat in the Semis.

"We’ll get into remoding our equipment, all our keels, masts and rudders. We’ve got different equipment we can pull off the shelf and put them on the boat. Hopefully we know exactly how to fight against them.”

Surely booking that top spot in the Semis is important too, though? "In a normal match race regatta, you feel like you have a massive advantage picking your opponent. Psychologically it would be nice to be able to pick your opponent, but really that’s just a feelgood factor. Whoever you don’t pick you’ll still end up racing them later.

"Race them sooner or later, it doesn’t really matter. In this regatta, coming 2nd in the Louis Vuitton is no different to coming 5th. We’ve got to race everyone at some stage."

Shosho will be back, but +39? Errrr... that will be a NO then!

2007-05-06T11:04:00.000+01:00

As teams begin to fall by the wayside on the road to the 32nd America’s Cup, it’s great news to hear that some are already beginning to make plans for the next time. Team Shosholoza may have missed the cut for the final four in the Louis Vuitton Cup, but the South Africans have covered themselves in glory, and syndicate head Captain Salvatore Sarno said they would be back.

“Most probably Defender Alinghi will win again and if they do,” said the Captain. “It is not final but 99 per cent sure, the next Cup will be in Valencia. If this is the case I hope that we will be able to launch RSA 101 by February next year and have it ready for the first Acts in May. My plan is that we have a two-boat programme.”

One team that we can be fairly sure won’t be making a re-appearance at the 33rd Cup is +39 Challenge. If anyone was in any doubt about the team’s future, jib trimmer Stefano Rizzi (pictured above) left us in no doubt at the media zone. It’s well known that there is no love lost between the sailors and their management, but no one has voiced it quite as explicitly as Rizzi.

“I would never have thought that at the age of 40 I would be involved in such a badly run project, but this campaign will give me the drive to do another one, because it can’t be worse than how it went here, it’s impossible. This is the America’s Cup, and you have to do it well, like in any great sporting event.

“I don’t want them [the +39 management] ever to get involved again. Everything was wrong, from the poor fundraising to the lack of organisation. The +39 project was a blueprint for how not to do the America’s Cup. This project was on the wrong track from the very beginning. We have been dealing with people with not enough experience and too much arrogance. They didn’t want to learn from the people who had experience and there was a lack of humility on their part.

“It’s a pity, because the sailing crew is excellent. I wanted to quit the America’s Cup after this edition, but now, to wash away the dirt from this campaign, I must do another one, even if I don’t get paid for it!”

Kiwi salute goes down badly with the Italians

2007-05-05T19:23:00.000+01:00

In the grudge rematch this afternoon, Desafio Espanol 2007 bounced back from a poor start with some great downwind moves and socked it to Mascalzone Latino. Both teams were fired up for this one, which was evident from the exuberant celebrations by the team in green when they crossed the line.

However, Vasco Vascotto spotted a gesture he didn’t like the look of, and it came from Desafio’s Kiwi tactician John Cutler. Vascotto didn't take kindly to this, and made his feelings evident in the media zone after racing. “It’s disappointing the end of their victory was marred by an unsportsmanlike gesture from John Cutler. In my crew I have Spanish sailors and he - who is a Kiwi - doesn’t deserve to sail on a Spanish boat. The whole world saw this, and I hope the Jury saw it too.”

John Cutler responded: “I come from New Zealand and the gesture that I made doesn’t mean anything. We were all partying between us [the sailing team] and the men from the chase boat, and maybe some of my gestures were misunderstood.” Cutler added that if Mascalzone had a problem with something he’d done, he was ready to apologise.

Certain physical gestures carry more weight in some cultures than others, but the America’s Cup is a multinational event and if Cutler made the alleged gesture then he was naive to think that others might take offence where a Kiwi might not.

A protest under Rule 69 of the Racing Rules for unsportsmanlike conduct would not be beyond the realms of possibility, but that seems unlikely. In any case, one sailor told me that he has been on the receiving end of gestures every bit as offensive from Vascotto in previous regattas. So a Rule 69 against Cutler would have the whiff of hypocrisy.

Yesterday Vincenzo Onorato said he approved of the rematch because it was the fairest way to measure the sailing abilities of these two teams. On the water, Spain won. Let's hope that will be the end of it.

49er Sailors flying high in the Cup

2007-05-04T19:51:00.000+01:00

I've just published a story about 49er sailors in the America's Cup. There's an excerpt of it below, but for the full text click here.

Emirates Team New Zealand has not looked as sharp as people had expected in the early phases of the Louis Vuitton Cup. One of the reasons suggested has been the injury to the team’s strategist Adam Beashel, whose finger was badly mashed in a winch during Louis Vuitton Act 13. Fortunately surgery later that night meant that Beashel’s finger could be saved, although he has yet to recover to the point where he is fit enough to go racing again.

Beashel’s speciality is sniffing out the best lines of breeze from his lofty perch up the top of NZL 92’s mast. With the wind having been in short supply in Valencia since the beginning of the Louis Vuitton Cup, that sixth sense for finding the best breeze can be a race winner. The Kiwis will be pleased when Beashel is fit enough to get back up the rig on those light and fickle days.

Beashel is one of a number of sailors who graduated to the America’s Cup from the Olympic skiff class, the 49er. At first sight, you’d wonder what the connection between an ultra-light 16-foot two-man dinghy and an 80-foot 24-tonne keelboat would be, but according to Luna Rossa tactician Charlie McKee there are some useful similarities. “Downwind in a Cup boat you’re sailing quite big angles, like you do in a 49er,” says McKee, a double Olympic medallist and former World Champion in the 49er. “The other thing is that both a Cup boat and a 49er travel pretty much at wind speed downwind, so you learn to look in the right place for the breeze.”

Click here for the rest of the story...

Onorato happy to be buying the ice creams

2007-05-04T13:00:00.000+01:00

Vincenzo Onorato called a press conference at the Mascalzone Latino-Capitalia Team base this morning. It was a typically flamboyant affair, with the charismatic Onorato in flamboyant and upbeat mood. And so he should be, after getting off the hook with another 10,000 Euro fine (remember the one from a couple of days ago for the paint job).

