Handbags at dawn

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.”

90 Footers for the 33rd Cup

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

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!

Left is a long way round

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.

Team Spirit v Boatspeed

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

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

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.