Americas Cup: whats next?

Except that you can't go back and correct that which is now posted eternally on the Inernet, as the posts are locked from editing.

I didn't ask Jim about that as it wasn't a part of the discussion.

I'm quite sure that he would be open to talking with you about any of his design work and whatever the inspirational sources might have been. It doesn't look as if you want to contact him directly on any of this and that's a shame. It would seem to me that when one gets one assumption about a designers credentials incorrect, that one would want to look at all of their assumptions about that person's work. Your understanding of the Antrim 27 was incorrect and it might be a good thing for you to invesigate the process associated with the U20, rather than maintain your current posture.

The question was never about your record compared to that of another. You wrote, "My track record? When have I ever been wrong in anything I've posted?" That question is not inclusive of the submittals of others.

I suggest, strongly, that you contact Jim Antrim and get the information directly from the person who drew the boats in question. If you don't want to do that, then it points to not really wanting to know the truth about a particular topic. I can't see how that sets you apart from "that person" if you are both deriving your information from vague sources.

 

“Jim Antrim, white courtesy phone please.”
“Jim Antrim, white courtesy phone please.”

 

From Scuttlebutt today:

KIWI DESIGNER IN FAVOR OF MONO HULL FOR NEXT CUP
Marcelino Botin, the Spanish head designer of Emirates Team New Zealand,
talked to Valencia Sailing about his ideas on the future America's Cup
yacht, the TP52's and, of course, the brand new Volvo Ocean Race campaign
the kiwis will run for the Spanish footwear group Camper. Botin and Emirates
Team NZ are strong advocates of the monohull option for the 34th America's
Cup.

Having interviewed three of the 19 designers present in the recent design
meeting in Valencia, Botin is convinced that, at least, the conception of
the new yacht rule is indeed an open, democratic consultative process. He
stated, "If it's indeed true, as Paul Cayard stated in his interview
yesterday, that we will "end up with a monohull", then it will be a clear
sign the Defender really gave up one of its major prerogatives."

VALENCIA SAILING: Let's first start with the Designers Meeting in Valencia
two weeks ago. Did you attend it on behalf of Emirates Team New Zealand or
as an independent designer?

MARCELINO BOTIN: Well, the invitation sent by Ian Burns was personally to me
but he obviously knows I work for Team NZ, so I would say that I was in that
meeting as a representative of Team NZ.

VALENCIA SAILING: Can you tell us what you and the rest of Emirates Team NZ
want?

MARCELINO BOTIN: First of all, what we want is a monohull yacht. We don't
want the America's Cup to be raced on multihulls, for a very simple reason.
The America's Cup is a match race and at least in its current format, we
believe it isn't suitable for multihulls. It could be different if you
envision some other format of match racing but in our opinion, and in
particular mine, the biggest attraction of the America's Cup it the match
racing itself and the close and tight races it offers. Even before the start
of the race you have close action and all those aspects would be lost with a
multihull. Take for example the 2nd race of the 33rd America's Cup last
February in Valencia. It would have been completely different had the two
boats been monohulls. -- Full story: http://tinyurl.com/2dxkmkn

 

This Horse is Dead

Kicking it does nothing.

 

RE: This Horse is Dead.

-and ain't that the truth!

 

San Francisco it is----

From Scuttlebutt 7/8/10:

SAN FRANCISCO TO LEAD USA EFFORT
(July 8, 2010) - San Francisco has put forward a strong, well-rounded venue
proposal, and is now the only city in the USA under consideration to host
the 34th America's Cup match. The city is home to the Golden Gate Yacht
Club, whose team BMW ORACLE Racing, won the 33rd America's Cup in Valencia,
Spain on 14 February. The 34th America's Cup is scheduled for 2013 or 2014,
the year to be determined by infrastructure development lead-times.

"Our team has said from the outset that San Francisco and the Bay Area have
the potential to provide a superb stage on which to host a memorable
America's Cup," commented Russell Coutts, CEO of BMW ORACLE Racing. "Our
team owner, Larry Ellison, has called the Bay 'a fantastic natural
amphitheatre'."

In being granted status as the sole venue candidate in the USA, San
Francisco can forge ahead with plans to provide the necessary facilities for
the America's Cup along the City's waterfront, south of the Bay Bridge. It
also now allows San Francisco to "nationalize" their efforts and to seek
support from the State of California and the federal government in
Washington, D.C.

Strong expressions of interest from four European countries are also being
studied by the American Defender. GGYC/BOR will announce a final decision on
the venue, along with the date and other details of the next America's Cup
by the end of this year. -- Full report: http://tinyurl.com/25kn6r9

 

But they still havn't decided on cat or mono?