Mascalzone Latino have been fortunate to find Bryan Willis and his jury in generous mood. This could so easily have been a disqualification for the Italians, which would have snuffed out any realistic hope of reaching the Semi Finals.

The Italians held their hands up to moving the top-mast backstays during the race. Indeed they admitted they had missed the rule change from two years ago which forbids such moving of the stays during racing. So for the past two years, the Rascals have unwittingly been moving the backstays around without realising that they were infringing the rule.

When British journo Bob Fisher asked Onorato why the team seemed to be getting away with financial penalties rather than competition penalties, the Mascalzone boss replied: “I don’t know, Bob, maybe it’s pocket money for ice cream. I don’t know the answer to that.” Not quite the answer that Bob was looking for, but it kept the press conference amused.

Onorato commented: “We made a mistake, but the jury came out with a decision saying that what we did had no effect on the result of the race. I am quite happy with the decision of the jury, because they have made it from a sporting point of view. One win for the Spanish, one win for us, now it’s time for a rematch.

“The rematch will say without any doubt who is the best on the water. So this is wonderful, something I like very much.” Mascalzone Latino are certainly living up to their name. The cheeky chappies are among the most popular teams in Valencia, but there is a feeling they have got off lightly again.

Walker talks through the 'With or Without Backstay' Dilemma

2007-05-03T18:49:00.000+01:00

This evening the protest takes place between Desafio Espanol and Mascalzone Latino. For the Italians, this potentially is a make or break meeting, because if the Spanish succeed in making their accusation stick (of illegal use of the top-mast backstays on Mascalzone), then it will be two points harder for Vasco Vascotto's team to break through to the Semi Finals.

At the press zone this evening I asked Ian Walker from +39 Challenge about this whole thing of removable backstays. Ian says on +39 they make a decision based on windstrength as to whether or not they'll need them. If it's light enough to get away without them, Ian texts one of the shore team who passes the message on to the measurers, who must be informed of such changes before the race.

It all seems a bit precarious mucking about with removable stays, but it seems it's common practice in the Cup, although for some teams more than others. In the 2000 Cup, the Kiwis were in the habit of clipping them on for downwind and unclipping them when they weren't needed upwind. Once the Kiwis started doing it, everyone else followed. But it was a far from desirable situation. So to get past all the hassle and potential danger of this practice, the rules were changed to say you either do a race with them, or without. No in-betweens.

However, it seems it hasn't really simplified matters. It just makes it more dodgy for teams if they get caught out by a sudden increase in the breeze. "It depends on your boat and design," says Ian. "For instance the South Africans never use top-mast backstays. If you design a really stiff mast you can get away without using them, or it depends on your jumper configuration.

"On +39, we take them off the top of the mast and then you have to attach them to the bottom of the mast below deck, because the mast is measured with them on, so you have to have the weight of the backstays on the rig. If you want to use them because you're worried that it's going to be windy enough that you'll need them, then you put them on."

So if the wind pipes up, then you can't hoist your kite? "Well... you can hoist your kite, but it might look like a 49er downwind! It depends on your rig. For instance we haven't had time to find out if we could get away without them. Our jumpers swing right back and I suspect we'd be fine if we never used them. But until you go out and try it, you never know.

"The geometry of your jumpers gives a lot of support to the mast upwind and downwind, depending on the configuration. It's a design decision. If you've got a lot of aft sweep on your jumpers you probably don't need them. South Africa don't use them, but then they never use S sails, so they just sail hotter with an A sail and they don't need them."

Spanish protest Rascals over their backstay

2007-05-03T14:25:00.000+01:00

So far so good for the change of helmsman on Mascalzone Latino, with Cameron Dunn doing a good job for the Italian boat in the must-win match against Desafio Espanol 2007 yesterday. The Rascals are still in with a chance of deposing the Spanish from that coveted fourth Semi Final place.

However, it seems yesterday's match between Mascalzone and Desafio is not quite over, with the Spanish putting in a protest against the Italians, who they claim made illegal use of their backstay during the race in question. It's an arcane rule, but basically if you choose to start the race with your backstay you must finish the race with your backstay. If you start the race without your backstay, you must complete the race without your backstay - which is a real problem if the wind pipes up half way through the race.

Why, you might ask, would you not want to attach your backstay? Apparently removing all that weight and windage is worth a couple of seconds per mile, and in the last Cup in Auckland, a man would be sent aloft in light winds to attach the backstay for downwind support, and remove it for reduced windage upwind. The new rules for this Cup forbid jiggling around with this on/off backstay arrangement. Either you use it or you don't.

It seems the Spanish are alleging Mascalzone did a bit of both with their backstay yesterday. There is a jury hearing this evening, and the Italians must be quaking. If Desafio's video evidence is conclusive, then it is hard to see the jury doing anything other than disqualifying the Italians. Unlike Mascalzone's poor choice of paint manufacturer a couple of days ago, which incurred a 10,000 Euro penalty, the jury are unlikely to look so leniently on this oversight.

Kiwi takes the Rascals' wheel

2007-05-02T17:19:00.000+01:00

Five losses in a row?!! I hadn't even realised until Vincenzo Onorato pointed it out yesterday. After such a strong start, that is a disappointing run of form for Mascalzone Latino-Capitalia.

Is it the right thing to change helmsman at this stage in the game though? Substituting Flavio Favini for Kiwi Cameron Dunn seems like desperate measures, but then again, I suppose the time has come for desperate measures. This time next week, 11 teams will have been slashed to just 4.

Team head Onorato commented: “Five losses in a row have seriously affected our morale, it would be wrong to deny. In today’s sailing team meeting the burn from the losses was evident. However my men are not depressed but angry, with a real desire to recover and that is exactly the way I’d like them to be.

