Category: america’s cup

ADEQUATE RECEPTION?

UPDATE: could this be the reason?  http://soc.li/SpokbEE

 

 

Many of my sailing friends have been saying all along that the next America’s Cup in San Francisco was ill conceived. Thoughout the process the rules have been very fluid; many excused the changes because the changes to the event were so dramatic. 

San Francisco is being shortchanged and the America’s Cup is as well.


Dean Barker shares his thought on the strange latest AC manuvering in the AC

Today the Event organisers dropped a bombshell on the Americas Cup competitors when they announced they will no longer be requiring the Teams to be based on Piers 30 and 32, and more importantly would not be paying for any redevelopment of the Piers as has been promised for the last 18 months.

I am sitting here completely stunned. We are a little over 6 months from relocating our base to San Fran to what we have been told would be a fully functioning base area complete with Team hospitality spaces and full access for the public to watch the teams preparing and launching their boats. It is now going to be a concrete slab with absolutely nothing on it which will now require us to secure cranes, jettys, and all services required to function. We have never budgeted for this and to be dropped on us now is quite unbelievable.

I have to say we are a long long way from the vision presented to us back in September 2010. Larry Ellison has done a lot for this AC and has put a lot of his own financial resource into making the Americas Cup next year a big event. However I think in terms of a lot of decisions made along the way by different people here we are with only 3 challengers and now no base facility to operate out of. This is a long way from the success of 2007 in Valencia no matter how you package it.

The catamarans are great but the AC72’s are just way too expensive. Not only is the design and build of the new boats extreme, but then you need a small army just to launch and retrieve the boat each day let alone the work to maintain it.
There is no question the AC72 racing next year will be spectacular. That is fortunate because the rest of the show looks to be well below expectations.

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
The date, 25 September 1983, remains vivid in the memories of Australians
who watched – perched on the edge of their sofas, thrusting into the air
punches of elation – as Australia II crossed the America’s Cup finishing
line at Newport, USA.

It was one of those events where you can remember what you were doing at
the precise moment they saw or heard the good news. And, it moved then
Prime Minister Bob Hawke enough to famously declare: “Any boss who sacks
anyone for not turning up today is a bum.”

Australians love the water, but yachting is not a spectator sport for the
masses. Why then, did the win have such an enormous impact?

John Bertrand, skipper of Australia II and now chairman of the Sport
Australia Hall of Fame, says the many superb performances by Australians –
notably Cathy Freeman’s gold medal sprint in the Sydney Olympics and Kieran
Perkins’ win from lane 8 at the Atlanta Olympics – make it difficult to
choose the ultimate achievement in Australian sporting history.

“We broke 132 years of American domination in winning the America’s Cup –
we’re proud of that!” says John.

It was a glow that was shared by many in the country, and more people chose
to become naturalised Australians shortly after the win, than ever before
or since. John says; “People felt part of this country for the first time.
Certainly there was a great injection of both pride and confidence into the
country.”

What about the controversy surrounding the secret weapon that gave the
Australian yacht its advantage over its American competitor – the upside
down, winged keel?

There has been a perennial argument over whether Australia II should have
been disqualified because the rules specified that competing yachts had to
be designed by residents or citizens of the country they represented. The
Americans alleged, but couldn’t prove, the boat was not
Australian-designed. Then, in 2009, Dutch boat designer Peter van Oossanen
claimed Australian II designer, Ben Lexcen, had minimal involvement in the
keel’s design, and a Dutch team were the true designers.

John claims it’s a technicality. “Success has many fathers; failure has
none,” he says. “To win the Cup required a great deal of work by many
people, but in terms of any controversy, the key was [that] Ben Lexcen was
the chief designer. So under the rules, Australia II was totally legal. Of
course, the America’s Cup rules now don’t even consider nationality.”

Today, Australia II calls home the Western Australian Maritime Museum in
Fremantle.

SAN FRANCISCO HAS HAD A BUSY SUMMER/TEAM KOREA CHANGES

BUSY WEEKEND
Got plans for Columbus Day weekend? The annual anniversary of Christopher
Columbus’s arrival in the Americas, which occurred on October 12, 1492, is
always the second Monday in October. As it’s also a federal holiday in the
U.S., you may be looking at options for a three day vacation. If you are
thinking of San Francisco, rest assured, you are not alone:

October 4-8: A tradition since 1981, Fleet Week is the most anticipated
Fall event in San Francisco. With an estimated audience of 1 million,
spectators are drawn every year to the city’s northern waterfront to be
awed by a parade of Navy ships, along with a spectacular aerial show that
includes the Navy Blue Angels. Also on hand are a variety of other
nighttime entertainment venues that kick off just as the sun sets over San
Francisco Bay.

