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Editorials

Ahh.. the Olympics and America's Cup, the gifts that keep giving...

On the America's Cup

* Absolutely the best result for the Cup...

If you're a Cup fan then this evening's ruling in favour of the GGYC is a great result. If you're a fan of petty euro politics, money-grabbing, self interest and back-biting then it's a disaster!! Hopefully we are all in the former category and we can now move on and start seeing a new dawn for the America's Cup. There's no point scoring points (Larry 1 - Ernesto 0 for the record though) and there's absolutely no point in re-hashing that fabulous quote from Ernesto about having the best lawyers and no chance of losing....that would be just childish now, wouldn't it?

So, Larry's the new Challenger of Record, the CNEV is as Mickey Mouse as we all thought and Russell's having a ball sitting atop the moral high ground shouting "it's about the Protocol, stupid!" There's been a great press release from the GGYC stating their intentions and to be honest it's all positive: We have a chance of a conventional regatta in 2009 (unlikely), an AC90 event in either 2010 or 2011 (likely) or a multihull farce if Alinghi are just stupid (I'm 50-50 on that one).

I think I'd rather see an AC90 version out of all of those scenarios in 2010 and to hell with the World Cup (that's football to all you lovely Americans) but there's just one nagging problem in my mind and that's the question of money. "Brother" Bob Fisher wrote a very interesting article on the subject and I'm just worried that all this Ernesto bull was a lavish smokescreen because he's lost all his sponsors and doesn't want to pay anything out of his own pocket. That could be a real problem for the event going forward and also Ernesto is now 'tarnished goods' in political circles and polite society - that golden boy glow has disappeared and he's very much the bad guy in world sailing as he was exposed as a money-grabbing billionaire and that's not a good look...

Anyhow, I'm sure things now will get ironed out and looking forward, you've got to see the Oracle team as a tantalising outfit. Let's get it on and get the Cup to San Fran as quickly as possible...I'm booking my son's ticket now!! -- Magnus Wheatley, http://www.rule69blog.com

* It would be foolish not to seriously consider that the 33rd America's Cup is going to be sailed in Multihull in 2008.

Let's consider the situation for a moment

On one side, we have a terribly disappointed Alinghi and ACM who have been putting the blame on Oracle for putting the Cup into this mess - really it would be fair to say that Alinghi pushed the rules with the 33rd protocol and were smart enough to find a challenger able to sign it!!! But then who is to blame??? Alinghi or Desafio?

You are struggling with organizing an event after having lost your sponsors and the momentum of the 32nd America's Cup You are going to feel pretty miserable sitting in front of the American team and negotiate with.... your ex best mate Russell Coutts?? No way! So on the Swiss corner it will be tough to accept anything coming from a team that showed so little on the water last summer ... but has been so smart lately and declared a winner by New York Judge.

Now let's look at the Oracle side

If you were Larry Ellison, would you really order your staff to work hard at a "conventional" Americas Cup in a couple of years? YES??? Are you Sure??? Well lets look at that for a second

You have been pouring an enormous amount of money into it for the past 8 years with little results You took a slap in the face last summer when America was not able to rich the challenger's final for the first time in history By allowing a conventional cup, you could be eliminated again before having a shot at the Cup Thanks to your very smart advisers you lodged a challenge back in July. This bold move is now giving you the opportunity to take the Defender Although money is not an issue for you, you could run one of the cheapest campaign of recent time.

And if you were Rusell Coutts, what would you be thinking right now? Well, you thought could be pretty similar to your boss's (and not only because he is paying you) You have a been a fervent supporter of radical changes in the Cup You know dam well that would be your best chance to bring the cup back to America. You have hired the best multihull designers (Van Pethegen - Lauriot Prevost and runours has it that the mould is almost completed. You have hired the best multihull skipper F.Cammas and you could start sailing immediately on Groupama 3. Why would you do all of these if it was not to go ahead with an America'S Cup in multihull ?

But also...
You have been working pretty hard at developing the WSL (World Sailing League) with your mate P.Cayard. Win or loose on the water would the 33rd America's Cup in multihull launch your WSL circuit in stellar fashion??? ...