“We’ve also felt the fatigue from the last days. The Cup is a long and strenuous commitment, for this reason I have decided to change the helmsman, for tomorrow’s race, from Flavio Favini to Cameron Dunn. We have very qualified and capable replacements and now is the time to make use of them. I would like to thank all of those who have shown their affection and still believe in us: Mascalzone Latino is still very much alive!”

So can Dunn make a difference? Mascalzone suffered a torrid match race season back in 2005, and then Cameron Dunn was put on the wheel for the final day in Trapani. If memory serves me right, the team won both matches.

The problem for Mascalzone Latino is that they have tried to remain true to their Italian roots. Onorato is a true romantic, and wants to see an Italian team succeed where so many have failed in the past.

Trying to maintain a nationalistic team in an event where the nationality rules are so relaxed is like trying to sail with one arm tied behind your back. Probably the only nation that could fill a Cup boat with 17 home-grown sailors who are truly world class is New Zealand. And even they've got three Americans in the afterguard. Indeed some are suggesting ETNZ is foolish not to have a British helmsman!

In Italy's case - strange though it is for a nation whose passion for the Cup runs deeper than any - there are few if any world class match racing helmsmen from Italy. Paolo Cian has re-established his credentials steering for Shosholoza but it's hard to think of any others. Francesco de Angelis made the sensible move of stepping aside to make way for Australian James Spithill becoming the helmsman of Luna Rossa. They look much stronger for it.

As I have mentioned before, one of the best moves Mascalzone has made in the last year is the appointment of Jes Gram-Hansen as starting helmsman, and the Dane has transformed the team's fortunes in the pre-start box. Flavio Favini's record as a fleet racing helmsman is exemplary, but match racing doesn't stop when the start gun fires. Perhaps Cameron Dunn's appointment is a reflection of that.

Let's hope the Kiwi's move to the wheel (plus the boat's new paint job ;) gives the Rascals back their Mojo, to borrow a Peter Isler phrase.

Wind stopped play

2007-05-01T15:48:00.000+01:00

No racing again, but this time because of too much wind, just over 30 knots of it. It's either too much or too little. Shades of Auckland 02/03 perhaps? Disappointing all round for sailors, spectators and sponsors.

If TV is as vital to the Cup as we are told, then something has to change. So what's the answer? The same as when it was blowing 3 knots. A canting keel Super Maxi, capable of racing in anything from 3 to 33 knots, quite capable of sailing in a good deal more.

But - the argument goes, you'd have to massively overbuild the boats to make them man enough for the nasty stuff. 'Overbuilt' is a bad word because it's a byword for 'slow'. So here's a video of a boat that's sufficiently overbuilt to be able to withstand the rigours of the Rolex Sydney Hobart Race.

Seeing as its sistership Wild Oats has won the last two Hobarts, there's no disputing the Reichel-Pugh/McConaghy pedigree. The boat is as overbuilt as it needs to be. A Valencian swell like we saw today would be no sweat. But what would it be like in a good, solid 10-12 knots? After all, those are the perfect conditions for a finely tuned, delicately balanced ACC boat.

Well, take a look for yourself. The boat in the video (and the photo above) is Neville Crichton's Alfa Romeo, just minutes after the start of last year's Rolex Middle Sea Race. As you watch the video [shot by my flatmate in Valencia, the inimitable Andrea Falcon], ask yourself if the words 'overbuilt' or 'slow' come to mind....

What goes around, comes around... but not always in the same day!

2007-05-01T11:58:00.000+01:00

So, $102,600 to ride as 18th man on the back of BMW Oracle. That's what the Ebay bid fetched, so well done to BMW Oracle, good luck to the 18th man (or lady perhaps), and congratulations to the Susan Komen breast cancer charity which benefits from the proceeds.

It seems terribly unfair that on the very day they do this good deed that BMW Oracle should suffer such a calamitous breakdown as they did against China Team. But maybe God doesn't leave good feedback until He's seen the PayPal transaction has come through safely...

Oh dear, I'm going straight to hell for that one!

Day of the underdog

2007-04-30T22:19:00.000+01:00

Today’s line-up looked pretty ho-hum, and with the stronger breeze it seemed like everything would run to form. How wrong can you be! BMW Oracle v China Team should have been the dullest of matches, but no sooner had former BMW Oracle bowman Geordie Shaver made the comment on America’s Cup Radio that this was still a pressure race for the B-boat crew (because that is who was sailing USA 98 today), than the jib blew out of the headstay foil.

Poor old Sten Mohr and the rest of the B-boaters – sent out to do a routine bit of paperwork at the office – and then the window bursts open and all the paperwork goes blowing off down the street. Imagine going back to the BMW Oracle base and having to tell the bosses what happened on their day off!

Fortunately for the sailing crew, Ian Burns, head of the design team, took it on the chin. “It was disappointing. We couldn’t get round intact so they [China Team] deserve the two points - these things happen in sailing, it’s part of the territory really. We were surprised and disappointed to see that failure, but I think it’s a sign of cutting it too close for comfort, and we will be reviewing that and a few other things to make sure that we are good enough to go the whole way. Maybe the compensation is that losing a couple of points to China Team is not as expensive as losing them to some of the other competitors out there.”

Areva Challenge sailed a blinder of a day, taking both of their races – first against Mascalzone Latino which the French won with a sucker punch of a luffing match on the first run. And then they pounced on +39 Challenge down the final run of a thrilling showdown between these teams that promise so much, but don’t quite have the finesse to match the top teams.

It was a day of so near and yet so far for Iain Percy and the +39 gang. To lose by just one second to Desafio Espanol in their first match after dominating the Spanish in the pre-start and leading for all but the final hundred metres, only to repeat the whole painful process against Areva. Hardly surprising, though, considering the severe lack of practice and organisation this team has endured for the past two years.

The team can sail smart and fast when unbothered by the other boat, but in close quarters contests the boathandling just wasn’t sufficiently tight. What Areva and +39 Challenge have both proven today, however, is that they are no pushovers and both teams must be treated with respect.