October 5-7: The 12th annual Hardly Strictly Bluegrass is one of the
largest (and free-est) music festivals in the U.S. Held in Golden Gate
Park, three quarters of a million people are expected for the likes of
Patty Griffin, Les Claypool, Cowboy Junkies, Emmylou Harris, Chuck Prophet,
Chris Robinson Brotherhood, Elvis Costello, Dwight Yoakam, Lloyd Cole,
Patti Smith, Steve Earle, Vince Gill, Nick Lowe and more.

October 2-7: The second event of the 2012-13 America’s Cup World Series
will be sharing the City with the iconic events above. The first America’s
Cup event in San Francisco in August attracted over 150,000 fans to the
Marina Green and nearly 500 spectator boats to witness 11 of the best
sailing crews in the world battle just yards from the shoreline. In
October, the 11 AC45 will return to the Bay in hopes of attracting the
attention of the holiday crowds. Full details:
http://media.americascup.com/pressreleases/?id=928
CHANGES AT TEAM KOREA
(September 20, 2012) – The revolving door marked skipper at America’s Cup
challenger Team Korea is spinning again as Australian Olympic gold medalist
Nathan Outteridge departs after just seven months, about the same tenure as
his predecessor Chris Draper, an Olympic bronze medalist.

Outteridge, who, with crew Iain Jensen, blitzed the 49er fleet in the London
2012 regatta last month, is expected to join one of the three confirmed
challengers for next year’s 34 America’s Cup with the Swedish-based Artemis
as the front runner. Draper is with Italy’s Prada-backed Luna Rosa
challenge. The third is Emirates Team New Zealand.

The imminent official announcement by Korea team boss Dong-Young Kim, which
will name Outteridge’s successor, may also be coupled with final
confirmation that Team Korea is putting its current Cup challenge on hold,
though it has paid the $200,000 entry fee, and aiming at AC35.

But the cost of mounting a viable challenge in the new class of 72-foot
wing-powered catamarans is upwards of $100m. So far Team Korea, which also
has links with English premier league soccer club Sunderland, has failed to
announce that it has raised any significant budget. Among the Team Korea
crew in Naples, Venice, Newport, Rhode Island, and San Francisco this year
have been three top British talents, Giles Scott, Mark Bulkily, and Matt
Cornwell.

Announcing a new skipper implies that Team Korea will race at the America’s
Cup World Series regatta in San Francisco early next month. If so, the crew
will then need to be confirmed. — Full story at: http://tinyurl.com/d92zz36

The ACWS race schedule has had to work around the Fleet Week activities.
The Cup Experience website provides some clarity on how the events will
merge: http://tinyurl.com/CE-091912

LOOKING BACK AT SUMMER

It is after labor day, the unofficial end of summer, and the beginning of school, or at least it used to be. The Olympics took place this summer and the America’s Cup is heating up. There is no shortage of Olympic sailors in the America’s Cup.

If you are a sailor and an American, you were stunned to see that the US did not medal in a single class, not even in the hunt.

ISAF, the governing body of sailing is so politically charged, it is often hard to understand if the right thing happens or could happen.

If the Olympics wanted to truly limit costs and open the possibility of more good sailors; there is a solution: model the sailing after college sailing. The host country would select a boat, doesn’t matter which. They would build a fleet which could be sold at the end of the event.

The sailors would race against each other in these boats, rotating after every race. This is level racing, with little room for anything else.

The America’s Cup is a development event. It is intended to foster faster sailing boats. The Event in 1851 was conceived to showcase naval architecture.

 

SPEED UNDER SAIL

The wing sail for Oracle was test lifted today. more testing to come. Hydropetiere is on a mooring in San Francisco waiting for a weather window for an attempt to set a new record from San Francisco to Hawaii. The search for speed under sail has not diminished; a long way from Howard Chapelle’s “Search For Speed Under Sail 1700-1855”.