 

A proa would be a sensible compromise then, and introduce some interesting new tactics as well.

 

Good one!!

 

Got to be the fastest-the ultimate in technology..

From Magnus Wheatley:

gotta be multis...


I know that the America's Cup community rarely reads the newspapers and most of the B's have scant disregard for the notion that the world's finances are on its arse and that we are in the depths of a global recession but to my mind the only way forward for the AC is to go multihulls for the next iteration of the Cup. It's a no-brainer.

It's pretty clear that BMWO and the big boys in the AC would like to see a global circuit that sort of mirrors the Bernie Ecclestone format of F1 leading up to a big match shoot out for the Cup itself and to be honest you just can't do that in boring old monohulls. It's a lofty ambition to think along the F1 circuit but it will work if everyone gets their heads out of their arses and stop believing in the fuddy-duddy out-dated notions of the Cup. This is 2010 and we're planning for 2014-2015.

Yeah sure, the stated intention will be for James Dadd of RORC to come up with some kind of monohull "weapon" but quite frankly why bother? Nobody outside of the top sailors in the world actually gets excited by viewing monohulls unless it's in 45 knots of wind and their arses are hanging out, masts are breaking and sails are ripping…

However, you do a straw poll in your place of work and ask how many people have seen a catamaran whilst they're on their annual beach holiday with the kids and missus and nearly everyone will have seen one. Sure they may well call them "Cata-meringues" or "Hobby-Cats" (as my wife does) but you can be darned sure that they've all seen one and all have an opinion! So there's your new audience and the TV stations start pricking their ears up.

Now when it comes to the racing, we have the opportunity with multihulls to really shake things up. Slalom courses, optional rig sizes, close to the shore racing etc etc…in short, the multis are just so much more versatile for a global spectacle.

Factor in too that you only need, say, a maximum of 4-5 egotistical, highly paid rock stars on board (rather than a cast of thousands on a monohull) plus the reduced transportation costs and shore crew and you also won't be needing any environmentally-unfriendly engines or power packs to cant keels – this quickly becomes a no-brainer. The TV guys are still interested.

And the other big plus is that you effectively Grandfather the established, well overpaid hierarchy of yachting (Cayard, Butterworth, Davis perhaps even Couttsie-Coo) heralding a new era of Cup sailors – young, good looking multihull dudes who come without the awful baggage of the match-racing circuit and Olympic medals…man I can see $$ signs and the TV companies are now forming an orderly queue alongside some multi-media organisation (whoa, were did they come from?).

Now for the televisual spectacle (one of the keys to the BMWO plan)…These boats have to sail in windy and glamorous venues. For a start, the armchair viewer has to go "Wow, look at that" or else you may as well forget it. We need huge capsizes, monster waves, spray, breakages, danger, juggling dogs (okay maybe not that far) but it has to be extreme sailing if the audience is going to be captivated. Helicopters need to be zooming in behind the boats at dangerous pitches with cameramen hanging out risking their lives. The onboard footage needs to be wide-screen, I want to feel the blisters, I want to feel the spray, I want to see the 3DL delaminating in front of my eyes, I want to hear the mast snapping with the biggest thunderclap in history as these things crash off the waves.

Therefore, number one on the venue requirement is wind and **** loads of it. **** the politics of the past with the likes of Valencia, Auckland etc and building special facilities so that you almost have an obligation to be there. We don't need team bases and all that paraphernalia, just rock up with a few containers and everyone shares the same facilities. Sure cap the wage bill, cap the budgets but get some grand-prix style advertising and rebrand the sailors as "pilots" and herald them as the greatest things since sliced bread. Make superstars of the young sailors, hell even introduce an upper age limit – 30 sounds about right – bring some glamour in and tell the world that to sail these things requires youth and born-in talent (everyone will believe you, trust me). Make it a circus…

These should be weekend regattas like F1 that start on Thursday with a tune up, before practice on Friday, qualification on Saturday and a burn-up, balls out race on the Sunday. I want pit girls, WAGs and a lot of glamour…I don't want salty sailors talking nonsense about two-boat lengths, windward boats, port and starboard etc etc…leave that to the Corinthians. Throw the rule book out of the window and stick two fingers up to the sailing hierarchy in their stuffy yacht clubs and challenge the established order of everything we have ever known. Tell ISAF exactly where to get off, have a vision and don't be afraid to go to the extreme left-field (it's quite nice over here by the way).

We have to have glamour back in this game but in such a fast multi-media world where kids consume media in the most extraordinary ways we need wam, bam, thankyou mam not some drawn out epic that the AC has become in recent times. If the next Cup goes anywhere near a court room, you can kiss this sweet little trophy goodbye, forever. This has to be the iPad Cup for the wireless generation.