Possibly two of the most eagerly anticipated matches of the day, Victory v Luna Rossa and Mascalzone v New Zealand, proved to be among the least exciting. Not that they were dull, but the two middle-order teams had an opportunity to prove their pedigree as Semi Finals contenders, and neither managed to do so.

With Desafio’s skin-of-the-teeth win from +39 Challenge, the Spanish hold a useful three point lead over their rivals for the fourth spot in the Semis. That one second victory today could be the moment that Spain ensured its survival beyond the end of the Round Robin phase, little more than a week from now.

Victory from the Jaws of Defeat

2007-04-30T10:57:00.000+01:00

Victory Challenge seem to have been one of the underperformers of the Round Robins to date, not to mention their woeful catalogue of sail-handling errors in the fleet racing of Louis Vuitton Act 13. Yet here they are in 5th place on the leaderboard, so there is still much for the Swedes to play for.

How many more Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free cards will come their way though, such as the one handed to them by Shosholoza yesterday? The spinnaker pole breakage was another heartbreaking moment for the South Africans who, while they have great boatspeed and are sailing tactically very well, are being let down either by ripping spinnakers or snapping poles.

These can be the hardest defeats to take, as skipper Mark Sadler's comment indicates: "It is so disappointing, you can't imagine. Have a second spinnaker pole on board would be too heavy, so what can we do? We didn't make any mistakes at all during the race but we had some strange manoeuvres. All was going so well, we are fast and good. And then once again a material problem. When it happened I thought, 'Oh no, not again!' We have to keep going of course, but this is really hard to digest."

It all just seems to be slipping away for Shosholoza after such a strong start to the Round Robin campaign. A Semi Finals spot now looks a long way away, with Desafio Espanol displaying the sort of form that suggests they are not going to relinquish 4th spot without a big fight.

What the smaller teams must keep on telling themselves is that anything can happen in these conditions. Covering your opponent in such fickle breeze can be a fool's game, with the greater priority being to tap into the best power supply up the course. Gavin Brady's comment after BMW Oracle's race against Germany shows how weather-focused the American team was yesterday: "Our weather team told us there would be a pretty big right hand shift, and whoever was in front would probably win the race.

"So the mentality had to shift from it being a four-leg race to being a one-leg race, and we knew we had to maximise everything, make sure we had our best sail up, and win the start and the first windshift. So there was a little bit of heat on board for that first leg. But our weather team predicted it dead right – it became a one-way race course."

One of the most intriguing of today's matches looks the line-up between Victory and Luna Rossa. The Swedes have proven themselves well capable of giant-killing in the past, and Luna Rossa's starting has been off-key of late, so Victory have to believe they can win this confrontation - without the sort of luck that they relied on yesterday.

And then there is the prospect of Mascalzone Latino against Emirates Team New Zealand, two teams that for different reasons have their backs against the wall. For the Kiwis it is a matter of pride and team morale to keep Mascalzone at bay, while for the Italians it is a matter of staying in the hunt for the last four.

Thumbs Up for BMW Oracle

2007-04-28T19:06:00.000+01:00

A fantastic day’s racing in Valencia to conclude a Round Robin that at one time seemed like it would never end. So what did we learn from today? Well, for starters, that none of the helmsmen in the leading teams are infallible.

It’s easy to overlook the fact that Chris Dickson, with all the other responsibilities he faces as head of BMW Oracle Racing, remains one of the best starters in the business. He has looked very consistent in the pre-starts. In the big decider match to determine who would win Round Robin One, he had Dean Barker and the Kiwis wrapped up like a kipper. Dickson saw a moment to close the Kiwis out of the start and put BMW Oracle at a massive early advantage.

However, Dickson got greedy and in his eagerness to post a ‘kill’, lost control of the situation and let Barker off the hook as NZL 92 sailed off to an unexpected early lead. However, the fact that the Kiwis ended up winning the start shouldn’t distract from the fact that in both pre-starts today the New Zealand boat looked in all sorts of trouble.

Magnus Holmberg can take credit for winning the pre-start against Barker in the match earlier this afternoon, although it was another case of the Kiwis wriggling out of trouble and finding better breeze on the right. Barker has been taking a lot of flak in some corners of the media for his inconsistent starting performances and rightly so, on the strength of what we saw today.

James Spithill, helmsman of Luna Rossa, is seen by some as the Russell Coutts of the next generation. Widely acknowledged as one of the most aggressive but controlled match racers in the game, we didn’t see the best of the young Aussie in the Italian team’s starts against Mascalzone Latino and Desafio Espanol – even if Luna Rossa ended up as the only team to win both matches today. Again, when analysing starting performance, Luna Rossa's results flatter to deceive.

Arguably the star of the pre-starts has been Jes Gram Hansen, whose roughing up of Luna Rossa today put Mascalzone Latino at a significant advantage on the first beat. It was unfortunate that Mascalzone could not hold on to that lead until the end of the race, but that is no reflection on the up-and-coming Dane’s starting ability.

It seemed that in today’s fickle and unpredictable conditions, winning or losing the start had little bearing on the eventual outcome of the race. There were numerous passing opportunities, and so it was a big day for the windspotters at the top of the rigs, sniffing out the best puffs of breeze wafting down the track. Desafio’s second helmsman, Jesper Radich, made the comment during his guest spot on America’s Cup Radio today that 90% of teams who lead round the first mark go on to win the match. But in these unstable conditions, raw statistics appear to count for little.

The unsteady breezes have certainly added to the excitement of Round Robin One, but have made it less easy to discern any real boatspeed differences between the top teams. Desafio Espanol won a drag race off the start line with BMW Oracle and beat the American boat fair and square, so there appears little wrong with the Spanish package. The Italian teams on the other hand seem more reliant on some decent breeze to get their boats up to race-winning pace.

Top Italian team Luna Rossa hasn’t looked entirely convincing and yet at the end of this intriguing first phase they lie second in the rankings. So, not so bad after all, perhaps? Along with Luna Rossa, the Spanish are the team in the ascendant. Confidence will be blooming, while in the New Zealand camp there will be a feeling that things just aren’t clicking. Before this season, most pundits would have put the Kiwis just ahead of BMW Oracle as the favourite to race Alinghi later this summer. After Round Robin One, however, the Challenger of Record is looking the most likely to front up against the Swiss.

