Category: america’s cup 34

BREAKING NEWS: CAPSIZE

Word on the internet is that the oracle 72 foot multihull has capsized. Damage to the wing. Should we be surprised?

This event coupled with Coutts remarks a few days ago:

Yachting: Coutts admits big cat a mistake

5:30 AM Saturday Oct 6, 2012

Coutts conceded if he had his time again he would have gone with a less ambitious design. Photo / NZPA

Coutts conceded if he had his time again he would have gone with a less ambitious design. Photo / NZPA

America’s Cup heavyweights at odds as tension hits boiling point

 

Russell Coutts, the mastermind behind the format for next year’s America’s Cup, has admitted he made a mistake with the AC72 class rule and revealed he even tried to scale back the size of the boat late last year.

The Oracle chief executive claims his efforts to revise the design of the wingsail catamarans when it became apparent other teams were struggling with the costs and complexity of the project were blocked by Team New Zealand counterpart Grant Dalton.

But, in what is sure to bring simmering tensions between the two teams to boiling point, Dalton has fired back at Coutts, accusing the four-time Cup winner of trying to “spin his way out of trouble”.

Under the original plans for the 34th America’s Cup unveiled in September 2010, competitors were supposed to be racing their AC72s in this week’s world series regatta in San Francisco.

But with just three challengers confirmed for the Cup next year, and only one of them – Team New Zealand – having got their boat wet yet, the remaining regattas on the circuit will be sailed in the AC45s.

The design and construction process of the high-tech wing-sailed catamarans has been far more time consuming and complex than anticipated. Artemis’ AC72 programme has been fraught with problems, while Oracle suffered major damage to their daggerboards shortly after they launched their boat, behind schedule, in late August.

In an interview with the Weekend Herald at Oracle’s base on the outskirts of San Francisco, Coutts conceded if he had his time again he would have gone with a less ambitious design.

“In hindsight, I think there were two errors. One was I thought the boats needed to be quite large-scale to be grand enough for the America’s Cup. Clearly the world series has proven this wrong – the AC45s look pretty damn good on TV,” he said.

“The other thing is, we possibly should have looked at making more of the components one-design.”

Coutts said he broached the topic of moving to a smaller scale boat at a competitors meeting in San Diego in November last year, but the idea was immediately rejected by Dalton.

“Quite a few of the teams were in favour of this, particularly the ones that were struggling financially. Do you know who opposed that? Team New Zealand. And now they’re complaining about how difficult it is.”

But Dalton has rejected Coutts’ account of events, and believes the Oracle chief executive is trying to use Team New Zealand as a scapegoat for his own poor planning.

“(The proposal to change the class rule) was nothing more than a statement made at a closed meeting so that one day when the wheels start falling off he can use it as an excuse,” said Dalton.

“He was proposing that we all scrap three well-advanced boats, and start again.

“It is one of the biggest concessions of defeat I’ve ever heard.”

Coutts asserts when the idea was tabled no team had begun building their AC72s, but Dalton denies this.

“At that point our boat was three-quarters built. His boat and Artemis were well in build. Deals were done.

“And what would that have meant (if we did agree to change the class rule)? That all these other teams were suddenly going to stump up the money?

“They can barely even start an AC45.”

With this latest spat following a stand-off between Team New Zealand and America’s Cup event organisers this week over a decision to abandon development of the team bases on piers 30-32, it appears the rare period of peace in the sport is coming to an end.

Dalton said he was becoming frustrated at the continual back-tracking from the event’s organisers.

“There are a chain of things that aren’t being produced as promised.”

Coutts, meanwhile, suggests Dalton “is only happy if he’s having a grumble about something”.

WE KNEW IT WAS COMING! A DEFENDER SERIES

This has always been the plan, since Ben Ainslie was signed to team Oracle.

America’s Cup “Defender’s Series” Revealed

October 13, 2012

By 

America’s Cup Principal Race Officer John Craig confirmed Friday that Jimmy Spithill and Ben Ainslie will have to battle it out to see who skippers the defense of the 34th America’s Cup.

Craig said the Defender’s Series will run in tandem with the Louis Vuitton Cup, scheduled for July 4 through September 1, 2013.

 

Copyright © ORACLE TEAM USA

While it’s been clear from the beginning that Larry Ellison brought Ainslie on board to hold Spithill’s feet to the fire, having a formal Defender’s Series will put two more AC72s on the Bay racing – something to augment what looks like a three-way race for the Challenger’s spot.

Fans will get to root for Ben or Jimmy, T-shirts will be sold, carbon fiber refrigerator magnets will blossom from a thousand doors, and commerce will rule the waves. Like other major leaque sports, it’s all about running more contests, and depending on how Team Oracle wants to set it up, there could be quite a bit of AC72 face time ahead next year.

CRASH AND BURN IN SAN FRANCISCO

Ok, are these the images we are all waiting for? NASCAR sailing? Can we only now be satisfied by capsizes and near misses? Have we come to terms with the idea that the America’s Cop will never again resemble sailing as we knew it? Will this new format sustain the event?
I am not in San Francisco so none of the images are mine.

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.

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