All the answers are ....Yes Yes Yes

Well-done Russell. -- Sebastien Destremau

* Excerpts from Part Nine (!) of Cory Friedman's magnum opus on our sister publication, the original Scuttlebutt:

The yachting sky has not fallen and sailing’s Chicken Littles have had a bad day, because Justice Cahn has done exactly what a Justice of the Commercial Division is supposed to do. He has quickly and carefully disposed of the dispute between GGYC (Oracle) and SNG (Alinghi) in a way that makes a successful appeal unlikely and puts the parties where they belong - on the water. To cut to the chase, he has handed GGYC complete victory, ruling that the Spanish CNEV is not a valid challenger and that GGYC is the Challenger of Record. SNG and GGYC will either negotiate a Protocol or meet in 90-foot catamarans for the fastest match races ever.

As expected, Justice Cahn’s decision was based upon the Court of Appeals’ Mercury Bay decision and went straight to George Schuyler’s intent, as expressed within the four corners of the Deed of Gift. The two issues were whether CNEV is an organized yacht club and whether it qualifies by “having” an annual regatta. The way he dealt with the organized yacht club issues demonstrates how an experienced judge works. Rather than stretch to resolve the issue, and possibly be reversed, he decided that resolution of the meaning of the term would require an evidentiary hearing - a trial on “custom and practice in the sport.” Talk about an open ended inquiry. He was free to take that position because he could decide the case based upon the “having” issue alone and did not need to resolve it. On the “having” issue he found, as a matter of law, that CNEV did not qualify as a valid challenger and thus, was out and the next challenger in line, GGYC, was in. End of case.

...In the end, it wasn’t who had “best lawyers,” although GGYC’s lawyers were excellent and SNG’s lawyers made the best of a losing hand, but who had the facts and the law on their side. It was no contest.

www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/news/07/cf/#p9

The Olympics

Like many other National Authorities, Yachting Australia receives funding from, and supports athletes with, money from the Government (and is very grateful for it!!). In Australia Summer Olympic Sports get the lions share of the funding - non-Olympic sports get very little by comparison. So, our support is very much tied to sailing remaining in the Olympic Games.

Now those that have read the IOC Program Commission Report from 2002 and don't think that the hard questions are being asked about the future of sailing need to read it again!! If you don't have time, just think back three years and consider how much coverage you saw of the sailing competition from Athens in 2004. If you put yourself in the position of those selling the rights, the question of what value sailing currently adds is not that difficult to answer.

There is evidence that ISAF has reacted to the challenge. The change in format and introduction of the medal race should serve to make the sport more attractive. The efforts to introduce the World Cup, if properly resourced, provide the opportunity for more regular coverage of Olympic sailing outside the Olympic Games.

From our perspective as a National Authority, all this is beneficial but choosing the right type of boats and competition disciplines for the Olympic Games is crucial. In fact, the continuation of a large part of what we do now appears to depend on it!!

Our approach in Estoril was simple - do whatever it takes to strengthen the position of sailing as an Olympic sport. Yachting Australia would rather loose Events in which we might consider we have better chances than loose the opportunity for the next generation of sailors to compete at the Olympic Games - and indeed for us to go on supporting them. -- Phil Jones, CEO, Yachting Australia

* Now, I can’t predict if you’ll cringe, laugh or cry when you read this. But here are the recommendations to Yachting New Zealand from its Olympic Committee.

Note in particular Point 3, which says: “NZL is currently suffering in expensive classes (Tornado & 49er) that are suited to younger (fit) sailors - so we should avoid these.”

Yes, after all, this is the Olympics. We can’t have young and fit sailors in the Games, can we!

I wonder, did Yachting New Zealand consult with any young Kiwi sailors before considering these recommendations? Also I’d suggest the YNZ offices shut down and everyone go on holiday for the week when the Tornado World Championships is going on, just down the road in Takapuna next March.

This leaked document is yet more evidence why some Member National Authorities (MNAs) cannot be trusted to do anything than vote for self-centred, short-term interests. If the MNA’s views are truly representative of what its sailors believe, then fair enough. But is that the case? I doubt it.

As for only having the top six or eight crews in match racing events at the Olympics, seriously, what would be the point? You could pretty much name those six or eight nations now. Either have a decent number of nations represented in the match racing (what about two-person keelboats by the way?) or don’t do match racing at all.

The last thing the Olympic Regatta needs is to be perceived as even more elitist and wealthy-nation oriented than it is already. -- Andy Rice in SailJuiceBlog.com

Editor's Choice
Your humble narrator's favorite article of the week, another must-read from the fellows at TheDailySail.com. A few bits from this 3400 world piece:

The end of an era

We bid farewell to the ORMA 60 and look at the rise of the new MOD 70 trimaran One of the saddest stories we are having to write this year is that of the demise of our favourite race boat class, the ORMA 60 trimaran.