The big teams are all facing a relatively straightforward start to Round Robin Two, with the exception of Emirates Team New Zealand’s draw against Mascalzone Latino, who claimed a Kiwi scalp in Round Robin One. It will be vital for Kiwi confidence to get the better of Jes Gram Hansen and the Latin Rascals at the start. If not, then the pressure will only continue to build on the New Zealanders.

Areva caught out by plumb crazy rule

2007-04-28T13:01:00.000+01:00

While there's not much point in Areva Challenge crying over spilt milk, they must feel a little hard done by after being ruled as Did Not Finish from yesterday's finish line drama against Team Shosholoza.

I'm sure that race officer Peter 'Luigi' Reggio and Bryan Willis's jury are absolutely correct in having determined that Areva's mast tip never recrossed to the course side of the line, and rules is rules. But what a harsh way to lose a point. Natural justice would suggest that if you re-round the finish buoy without hitting it, then that should be sufficient to offload the penalty.

The counter-argument could run that if you don't want to take the risks inherent with using the finish buoy as the place to offload the penalty, then Areva could have taken the 270 degree turn further up the course. Of course that wouldn't have won them the race either because the finish between Shosholoza and the French was close enough as it was, let alone trying to do a penalty before the finish and then sailing the final few metres downspeed with just mainsail and genoa up.

So Areva were damned if they did and damned if they didn't. In the modern media world where audiences demand instant decisions, however, doesn't it make sense to revise this rule rather than have this overnight delay until a jury can make the final decision? Meanwhile, next time Areva have to take a penalty, they should send a man aloft with a very long plumbline hanging from the top of the mast. That way they'll know for sure whether they were clear or not!

Ebay your way into the race

2007-04-26T22:25:00.000+01:00

Fancy a ride on BMW Oracle, the boat of the moment? Well, if you've got $40,000 spare, then you could ride as 18th man aboard USA 98. Go and bid on Ebay for the spot. Actually, it's already $40k and there's four days to go, and the way that Chris Dickson and Co. are sailing, you can expect bids to go considerably higher.

What's more, it's all in a good cause, because 100% of the proceeds are going to a breast cancer charity. What a great use of an 18th man spot - a good deal better than Alinghi anyway - who have a policy of never taking a passenger. Not that it's going to happen, but wouldn't it be great to see an Ebay match race between the Challenger of Record and the Defender, and see who can pull in the biggest charity bucks!

Click here if you fancy a punt on ebay...

Yeah, baby! I've got my Mojo back!

2007-04-26T20:45:00.000+01:00

A lovely quote from BMW Oracle navigator Peter Isler this evening: "That sort of mojo is beautiful when you can earn it or talk yourself into it that you have it. There is a little bit of that going around. And confidence breeds confidence. To keep winning and keep doing well and not taking chances and sailing conservative races, taking a chance only once in a while when it is necessary, and as long as we are fast - that will end up putting points on the scoreboard."

That sums up an excellent regatta so far for Chris Dickson and the Americans, who have gone unbeaten while every other team has dropped two or more matches. A good day for Luna Rossa too, as James Spithill confirmed his reputation as one of the smartest match racers on the racing scene, getting the better of Dean Barker in the pre-start and upsetting the form book to beat the Kiwis.

Desafio Espanol are earning a lot of respect for their performances and seem to be coming on strong while the wheels have been falling off the Shosholoza wagon of late. Ken Venn, mid bow on the South African boat admitted afterwards: "Unfortunately we ripped two spinnakers because of the way our rig is set up. It has a few sharp edges that need to be softened tonight."

If the kite-ripping problem really is as easily solved as that, then it begs the question why this hasn't been addressed before. The South Africans are getting so much of the difficult stuff right, it would be a great shame if they don't progress to the Semi Finals through such basic oversights on the boat maintenance.

After Alinghi's weather briefing yesterday morning, the breeze at last seems to be coming good in Valencia, the Lord be praised. With the exception of Wednesday's racing - which pretty much ran to the bookies' form - every day has some seen some upsets. Having said that, when you look at the overall standings now, things are pretty much running to expected form.

One of the slight surprises is just how dominant BMW Oracle are proving. The Kiwis have yet to impress in the way that Kiwis usually do, while Luna Rossa seems to need some breeze for their square-shaped Star boat to pick up her skirts and get going. Perhaps they have geared ITA 94 to the stronger breezes that are expected to come in later in the series, but as far as getting through to the Semi Finals, they are by no means assured of that. Desafio and Mascalzone in particular are looking like strong contenders for the Semis, so optimising your boat for later in the regatta - if indeed that is what Luna Rossa have done - is a risky strategy.

Tomorrow's line-up looks mouthwateringly good, with plenty of close matches in store. And hopefully more upsets.

Alinghi attempts to Defend the weather, as well as the America's Cup!

2007-04-25T10:06:00.000+01:00

This from a media release by Alinghi this morning:

At a media briefing this morning, the Alinghi weather team, Jon Bilger (left in photo) and Jack Katzfey (right) explained to the media the recent weather pattern that has been plaguing the start of the Louis Vuitton Cup. They gave the statistics of sailing days in Valencia from 2000 until now and an explanation of the tools they use to make their weather predictions. Alinghi team skipper, Brad Butterworth, was also present.

Here are some of the frequently asked questions, answered:

1. Why do we have this irregular weather pattern in April?
“This April is very unusual in the sense that we have an atmospheric block over Europe which is not atypical, but it is a particularly strong block and the position of it is what is causing these weak winds over Valencia for a prolonged period,” explains Jack Katzfey.

2. What are the statistics on sailing in April, May and June?
“The statistics from 2000 to 2007 are very good for April, May and June. They vary between 80 to 90% of sailing days. However the percentage this month has been just 50% versus the 80/90% so you can see that this has been an exceptionally bad year,” explains Jon Bilger.

