Inset: covering all the bases… (exactly) as Emirates Team New Zealand cross the line in the background to win the America’s Cup the new Defender is handed a challenge from Circolo della Vela Sicilia to ensure their position as Challenger of Record. There was more, though. At home the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron was in purdah with every phone line and server shut down to avoid being ambushed by any super-techy intruder…
The great news for this next Cup is that the Challenger (and the team that is going to negotiate with the Defender on behalf of all the potential challengers) has been in this game for 20 years and has been the Challenger of Record twice before. Luna Rossa will be strong in making sure the playing field is level and the next America’s Cup regatta is true to the intent of the Deed of Gift. Dalton and Patrizio Bertelli will stand up and be counted. Enough of the technical stuff. My challenge will be case one, we will work it out as equal partners. Before we talk about the boats we should have the same conversation that ETNZ and Luna Rossa have been having. Namely what is the America’s Cup supposed to be? How do the words written in 1857 convey the intent when trans- lated to the language of 2017? Are we aiming for a massive show with a worldwide audience or is it a ‘friendly yachting competition among nations’? Who are we running this competition for, and why? The last America’s Cup boats were ultra high-tech and incredibly fast. The boats flew on the water at speeds most motorboats could not match. Got to say it was pretty cool. It was sailing in the sense of powered by the wind, but not as anyone has known it. Four people on wind-trainers supplying oil to drive the systems, two on the X-Box pushing the buttons the computer tells them to push. Any change of boat will mean a slower, less wow factor boat, but the crew will participate in sailing in a more traditional sense. One of the better points of our dinner chat was ‘the rules of the next Cup should be appealing to their peers’… as in yachting peers. A simple fact of life: if you want the crew to be more involved in the sailing of the boat we are going to have to slow down. The AC50s did not need, nor want, extra sail area downwind. They never went downwind. When you go 40kt downwind, the wind is always in your face! You beat everywhere, the apparent angle is just a few degrees different upwind to down. No extras needed here. The basic question is ‘do you want the sailors to be part of sailing the boat?’ in a normal sense of the word, or do you want the fastest thing we can do? My guess is Luna Rossa want a boat where the crew take part in sailing the boat, trimming and changing sails. They will be looking for more from the sailors than supplying oil to the system. Should America’s Cup boats be big? The Deed of Gift, and tradition, would indicate reasonably big – between 65 and 130ft has been the norm for the last century. How big? 70? 80? Does the cost become a factor in your decision? Haha, it is not our decision at all, but run with it as if it is ours, just for the fun of it! The choice of boat could dictate how many teams partake in the next event. Should it be a factor in ‘our decision’. Personally, I don’t think we can ignore the benefit to the Cup of having eight teams competing. We need to make it possible for lots of teams to compete; that means minding the costs.
Nationality. Consensus is a sailor nationality requirement is a good thing. It’s previously been suggested nationality could be two-tiered. If the country had not challenged in the past 20 years they would get more non-nationals (say 50 per cent) than a country that has, who have to have 80 per cent nationals. We can play games with the numbers and what constitutes a national but the aim is to help new countries into the Cup and to keep the contest among nations. OK, what do we know? We know it’s not really our decision, thank the Lord. But if it was, when you take the time to understand the Deed of Gift and to respect the tradition and history of the Cup and apply some common sense, the answers to questions like boats and nationality will become clear.
Like I said, the two parties making this decision are both very experienced in the America’s Cup, and on opposite sides of the table as the Defender and Challenger should be. Therefore, we should have a pretty damn good set of rules when they come out… If you want to have a bit of fun, write down what you think will be the next set of rules. We can compare notes after they come out… Maybe over dinner. Got time for a second beer?
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