34th America's Cup: multihulls!

Has anyone signed Steve Clark yet? Steve Killing? Is there a Canadian effort?

 

34th AC- the challengers-Canada

From Scuttlebutt Europe tonight:

Canadian America's Cup Entry?
A Canada-wide challenge, to be put forth by the Royal Canadian Yacht Club at a cost of $30 million to $45 million, is being discussed.

"We're very much in the exploratory phase of the program," said Kevin Reed, a Toronto investment banker and RCYC member who is chair of Red Maple Racing, the bid's name if and when it takes off.

"We'll know by late January or mid-February. We'll take 60 days to size up the opportunity. But it makes a ton of sense and the economics are realistic."

Reed said the Canadian group, including the Royal Vancouver Yacht Club and Royal Halifax Yacht Squadron, would put together a joint challenge, to be run out of the RCYC on Toronto Island and feature an all-Canadian crew.

"Do we have the talent for an all-Canadian crew? I think we do," said bid backer Paul Henderson, former head of the International Sailing Federation and the only RCYC member who was actually born on Toronto Island. Henderson worked the America's Cup meeting last week in Dubai, where the Canadian cat began to escape the bag.

Canada has challenged previously for the oldest (first awarded 1857) trophy in sport, beginning with an RCYC attempt back in 1876, but it hasn't been back since 1987. Tales of high-tech challenges costing north of $200 million dominated America's Cup talk in recent decades, but things are changing.

"I've heard about teams spending $150 million or $200 million, but this new approach is to make it as syndicate-friendly as possible," he said. "They've told us (costs would be) $10 million to $15 million a year, with some of that coming from revenue sharing." -- Dave Perkins in the Toronto Star, full article at www.thestar.com

 

From Scuttlebutt Europe todayhighlight by DL)

America's Cup: Supes Pass San Francisco's Best Bid For Venue Hosting
Supervisors of the City and County of San Francisco have passed the recommendation from their Finance Committee for the Hosting of the 34th America's Cup.

The vote was unanimous 11-0

That plan, which was claimed by City officials to have been re-negotiated with BMW Oracle Racing since the weekend is for the so-called Northern Alternative, involving a set of Piers and infrastructure more to the north of the City.

The previous plan, involving a more central location, and the subject of four month negotiation between the America's Cup Defenders, will not be submitted.

At yesterday's Finance Committee hearing, official backed the Northern Alternative, largely on financial grounds in a deal that is effectively cost neutral to the City in return for an estimated $1.2billion dollars of Economic Return and 8,000 new jobs.

City Officials could not determine whether they were going to make or lose money on the deal. On one hand claiming that the deal would cost the City $11million and on the other saying that by accounting for $32million of sponsorship to be raised by the America's Cup Organising Committee and offsetting this against the $11million of cost, the City would show a positive return of $22million from the event.

The substitution of the Alternative Plan, as the City's best offer on Hosting effectively removes it from the position of having a 'winning bid' in the words of lead negotiator, Stephen Barclay of BMW Oracle Racing, to one where the San Francisco bid would be compared with others from Italy and New York.Details of the New York bid are not to hand, however the Italian bid, believed to be linked to Rome's Olympic hosting aspirations for 2020, involves a guaranteed event fee and numerous other concessions and fast tracking.

The survival of a confidence vote by the Italian Prime Minister overnight, said to be a key supporter of the Italian bid, will have only strengthened the European hand. -- Richard Gladwell's full article in Sail-World.com:

www.sail-world.com

 

Just got the news.
It's Newport.

 

Got a link? The biggest problem I see with Newport is the lack of wind....

 

No.
I just heard it on the radio.

 

=========
Thanks, Patrick- I sorta think somebody may have jumped the gun. There is no news that I've found on the net that corroborates that story. Even SA is quiet and they would be cackling like a flock of chickens if the decision had been announced. As I understand it, BMW and or the organizing committee has until the 30th or 31st to make a formal announcement.
Thanks for the heads up-the story may still be accurate -who knows....

 

34th AC-SF????