Over the last 30 or so years the class has brought us some amazing stories - the fight between Apricot and Paragon in the 1985 Round Britain Race. From a British perspective there was Apricot beating all the 75ft competition on one leg of the Round Europe Race, Lawrie Smith, Rodney Patisson and co showing the French competition around the race course aboard Paragon. In France there was Florence Arthaud's victory in the 1990 Route du Rhum (Ellen wasn’t the first female sailor to kick male butt singlehanded offshore...), Laurent Bourgnon’s incredible singlehanded transatlantic record during which he broke the fully crewed 24 hour record, the OSTAR wins of Philippe Poupon Loick Peyron and Francis Joyon, Yvan Bourgnon setting a 623 mile 24 hour record in the Quebec-St Malo race, the dominance this decade of Franck Cammas’ Groupamas…

So why has the class gone to the dogs?

The reasons are numerous but equally very typical of practically all development classes from dinghies through to maxis. In the case of the ORMA 60s, where all apart from the Gitana team are fully sponsored, the reasons have been primarily escalating costs and not enough return on investment for their backers.

Today the general consensus, if there is one within ORMA, is that since the present generation of boats are all virtually one design, they might as well go for a one design trimaran. And so it is that the Multihull One Design (MOD) 70, a design by Vincent Lauriot Prevost and Marc van Peteghem, is now being touted around. -- http://thedailysail.com

On The Coffee Table This Weekend....

"Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of his Time"
by Dava Sobel, 192 pages, hardcover. 12.00 GBP.

Originally published in 1995, a tenth anniversary edition added 10 pages of colour illustrations and a foreword by astronaut Neil Armstrong.

This is one book I'd love to have two copies of, the second being the anniversary edition, for the copy in my library is nearly ten years old and a bit ragged from years of re-readings. This is not a coffee table book, it's one that fits easily into a backpack or weekend duffle, it's only 5 by 6 inches, 192 pages.

This is the story of a genius, John Harrison, who toiled for 40 years trying to convince the British Admiralty of the efficacy of his timepieces offshore. In that quest, he battled against members of royal courts, the scientific establishments of his day, particularly astronomical.

Without a method of determining longitude, once out of sight of land, sailors were literally lost at sea. Thousands of lives were lost when ships struck shoals and foundered because their navigators' calculations were dead wrong, literally. Elaborate attempts at astronomical measurements and earlier attempts to bring timepieces aboard failed... until Harrison designed choronometers that were virtually friction free, using a variety of metals such that when one expanded another contracted, keeping the mechanisms in perfect balance.

The problem of determining longitude was so critical that the British Parliament established a prize of 20,000 pounds (worth nearly 7 million today) for a solution.

The "mechanical solution" concept was simple: if one had two clocks, one set to one's home port, or other location of known longitude (the position of the prime meridian is another one of the greatest convergences between science and politics), and another, a ship's clock set to noon each day from local observation, then one could determine longitude. Every hour's difference between the clocks equals 15 degrees.

What was not so simple was building a clock that could withstand the pounding of the sea, saltwater, high humidity and drastic changes in temperature.

Harrison built 5 models for testing over many years... named H1, H2, H3, H4 and H5, they are still in existence. The first four are at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich (H1, H2 and H3 are running, H4 was stopped as it requires lubrication and degrades when run). H5 is in the Clockmaker's museum in Guildhall, London.

"German Frers: A Passion for Design"
by Barry Pickthall, 198 pages, South Atlantic Publishing.

A serious coffee table book with hundreds of colour plates. The history of the Frers family is a study in the history of yacht design and the rating rules. It's a yacht design heritage that spans three generations whose designs have been responsible for the production of more than 10,000 yachts ranging from dinghies to maxi's. Cruisers, racing yachts, even powerboats have seen the stamp of Frers design.

After a history of the family, A Passion for Design then follows the IOR, IMS and Maxi years, then includes a number of chapters featuring dozens of specific boats, some production designs, some one-offs, with hundreds of photos and designer's notes.

An excerpt from Chapter 2: The IOR Years:

The list of winners spread around the world. Frenchman Jacques Dewailly commissioned a 50 footer, the first in a successful line of Emeraudes, from Wolter Huisman’s yard in Holland, which sailed in the French Admiral’s Cup team in 1977. Irving Loube, the San Franciscan lawyer who in later years became a leading supporter of IOR racing in the United States, ordered the first in a line of Bravura yachts. This one, a 48 footer, won the 1978 Victoria/Maui transpac race.