Come on lads, step the game up…believe you can do it. Larry you have my number. Use it!

Magnus Wheatley

 

how come the extreme 40 circuit has not taken off then???
Only finished last year as Oman sailing paid the bills
It is runnng this year much to everyones surprise

 

Multiulls in AC? Canting keels in AC?

From Scuttlebutt 7/28/10:


YES!

THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX
From his early days as a high ranking advertising executive, Garry Hoyt has
a long history of generating fresh ideas and inventions to invigorate the
sport. Now Garry provides his advice for the brain trust deciding the
details for the 34th America's Cup:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
I fear that the commendable intentions of Messrs. Ellison and Coutts (of BMW
Oracle Racing) to energize and popularize the next America's Cup are likely
to run head on into the intractable paradox that the features which make
sailboat racing so intriguing to its practitioners also conspire to make it
both boring and incomprehensible to outside viewers. This is particularly
true when it comes to the effective TV coverage which is vital to any hope
of attracting major audiences.

So rather than attempting to graft together these incompatible elements, it
would be better to treat the America's Cup as the separate, premier event it
aspires to be, and give it a separate set of rules that address the
following realities:

1) Viewer interest in any race (track, swimming, cars, horses) depends
directly on the viewer being able to quickly and continuously discern who is
ahead and by how much. Conventional sailing practices often deny this.

2) Maintaining same screen proximity of the combatants is vital to viewer
interest and comprehension and this requires special staging on special
courses.

3) Given the scale and expense of the supporting equipment, sailing speeds
that are less than what a man can run make sailing seem dull and archaic.
Since multi-hulls are demonstrably and dramatically faster, why not go with
them and design race courses that showcase their sailing speed.

4) Given the inescapable relation between wind velocity, sailing speed and
visual excitement, minimum starting wind speeds of over 10 knots should be
required and sailing areas that cannot reliably deliver that should be
avoided.

5) Once liberated from the artificial constraints of conventional sailboat
racing rules, a modern America's Cup would be free to be as entertaining as
it would be demanding. Suggesting this is not heresy or betrayal of sailing
tradition, rather it is a practical adjustment to the special nature and
stature of what the America's Cup can and should be.

As I have previously suggested, there is no reason why AC sailing action
cannot be continuous on a given day, with downwind starts immediately
following upwind finishes of deliberately short courses that would allow
three races on a proper day. This would maximize the heightened viewer
interest that provably exists around the excitement of the starts.--Scuttlebutt Forum:
http://forum.sailingscuttlebutt.com/cgi-bin/gforum.cgi?post=10216#10216
===========================================

No! and No! Again...

WILL MULTIHULLS STIFLE AMERICA'S CUP?
Sir Keith Mills, head of Team Origin Britain's America's Cup challenge,
believes that if holders BMW Oracle Racing choose a multihull for the next
cup, few if any teams will want to challenge because "the playing field
would no longer be level."

Because of the trimaran they used to win the Cup last February, BMW Oracle
Racing (BMOR) would have two to three years' advantage in research and
development and this, said Sir Keith, would be unfair. "No one is going to
spend tens of millions if they don't have a chance of winning."

"We would prefer to have a monohull and six or seven of the other teams
would also prefer a monohull," he said. He also claimed the majority of
challengers wanted a monohull without the complexity and expense of a
canting keel which is an option already published in the draught protocol
for the next Cup. -- Yachting World, read on: http://tinyurl.com/33tmnv3

=================
Go Garry!

 

AC: whats next?

And the "yeas" have it! Long live the Cup!( in the Multihulls forum)

 

Doug: When I looked at the AC34 web site and read the PR re: Multi Hulls, I immediately knew you would be elated. As a monohull sailor I do have a preference, but as I said before the design parameters have to make for a level playing field. Without that constraint, the best fund raiser wins, not the best sailing team. Sailing team has to be defined as designers, architects, builders, and actual crew...the people. Keeping the boats evenly matched allows technology and sailing skill to both play a role.

I know this an idea most will find hard to fathom, but an AC series racing the Js, the 12M and the AC class boats leading up to the multihull races for the Cup itself would be great...allow teams to narrow down the best sailors for the AC itself, and give the public a history lesson in sailing too. Nothing like Js racing aginst each other (see J Class Association for news about 2012 in the UK and 2013 in Newport RI for J regatta...potentially 9 J boats racing, what a sight).

 

-----------------------
Tim, that is one of the best ideas I've yet heard of for the Cup! It might be possible in some way or the other-it is a fantastic concept.