3. How do you make these weather predictions – what tools do you use?
“There are basically three things that you need, the first is analysis of the atmosphere, then you need a model of the atmosphere in which you input the analysis, then you run the model to give a prediction. That is a basic tool that most meteorological offices use to predict the weather,” explains Jack Katzfey.

4. What is the Meteorological Data System and why was it set up?
“The MDS is made up of 21 weather buoys on the two race courses and some of them are further off the coast, plus six land based stations. All the teams have received the same data, this is the first time this has been done and it has been very useful. The motivation for doing this, was to avoid duplication of resources by having several weather boats from different teams sitting next to each other and to provide more detailed information on course winds. The desire to reduce costs of competition in the Cup was the initial motivation in creating this system,” Jon Bilger.

5. What influence did Alinghi have on the selection of Valencia?
Influence, none at all, the Alinghi weather team was commissioned by America’s Cup Management to supply a report on Valencia weather among eight other cities. ACM then made the selection through a bidding process, about which you will need to ask them for any detail,” Jon Bilger.

6. Have Alinghi’s long-term predictions for June changed?
“No,” Jon Bilger.

7. Armed with this year’s weather data to add to the existing data, would you still recommend Valencia to hold an LVC in April/May and the America’s Cup Match in June?
“Yes of course, you can see from the data that this has been an exceptionally bad month, it has been unlucky, but any venue at any time can suffer from this sort of thing. The weather is the weather after all and it is uncontrollable,” Jon Bilger.

8. Knowing what you know now, what other venue for the America’s Cup would you have recommended?
“We still stand by our analysis that Valencia is a good sailing venue, it should not be judged on a single meteorological event,” Jon Bilger.

Shosholoza talk the talk, AND walk the walk

2007-04-24T20:50:00.000+01:00

Well, knock me down with a feather! When Mark Lagesse said Shosholoza would be disappointed if they didn't beat Luna Rossa, that just seemed like the usual bravado you get from sailors after a good day on the water. Apologies, Mark, I should never have doubted you!

The South Africans continue to shock and surprise, while Luna Rossa becomes more and more of an enigma. No sooner have they been whopped by the little people (in financial terms, anyway), than they hold BMW Oracle to one of the most tense and thrilling matches yet seen.

We may only have had three days' racing so far, but every day has produced a big upset. Long may it continue.

Should they have raced today? Depends on your point of view

2007-04-23T18:31:00.000+01:00

You can tell a lot about a team from its attitude to light and fluky conditions. There's no doubt that the wind conditions in Valencia - when they are good enough to actually race in - are a great leveller between the strong and the weak teams. So no wonder the big teams would rather wait while some of the minnows want to get on with it.

Ross Halcrow, trimmer on BMW Oracle Racing, hinted at just how touch and go winning and losing can become in the soft stuff: “In the light stuff a knot more pressure has a huge effect. Pressure is king out there and can easily make you look good or bad. The differences in boats start to come in at around 9-10 knots of wind.” Which presumably is why BMW Oracle are quite happy with the race committee's decision to keep postponing until the breeze really settles.

And perhaps it's also why Jesper Bank, United Internet Team Germany's skipper, would rather have been racing today even if it was on the margins of being sailable. “I think we have to do something about the lower wind limits…[We could be racing in] six knots if you can get the boats moving. You have wind shear when sometimes the wind mixes down very well and sometimes it doesn’t.

"Today you had a pretty good mix nearly all the way down and even with 6.4 knots the boats were loading up nicely. I think you’ll have to play it by ear and I know it will be a huge topic for discussion with some saying ‘no we don’t’ and some saying ‘yes we do’ (agree).”

Another answer for future Cups might be to introduce Super Maxis in the style of Wild Oats or Alfa Romeo, which can get moving in just 3 or 4 knots of breeze, and in 6 knots are capable of sailing faster than windspeed all the way round the course. In fact they can do almost double windspeed downwind.

Once the 12-Metres made way for the current ACC yachts, did anyone ever look back and say, 'I wish we could bring back the 12-Metres'? Not to my knowledge. Once the Cup upgrades to something a bit racier than these graceful but dated ACC boats, the event will never look back. Once you introduce boats with a higher power/weight ratio, you immediately convert marginal race days into definite race days.

Shosholoza looking forward to the Italian Job

2007-04-22T21:47:00.000+01:00

Shosholoza's navigator Mark Lagesse revealed just how far Shosholoza's ambitions extend now, with this comment after today's racing. "The only boat that is considerably quicker than ours is Team New Zealand. Tomorrow we've got Luna Rossa and if we beat them I won't be surprised - and if we lose I'll be disappointed." Such a statement of intent would have seemed laughable two and a half years ago when the South Africans muddled their way around the course at Louis Vuitton Act 1 in Marseilles. Thirteen regattas later, and the Africans are a real threat to the big guns.

BMW Oracle avoids a South African upset

2007-04-22T18:42:00.000+01:00

Well, when the racing happens in Valencia, it's actually pretty good! For a while it looked like we were about to witness an upset of even greater proportions than Mascalzone's scalping of the Kiwis two days ago. When Shosholoza pulled ahead of BMW Oracle on the first lap of their match today, every neutral observer - and quite a few besides - were willing the South Africans to beat the Americans.

However, when the Shosholoza crew fluffed their spinnaker drop at the leeward gate, Chris Dickson's team was ready to pounce and they sailed in typically controlled and ruthless fashion to overhaul the underdogs. That's tactician Gavin Brady doing all the concentrating in the photo above, with navigator Peter Isler to his left and the iceman Dicko on the wheel.

At least in the Desafio v Areva match the underdog French team managed to hold on to their lead and stick one on the Spanish team who have such high hopes of making the Louis Vuitton Semi-Finals.

For all the fact that we've only had two days' racing in a seven days of competition, this first week says so much about the Swiss management of the Cup, both good and bad. Perhaps someone should have listened more carefully to Russell Coutts when he suggested Cascais on Portugal's Atlantic seaboard would be the better sailing venue. Or maybe we've just been really unlucky with the breeze.

