The America’s Cup is becoming more bizarre by the minute.
As many of you will remember, immediately after the last America’s Cup the winning Alingi syndicate declared that the next Cup would be held by a faux Spanish Yacht Club in Valencia in July ’09 in newly designed boats to be 90ft long.
Some 12 entries were received and everyone thought that was that until Oracle BMW came along with a challenge in the State Supreme Court of New York stating that the new Spanish Club was a sham and the rules for the racing biased towards the defender. Supported by the best lawyers money can buy they were successful and it has now been decreed by the Court that the challenger of record will be the Golden Gate Yacht Club whose challenger will of course be Oracle.
To add more grist to the mill, Oracle has declared that the races will be in multi-hulls, catamarans or Trimarans we don’t know, to be 90ft long and 90ft wide. Shades of 1998 when New Zealand’s huge single hulled yacht was wiped off the course by Dennis Connor’s catamaran. The Oracle syndicate have been busy training in 40ft cats and are said to have their design well progressed.
To add further spice the GGYC has stated that the race will be in October 2008, only 7 months away. The Alingi syndicate, in the person of Ernesto Bertarelli, then staged a tantrum and said they would rather forfeit than race. However cooler heads have since withdrawn that rather empty threat. To add a further twist, designed for the lawyers to enjoy, the America’s Cup deed states that “The Challenging Club shall give ten months notice in writing naming the days of the proposed races”.
The two syndicates met yesterday in Geneva to try to iron out differences particularly over the timing, which Alingi wants for May 2009. It will be no surprise to learn that nothing could be agreed and so it is back to Justice Cahn in the NY Supreme Court. The principle argument seems to be over when the ten months began and whether or not a waiver was granted and if so by whom and when.
In the meantime the other 12 syndicates have gone off to do something more interesting, probably including actually doing some yacht racing.
For those wanting to know where Australia stands in all this the answer is nowhere; however the Oracle syndicate has nominated Aussies James Spithill as helmsman and Joe Newton as a sail trimmer on whatever floating apparatus the race is finally sailed in. Presumably Syd Fischer is talking to our best legal brains to see if we can get to the starting line at the Court!
When and if this series for two takes place it is most likely to be very one sided since the designs could be completely different and as a result boat speed quite dissimilar. Both syndicates are rushing about looking for catamaran talent. Alingi has hired Alain Gautier, who won the Vendee Globe race, amongst many others, in a huge catamaran and our Australian medal wining Olympic Tornado sailors might suddenly find themselves in a more lucrative occupation than Olympic sailing.
One thing’s for certain, when it is eventually sailed it will be a bare knuckle affair and don’t be surprised to see gentlemen (or ladies) in wigs seated on both sides of the helmsman.
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