From Scuttlebutt tonight:


IS SF'S CUP BID ON SHAKY GROUND?
By Rob Grant, Latitude 38
With its government having pulled out all the stops to put together a bid to
host the 34th America's Cup, San Francisco is far from a lock to host the
event. Most recently, reports that BMW Oracle Racing team officials have
been meeting with representatives from Newport, Rhode Island, Dubai, and a
nebulous Italian venue have done a great deal to cast doubt on San
Francisco's bid. Given that the team's imposed deadline for a bid from the
City has already passed, we're at a loss as to what the team hopes this will
accomplish. It's too late to be a negotiating ploy, which leads us to
believe that all the effort put in by the sailing community, San Francisco
government and civic leaders may have been in vain all along.

First of all, what's with all this Newport, Rhode Island business? What
happened to San Francisco being the only U.S. city under consideration?
Ellison can do what he wants with the Cup - it's his prerogative as the
winner - but he's going to have a hard time arguing that the signed, sealed
and delivered deal from the City of San Francisco will have a deleterious
impact on the event. Which is the only believable argument from someone with
a personal fortune estimated in the neighborhood of $27 billion. He's going
to have a hard time convincing us that Newport will generate the same kind
of international appeal and enthusiasm around the Cup as San Francisco will.

The thing is, by this point in the process, San Francisco is a known
quantity. Ellison and Coutts know what they'll get here, the terms are
spelled out. It seems highly doubtful that Rhode Island, motivated as it is
to get the event, would be able get a host city agreement together and voted
on by the end of the year. So, if they were to choose Rhode Island, BMW
Oracle Racing either must risk announcing the venue without having a host
city agreement in place, or put off the venue announcement and risk being
sued by a challenger for not sticking to the protocol.

The team's COO Stephen Barclay has been all over the wires with his claims
that the deal was changed late in the game and that's what caused the team
to look elsewhere. But the reality is that the deal only changed because the
original one no longer had the support of the majority of Board of
Supervisors, due in part to the fact that the City government rightly
uncovered the myth the team made every effort to perpetuate - that of the
bogeyman Italian venue (while the European economic crisis swelled to a
crescendo) - and that even if that competition was real, it wasn't worth
giving away the farm for anyway. -- Read on: http://tinyurl.com/L38-122010

 

34th AC-SF????

From Scuttlebutt tonight:

A NEW CHAPTER IN THE WORLD OF LARRY
While the vision BMW Oracle Racing has for the 34th America's Cup might have
turned off a segment of committed sailors, the team is more focused on
engaging the non-sailing audience in hopes of growing the commercial base
for the event. However, based on this story by columnist Mark Purdy of the
San Jose Mercury News, the Cup defender might be losing some traction there
too:----------------------------------------------------------------------
So I guess we can all be glad that Larry Ellison missed out on his bid to
buy the Golden State Warriors.

Why do I say this? Because if Ellison had been successful, the team might be
leaving Oakland for a new arena in ... I don't know, Hilton Head Island or
West Palm Beach.

Or perhaps you have not been following the strange and ruthless America's
Cup dance in San Francisco. It has been quite the entertaining example of
how gazillionaires such as Ellison love to do business. Hint: Never take it
for granted that they care as much about local pride and local people as
they do about crafting a fabulous real estate deal.

Ellison, the grand pooh-bah of Oracle software and hardware, is also a
wicked sailor of cool big-time yachts. Last winter, he went to the waters
off Spain and won his sport's biggest prize, the America's Cup. Under the
rules, Ellison and his sponsoring Golden Gate Yacht Club now get to select
where the next America's Cup races will be held in 2013.

The obvious choice is the San Francisco Bay, right? Ellison's company is
located in Redwood Shores. His yacht club is within spitting distance of
Alcatraz. And last week, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved
what looks like a pretty sweet plan.

Basically, that plan would hand Ellison's group a free extended lease to
prime waterfront property and piers. The Ellison group, in exchange, would
develop the property into suitable America's Cup facilities and condominiums
or retail buildings that would survive long past the event itself. A group
of civic boosters also was promising to raise more than $200 million in
private money to help subsidize the races.

Fair enough, one would think. But not in the World of Larry. Last week, his
Golden Gate Yacht Club representatives flew to Newport, R.I., to discuss an
alternate deal that would be more financially favorable. With a decision
expected before Jan. 1, club spokesman Tom Ehman said Monday that Ellison's
group was "seriously" considering turning its back on San Francisco and
taking the races east.

"That would be pretty disappointing," said Tad Sheldon, a race officer at a
Bay Area yacht club.