Valencia is known (by some) as the Fremantle of the Mediterranean, but the supposedly reliable thermal effect has been in short supply to date. Chief race officer Peter 'Luigi' Reggio expects the situation to improve the further we get into the summer, when the mountains further inland can be expected to heat up properly and start to suck in a decent sea breeze. But that doesn't really start happening until late June when the event is all but over. That might be fine for the America's Cup but it's not much fun for the challengers in the LV Cup.

You could surmise that this was all part of Alinghi's cunning plan, to have the challengers wallowing around in no wind for two months before the Cup, but that would be a conspiracy theory too far! After all, Alinghi's second boat, SUI-100, has barely had time to get wet, let alone test the 'can they, can't they' canting keel.

Looking on the bright side, at least these light breezes are producing some real upsets in the competition. The 'Big Four' are not looking nearly as impregnable as they have in seasons past. And for that, Alinghi and ACM deserve real credit for introducing the Louis Vuitton Acts. Would Shosholoza have led BMW Oracle so confidently in the race today, even if they didn't end up winning? Would Mascalzone have trounced the Kiwis last Friday if we hadn't had the 13 Act regattas? I don't think so.

The naysayers (largely from the other side of the pond who still think the America's Cup was named after their great nation, and hanker for a return to those halcyon days in Newport RI) have long gone silent over this particular criticism of ACM. Whatever you think of the choice of Valencia as a reliable sailing venue, you can't fault the Acts and the implementation of the Version 5 design rule. Both have conspired to produce what is set to be a tighter challenger series than we have ever witnessed before. That's bad news for the Kiwis, but it's great for us sailing fans.

Gram-Hansen + ITA-99 = Winning Rascals

2007-04-21T10:23:00.000+01:00

So, in the battle of the Russell Coutts protégés, it's Jes Gram-Hansen 1, Dean Barker 0.

Everyone knows that Barker grew up in the shadow of Coutts, and became his regular sparring partner at Team New Zealand for the 2000 defence of the Cup. Lesser known is the Danish match racer Gram-Hansen's involvement with Coutts, but Gram-Hansen has done a lot of World Match Race Tour events as the Kiwi's tactician.

Gram-Hansen was already a well-established match racer in his own right, but his performance had taken a bit of a downturn until Coutts came along a couple of years ago and invited Gram-Hansen and his Danish team mates to do some Tour events with him. Not only did this provide the Dane with a chance to observe the master at work, but it also gave the 35-year-old his break into America's Cup campaigning, as a meeting with Vincenzo Onorato led to his appointment as starting helmsman for Mascalzone Latino-Capitalia Team.

As we saw yesterday against Emirates Team New Zealand, Mascalzone Latino have addressed criticism that they are a good fleet racing team but a pretty poor match racing team (which they were in the 2005 season). Things improved a little in 2006 with the Italians' acceptance that they would have to employ a non-Latin match race specialist.

Last year Gram-Hansen's aggressive pre-start manoeuvres put the Latin Rascals in the winning position against superior teams on a number of occasions. However they didn't always have the boatspeed to convert those winning moves to victories on the scoreboard.

The team has made another step change for 2007. Now that Harry Dunning and the boatbuilders have delivered a strong package with new boat ITA-99, when Gram-Hansen hands over to chief helmsman Flavio Favini the Italians look like the real deal. Not only can they win starts, but they have the pace and confidence to win races.

The victory against the Kiwis was no fluke, so expect more Latin fireworks later in this Round Robin.

Cutting through the crap with Cayard

2007-04-19T21:12:00.000+01:00

Looking around the different keel configurations at Unveiling Day a couple of Sundays ago, it was striking just how different the bulb and winglet packages were. Horizontal winglets, angled winglets, winglets on the back, winglets in the middle.

Someone I was standing next to passed on a Russell Coutts anecdote, where the Great One is said to have offered this advice to a designer when Russell was asked where he would like the winglets to be stuck. "Mate, whatever makes you happy, just put them where you want because it makes no difference to me." Or words to that effect.

I was reminded of this when reading an interview with Paul Cayard on the official AC website, written by my young colleague on the AC Info Team, Paco Tormo. Paco asked this question and found Cayard on top philosophical form.

"Besides the budget, what are the main differences between a winning team and a losing team?"

Cayard: The difference is when to make a decision. If a team has been chasing after something for a year and a half and still nothing has come from it then it must be forgotten. Whether it is a decision about the boat, the crew or whatever, there is often a tendency to keep discussing and worrying about something, wasting energy when you just have to make a decision. One of my philosophies is that if two things are so similar that it makes it hard to decide then you should just pick one, because it doesn’t matter. It is important not to waste any more time on it because there is probably something else that will make much more difference, where you really need the time. If you get it wrong in that case you can lose a lot, but if two things are going to have a similar outcome, it’s not worth wasting any more time on it, since in the end it will be the same anyway.

Sounds obvious when you hear it put like that, doesn't it!

Click here for the rest of the Paul Cayard interview...

Phew!!! A whole blog post without any mention of the weather! Doh!

Fremantle of the Med? Yeah, right!

2007-04-18T19:56:00.000+01:00

Valencia has been described as the 'Fremantle of the Mediterranean', famed for its reliable sea breezes. Yes, well, enough of that.

Three days of no racing is not the ideal start to the competition, except perhaps for +39 Challenge, who have had three more days to sellotape their Version 5 rig back together. Kind though it was for Alinghi to lend its Version 4 rig, the very mast that won the 2003 Cup in Auckland 5-Nil, apparently in anything more than 10 or 12 knots of breeze and the extra loads caused by these new-generation square-headed mainsails makes the stick look distinctly wobbly. Talk is that Iain Percy's shore crew could have the Version 5 rig back together by tomorrow (Thursday).

