Update
It was the worst of places to come back from and in the end it took a reinvigorated team under new CEO Grant Dalton 14 years to do it but in Bermuda the ghosts of Team New Zealand’s awful defence of 2003 were finally laid to rest. The strange ‘hula’ equipped ACC defender is here in only Race 1 of the Match and already threatening to sink. Among the numerous other indignities suffered during the series was a broken mast in Race 4. And each long day the Kiwi-stacked challenger Alinghi cruised serenely over the horizon…
BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR – Jack Griffin During the press conference for the Protocol announcement Grant Dalton confirmed that a new monohull class will be used for the 36th America’s Cup. He cited an online survey with over 80 per cent of the respondents expressing their desire for a monohull. The concept video for the new foiling AC75 shows only one hull, but whether it enthralls, disappoints or confuses those survey respondents is an open question. There is no question that it is an audacious concept. It will
fascinate, entertain and surprise us. We will have much to discuss over the next three years! With no keel and the windward foil’s weight providing righting moment, we should develop a new vocab- ulary for discussing any modern ‘foil delivery platform’ regardless of how many hulls it has. Many people have expressed a desire for a traditional America’s Cup, with close match racing, dial-ups and circling in the pre-starts, sail changes and spinnakers. As we develop our vocabulary, perhaps we should altogether avoid the word ‘traditional’ – it often seems to simply mean ‘what I like’.
12 SEAHORSE
Déjà vu all over again The America’s Cup has changed club seven times. Each new holder has put their mark on the Cup, literally and figuratively, not always to universal approval. Bob Fisher’s excellent book, An Absorbing Interest, provides fascinating background about how each new defender organised the event to their liking. For the first defence New York Yacht Club’s membership chose to ignore the meaning of a ‘match’ and sent their entire fleet out against Ashbury’s Cambria, representing the Royal Thames YC. A century later their acceptance of a challenger selection process was widely welcomed. Challengers were less keen on some of the NYYC’s ‘interpretive resolutions’, including nationality requirements for yacht component construction and residency requirements for designers and sailors. The current holder, Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron, is the
only club to recapture the Cup after having lost it. Their Protocol and plans for 2021 have interesting similarities and differences from earlier editions, including their own Protocol for the 2000 cycle. The 1987 Big Boat challenge from Michael Fay and the Mercury Bay Boating Club had caught San Diego Yacht Club by surprise.
PAUL TODD/OUTSIDE IMAGES
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