With five new sail numbers allocated to various America's Cup teams, design and build teams are working furiously to have these Version 5 boats ready for competition in the 2006 Acts.
Version 5 is really just a tightening down of the existing rule in many ways, as it forces the designers into a corner of the box that they were already heading towards. This was very much the intention of Alinghi and ACM's management team, as Alinghi's resident historian and general counsel Hamish Ross explained recently during a roadshow tour of America. "The reason why we did that is to make racing closer and more exciting. It would have been easy for us, if you like, to gerrymander the rules to make sure that we had a big advantage, but Alinghi really has a long-term goal of making the Cup, growing the Cup, growing the awareness of the Cup worldwide. As part of that, we want to make the racing as exciting as we possibly can. So the design parameters have been boxed down a lot more."
It's hard to fault Alinghi/ACM for their generosity in this area of the Cup. There was much more advantage to be gained by a big, wealthy team to open the design rules right up, but as Ross stated, Alinghi's goals are as much focused on the commercial growth of the event as in the successful defence of the Cup in 2007. Then again, that isn't to say that there isn't anything left for the designers to tinker with. It's just that hull shapes are unlikely to be the big area for gains.
It was interesting to note how open Alinghi have been with SUI-75, their rocketship that performed so well in 2005. Throughout the past year's regattas, she was there for all to see and photograph, and no doubt rival teams spent many an hour logging the subtleties of her hull shape and appendages. The one area that the Swiss appear very cagey about, however, is the base of the mast between the hull and the deck. During sailing this section of the rig is below decks, but as soon as the rig is lifted out on shore the team are very careful to cover it up. The belief is that they have a twisty rig, which would mean the upper sections of the mast would be more favourably aligned with the wind direction and present less wind resistance.
So the areas for making gains could be much more subtle this time than on previous occasions. There's no strong likelihood of a winged keel or a hula coming out of leftfield. This should make for some tight racing in the finals in 2007, something that has been sorely lacking in past America's Cups. Along with the move to shorter courses, thereby further minimising any boatspeed advantages, Valencia should represent a test of superior sailing skill as opposed to superior design.
This sounds like a good thing, as in many people's view it is the sailors and not the designers that should be the stars of the show. But for others, the Cup boats have grown too long in the tooth, and it is time for the event to come up with something more cutting edge. Certainly sailing technology has moved on leaps and bounds in the decade and a half of the ACC yacht's existence. The new generation of lightweight canting keel boats, such as are competing in the current Volvo Ocean Race, almost always exceed true windspeed. Give them 6 knots breeze and they'll do 8. Give them 20 knots and they'll hit 23, no trouble.
The ACC boats on the other hand, rarely exceed 11 knots either upwind or downwind. Slow boats make for close, but slow-motion competition. While they won't admit it publicly, many Cup sailors do not enjoy the actual sailing experience of the ACC boats. Hopefully this current generation of ACC yachts will be the last that we will see of them. Valencia 2007 will be an opportune moment for saying thank you and goodbye to the old, and heralding in a new breed of race yacht that really gets the sailors' juices flowing again.
As the 22 October date for a court hearing in the New York Supreme Court drew ever closer, the verbal tit for tat battle over the future of the America's Cup stepped up a gear. While there have been reports of the disgruntled billionaires Ernesto Bertarelli and Larry Ellison trying to sort things out over the phone, there has been little sign of progress in public...
A few days after Justice Cahn sat down in the New York Supreme Court to hear both sides of the dispute over the 33rd America’s Cup, Alinghi made the unexpected move of publishing details of the new 90-foot rule which will shape the boats for the future...
One day we might look back on this era of the America's Cup with fond amusement. The moments in a century and a half of competition where the lawyers have had a bigger say in the event's outcome than the sailors, all add to the Cup's rich history. But going through these periods as they're actually happening is nothing but painful...
Will we ever see a better America’s Cup in our lifetime than the 32nd edition? Highly unlikely. Although it didn’t go down to the wire like Australia II’s historical 4-3 comeback against Liberty in 1983 – the match which changed the Cup forever – the racing in the 32nd edition was far more compelling.
One of the intentions of the Version 5 rule changes to the America's Cup Class was to make the boats more similar in speed, and also to make it easier for the trailing boat to overtake downwind. The ultimate intention was to make the racing much closer and less predictable. While Version 5 has indeed made the yachts much closer in performance, strangely this hasn't succeeded in producing any closely-fought series during the knock-out phases of the Louis Vuitton Cup...
If Chris Dickson never wins the America's Cup, it will be because he wanted it too much. Elite athletes and sports psychologists talk about ‘optimum level of arousal' - getting excited enough to get the adrenalin flowing, not getting so excited that the adrenalin floods the system and you lose mental and physical control. Despite the presence of a full-time psychologist at the BMW Oracle base in Valencia, Dickson has not yet learned to achieve that optimum level of arousal...
I didn't think Alinghi would win Valencia Louis Vuitton Act 13. While the challengers would be racing hard for bonus points to take forward into the Louis Vuitton Cup, it seemed the Defender would want to play its cards closer to the chest. Alinghi proved me wrong, however, as four wins from seven races suggest sandbagging was not on the Defender's agenda after all. Fair play to Brad Butterworth and his crew, I think they gave a pretty honest account of themselves in Act 13, and they gave plenty for the challengers to think about too...
At the end of February the Auld Mug, the America’s Cup trophy left Geneva, its temporary home for the past four years, on the ‘Road to Valencia’. This was a procession through five major European cities, which during March took the Cup to Paris, Rome, Berlin and Madrid, before reaching Port America’s Cup in Valencia.
Well the wind has been truly dire over the Valencian winter, so all those teams that took themselves elsewhere for some off-season training will be feeling very smug now...
The British have been trying to win the America's Cup longer than any other nation. After all, it was a race around the Isle of Wight in 1851 that started it all, when the only foreign yacht, America, defeated 14 local boats in their own backyard...
You've worked hard. You've made millions, billions even, the fruits and rewards from years of building your business empire. And then you want to blow more than $100 million on a yacht race...
Even when they're training in different continents around the world, the 12 teams vying for the America's Cup are still waging war against each other. It is a war of words, fought through press releases, web sites and blogs, and one of the most entertaining battles to watch is over who thinks they have the best weather...