So at least some good has come of this no-wind situation. It has also meant that Port America's Cup has precious little to talk about, so the chat at the Estrella Damm bar has been about those dirty, rotten scoundrels at Alinghi who have supposedly developed their non-canting keel. Yacht design makes my head spin, so if you want to try and understand more about this, I suggest you head over to Matt Sheahan's explanation at Yachting-World.com.

Chief measurer Ken McAlpine is meant to be doing some talking tomorrow, so perhaps he'll shed some light on the subject. Meanwhile Alinghi will be having a right good laugh. No wind on the race course, and a lot of wind about their 'canting' keel. Classic smoke & mirrors stuff.

Baby Gap

2007-04-18T09:38:00.000+01:00

Apologies for being offline a few days, but I've been home to the UK to witness my wife giving birth to our new son. You think it's painful waiting for the racing to start in the Louis Vuitton Cup, but believe me, it's got nothing on natural childbirth, and that's just watching it - let alone doing it!

Thanks for the congratulations received so far. It seems James Boyd has been filling in the spare moments between races (ho ho) on his America's Cup blog on TheDailySail.com with mention of the new arrival, so news has been spreading fast.

Thanks also for the name suggestions. Top of the list at the moment is Darbar, named after the curry house just an onion bhaji's throw from Port America's Cup, and where Yachting World hack Matt Sheahan does most of his best work. Indeed, so crucial is Matt's digestive system to the local economy that they've even named one of the Darbar's dishes in his honour. I kid you not.

Another suggestion has been to name the newborn after the winning skipper of the Louis Vuitton Cup. That would give us options like: Dean, Chris (or Dicko), Francesco, Karol, Vasco, Magnus, Mark, Iain (or Percy), Sebastien, Jesper or Pierre. However, we only have six weeks in which to register the birth, so this idea doesn't really work either.

The baby was born on Friday the 13th, so names like Freddie or Damian spring to mind. Our four-year-old is called Gabriel, so maybe Lucifer? The wife doesn't agree, and so the argument continues. Suggestions on a postcard please...

The Kiwis have yet to show their best hand (says a Kiwi)

2007-04-09T11:00:00.000+01:00

Peter Lester has some short but succinct analysis of the racing in Louis Vuitton Act 13. Peter is doing the TV commentary for America's Cup TV (ACTV), and is the ideal pundit because he has been there, done it with Team New Zealand and probably knows the Kiwis better than anybody.

Although he acknowledges that Alinghi looked very good, there are perhaps mitigating circumstances for the Kiwis not performing as well as they might. Here's an extract of Peter's commentary for the New Zealand Herald website:

Am I surprised Alinghi won the fleet racing regatta so easily? No. They had more to gain and nothing to lose compared to the challengers.

Emirates Team New Zealand used their older boat and it looked like the sails they used were not new. They also had Ben Ainslie helming.

Alinghi had a speed advantage in 12-14 knots-plus and we had those conditions for most of the regatta. Because they've had so much time, maybe they pitched their boat for this regatta. I don't think the challengers had that luxury.

But Alinghi sailed very, very well. They came back from some mediocre starts to win races. I think it is a warning shot for the challengers that they need to do better.

For the rest of Peter Lester's conclusions from the fleet racing in Valencia, click here to go to the New Zealand Herald website's sailing section.

Lucky 13 for Alinghi

2007-04-08T16:55:00.000+01:00

Louis Vuitton Act 13 worked out very nicely for Alinghi. It gave the Defender an ideal opportunity to check in one of the team’s new boats, SUI 91, and provide reassurance for Brad Butterworth that Alinghi is the match of anything that the challengers can throw at them.

Butterworth commented earlier in the week that in his experience it is always the fastest boat that wins the contest. “I think for me the America’s Cup is a design race. I think the fastest boat will win. At this level, against this calibre of sailors, if you have a slightly faster boat you’re going to beat them…they can all sail well and in their own right win races on any given day, but it’s pretty tough to beat a faster boat. At any other Cup I’ve done, the fastest boat has won, and I think this will be like the others.”

However, despite what Butterworth says, it seems like good boat design is going to be a less significant factor than in the past, unless Alinghi really do have something spare that they weren’t revealing during the fleet racing. Were they sandbagging during Act 13? With four wins from seven races, it doesn’t seem likely. Assuming that Ed Baird was driving the boat as hard as possible – and remember, for the American helmsman this was still exam time for him in the ongoing selection process between him and Peter Holmberg – then Alinghi is certainly fast but not significantly faster than the top challengers.

They’re certainly not toying with the opposition the way that they were with SUI 75 in the 2005 season. Remember that race in Malmo when Alinghi’s mainsail started falling down, bowman Pieter van Nieuwenhuyzen was hoisted at running speed to the top of the mast, fixed the problem, and by the top mark they had overtaken the Germans (whilst all the while the onboard GPS locator inexplicably switched off for a few minutes, strange that…)! Click here for a reminder of that race...

All in all, I think the Defender and challengers gave a pretty honest account of themselves. The Kiwis started badly but finished stronger, as did Luna Rossa, while BMW Oracle looked great at the beginning but slipped up a few times in the middle of the regatta. All of them looked fast at times, but all of them looked more fallible than Alinghi who as I mentioned recently, display the hallmark of all great sporting teams or individuals – to be able to pull a reasonable result out of the bag even when they’re performing below par.

One thing we should bear in mind when trying to compare performances: most of the teams with two new boats were probably fielding their less favoured boat, and who can blame them after what we saw happen to +39 Challenge and their only Version 5 mast earlier in the week? The fleet racing produced very hectic and at times dangerous situations, but how could anyone possibly argue with the excitement it generated?

Alinghi and ACM have toyed around with fleet racing, and now the genie is out of the bottle. If you want to enthuse the spectators, the TV, even the sailors, then fleet racing offers drama on a much more regular basis than match racing. As one tactician commented anonymously after one of Act 13’s epic races: “You’d have to get through at least 10 match races to even come close to equalling the thrill of one of these fleet races.” So the question is, how to crowbar fleet racing into the 33rd America's Cup?