From Italy, Raoul Gardini chose Frers to design his first Il Moro di Venezia, a 68 ft wooden pocket-maxi built to perform well in the light airs of the Mediterranean. Syd Fischer, the Sydney-based hotelier, chose a 47.5 footer for his second and most famous Ragamuffin, and Minnefords built the 47 ft Tatooshfor Robert Hutton, who sailed her to overall honours in the 1980 Sardinia Cup.

In 1979 Chuck Kirsch launched his second Scaramouche, a 48.5 footer which carried him to class honours at that year’s SORC, and Carlos Corna commissioned Recluta IV, a sistership. Down-under, John Kahlbetzer underlined the ‘Big Boat’ label attached to all Frers work by calling on him to design an all-out maxi in the form of Bumblebee 4. Back home, however, this tag did not stop local Argentines from ordering as many as eighteen Quarter-tonners for the following season, and owners elsewhere began to think of him for Ton Cup yachts. Gitana VII, built for Baron Edmond de Rothschild and campaigned by Ghislain Pillet and the redoubtable Jean-Louis Fabry, won the Two-ton Cup in 1979, with Sur, sailed by Diego Peralta Ramos and Pepe Frers, taking a close second. Samsara, another French boat, this one owned by Madame Tran van Dom, also made a splash that year, finishing second at the Three-quarter Ton Cup.

The 1979 Admiral’s Cup was marred by the notorious Fastnet disaster in which fifteen sailors drowned during an unprecedented storm in the Irish Sea. German was sailing aboard Burt Keenan’s Acadia, his first outright racing design, and remembers it well. ‘We were laid over to 120 degrees on two occasions. I was glad to be aboard a lightweight racer and not a deep heavy boat that might have been swamped. A modern boat asks more of its crew than the traditional designs, but racing yachts today are much more responsive. Being able to accelerate and slow down at will in those seas was a great asset. I was much happier with the seas breaking on the hull, rather than over the decks.’

65 pounds, available from South Atlantic Publishing
Buy 4 copies for your crew and the fifth is free.

Kiwi Chief Demands Payment From Alinghi
Team New Zealand chief Grant Dalton has sent a compensation demand to Alinghi owner Ernesto Bertarelli for the postponement of the America's Cup in 2009. The demand came just 24 hours before Justice Herman Cahn, of the New York Supreme Court, found against the Swiss businessman and in favour of Larry Ellison's Golden Gate Yacht Club in San Francisco.

Dalton's estimate of losses to his Kiwi team of 12 million pounds if the America's Cup is put back to 2010, and 19 million if it is 2011, is graphic illustration of the disastrous commercial complications caused by the summer-long stand-off between the Swiss and the Americans.

Dalton's compensation demand was based on a secondary deal struck with the Swiss when the Kiwis challenged at the end of July. The Swiss undertook to hold the America's Cup in 2009, to give Team New Zealand a payment holiday on their entry fee and offer first right of refusal on Ellison's team base. Other challengers are known to have side deals, put in place so that they felt able to challenge. -- Tim Jeffery in The Telegraph,

* Emirates Team New Zealand managing director, Grant Dalton, has confirmed a report that appeared yesterday in the British newspaper, the Daily Telegraph.

The story by noted yachting writer, Tim Jeffrey, did not name a source for the information, but claimed that Emirates Team New Zealand had sent Alinghi team boss, Ernesto Bertarelli, a claim for compensation of NZD32million if the 33rd America's Cup were postponed to 2010, and a total claim for NZD50million if the event was transferred to 2011.

It was reported that the claim arose from a breach of agreement struck when Emirates Team New Zealand controversarily entered the 33rd America's Cup in an announcement on 25th July 2007.

The entry of the 2007 America's Cup Challenger came after protracted negotiations bewteen the Defender and then Pretender, BMW Oracle Racing. It was believed at the time that Emirates Team New Zealand Grant Dalton had driven a hard bargain with Ernesto Bertarelli, obtaining a number of undisclosed concessions.

Emirates Team New Zealand's entry, in turn, added a lot of credibilty to Alinghi's position in the stand-off with Golden Gate YC, and they were frequently quoted as a credible challenger who had accepted the conditions set by Societe Nautique de Geneve in their Protocol for the 33rd America's Cup.

Many believed that Emirates Team New Zealand's entry had protracted the dispute, and that a refusal by all substantial Challengers to enter the 33rd America's Cup would forestall the action in the New York Supreme Court - forcing an early negotiation. -- SailWorld.com

The Last Word
Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education. -- Bertrand Russell