Contrary to popular belief, most sailboat owners are not rich people who
wear ascots. They are folks of varied means who simply choose to spend their
free time and dollars hoisting jibs instead of paying golf green fees or
buying 49ers season tickets. And the local spinnaker tribe was pretty jacked
up about the prospect of seeing the world's fastest sailboats dueling on the
bay.

What a sight that would be. Thousands of spectators would line the shores to
watch the action for free. Catamarans with their 150-foot masts would slide
at up to 40 mph beneath the bridges as commuters looked down from their
cars. Local kids might be encouraged to take up the sport.

"It's up to Larry Ellison what he wants to do with his money," Sheldon said.
"But if he was truly interested in improving the sailing scene in San
Francisco Bay, the deal would have been done already." -- Read more:
http://tinyurl.com/MSS-122110

 

34th AC-SF????

More from Scuttlebutt tonight:

WAY BEYOND KICKING TIRES
By Stuart Streuli, Sailing World
As Monday's meeting of the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation
broke up, I sidled up to Tom Ehman of BMW Oracle Racing and put it as
straight as I could. "Are you just kicking tires?"

He looked me straight in the eye and shook his head. "No, we're way beyond
that," said Ehman. "I went all the way to Michigan [his native state], came
back here. We brought a bunch of people in here, spent a lot of money. Larry
[Ellison] has a house here. We're looking for the best possible facilities
that will happen reliably on July of 2012 and in a way that's not
expensive."

Among the BMW Oracle Racing officials that visited Rhode Island last week
were COO Stephen Barclay, Craig Thompson, CEO of the America's Cup Event
Authority, the organization tasked with running the event, and Iain Murray,
the Australian Cup skipper from 1987 who will serve as regatta director for
the contest. But does this mean they are serious in their intentions; and
not simply looking for leverage to get San Francisco to sweeten the deal.
Who knows? -- Read on:
http://www.sailingworld.com/blogs/way-beyond-kicking-tires

 

34th AC- the challengers-Australia

From Scuttlebutt tonight:

(December 22, 2010) - Today a Syndicate of Australians including legendary
yachtsman Ludde Ingvall, skipper of the YuuZoo Big Boat Racing Team, has
submitted a Notice of Challenge to the defending Golden Gate Yacht Club of
San Francisco. The Syndicate aims to bring together nationwide resources and
skills in a true people's challenge. Lodging the application reserves a
place for Australia to return to competition for the world's oldest
international sporting trophy. -- Read on: http://tinyurl.com/PR-122210

 

34th AC- BMW leaves Oracle!

From Scuttlebutt tonight:

"ULTIMATE DRIVING MACHINE" DRIVES ON

Too much of a good thing is a bad thing, as some us have learned over the
years. BMW, one of the main partners of the current America's Cup defender,
decided this week that enough is enough, after winning the 33rd edition of
the event. The two have partnered in the event since 2002 and, according to
BMW, have shared much, especially at an engineering level, since.

The transfer of technology between BMW and Oracle (including structural
engineering and high-modulus composite construction) led to the creation of
the USA 17 trimaran. The yacht soon became the fastest in the history of the
America's Cup and climbed at the top of the standings of the 33rd edition in
Valencia, Spain back in February.

"On the design and engineering front, BMW engineers set new benchmarks in
terms of intelligent lightweight design," said Ralf Hussmann, general
manager BMW Sports Marketing and Brand Cooperation. "In winning the 33rd
America's Cup, we achieved all of our ambitious goals. We will continue to
be involved in the sport on a national level."

According to both BMW and Oracle, their separation comes as a result of the
goal, winning the Cup, being achieved. --
http://www.autoevolution.com/news/bmw-leaves-the-americas-cup-28787.html

 

34th AC-San Francisco wins!

Yee Ha! San Fran is it!!
http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/sports&id=7873444

 

Doug.
I could only find this.
"Golden Gate Yacht Club says SF not yet chosen to host America's Cup as negotiations underway."

Is your news the latest ??

 

==========
Well, I think so-ABC news confirmed it and SA is all a flutter. I'll try the Daily Sail and get back to you.

EDIT-nothing there yet....
EDIT: Geez, they changed the story on ABC-in its place they have the headline you mention and a story dated yesterday.....
EDIT: Heres another confirmation: http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/2010/12/souces-say-san-francisco-has-americas-cup
and another: http://www.ktvu.com/video/26333602/index.html