GBR 75 tunes up against America

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.

Alinghi sells SUI 75 to the Brits

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.”