America's Cup ruling, not an April Fools joke?

[rbgarr]

http://www.tradeonlytoday.com/index.php/home/497384-appeals-court-rules-in-favor-of-us-in-cup-lawsuit.html

[John B]

I haven't read that but the news here is saying Oracle is challenger of record now. Funny how the real ruling is a mirror of all the april fools stuff. LOL.
If they do the cat thing, Alinghi will bring out a significantly larger boat and it'll be a ketch or yawl.

[bamamick]

They have set the thing back so far now that it is pretty much irrelevent. It will be very interesting to see if it even survives, much like the VOR. I think that Alinghi's contract with the Region of Valencia states that they (Alinghi) have to guarantee participation of 11 teams for their contract of 9 million Euro per event to hold. We will see.

Mickey Lake

[John B]

You read it here first.

reported elsewhere as ' The rumor is that the Swiss boat may fit their boat with some kind of token yawl rig to accommodate the additional 25 feet of LWL.'

[johnw]

From the Orlando Sentinel:

America's Cup disagreement persists

posted by Linda Florea on Apr 23, 2009 9:49:15 AM Discuss This: Comments (0) (http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/sports_sailingflorida/2009/04/americas-cup-in-dispute.html#comments) | TrackBack (0) (http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/sports_sailingflorida/2009/04/americas-cup-in-dispute.html#trackback) | Linking Blogs (http://technorati.com/cosmos/search.html?url=http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/sports_sailingflorida/2009/04/americas-cup-in-dispute.html) | Add to del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us/post?url=http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/sports_sailingflorida/2009/04/americas-cup-in-dispute.html&title=America%27s%20Cup%20disagreement%20persists) | Digg it (http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&url=http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/sports_sailingflorida/2009/04/americas-cup-in-dispute.html)
From a press release from Golden Gate Yacht Club. A judge ruled on the case recently, but the argument didn't end there:

Valencia, Spain, 23 April 2009 – A delegation from the Golden Gate Yacht Club and its team, BMW ORACLE Racing, met in Geneva today with representatives of SNG/Alinghi.
GGYC’s clear and straight-forward proposals for a fully competitive, conventional America’s Cup in monohulls were rejected by SNG, who insisted on a regatta in large multihulls under the Deed of Gift.
SNG asserted that the Deed of Gift match with GGYC would take place in May 2010. This is in defiance of the recent decision and orders of the New York courts that the DoG match take place in February 2010.
GGYC has asked SNG to put their position in writing, and hopes to have another meeting with SNG soon to clarify issues related to the DoG match.
GGYC is disappointed that SNG categorically rejected our proposals for a conventional regatta. GGYC will continue to negotiate in good faith as Challenger of Record to put the America’s Cup back on the water as soon as
possible.

And Alinghi's press release:

Geneva, Switzerland - (2009-04-23)
At a meeting today in Geneva, the America's Cup defending yacht club, Société Nautique de Genève (SNG), confirmed that it accepts the Golden Gate Yacht Club's (GGYC) challenge for the 33rd America's Cup and informed representatives of the American yacht club that its team, Alinghi, will be ready to race their 90x90ft boat (as stated in the GGYC Notice of Challenge) in 2010.

SNG expressed its willingness for the challenger selection to be open to other teams and has encouraged GGYC to do so by offering them more time for teams to prepare if necessary. It was also stated that the SNG would be flexible and ready to discuss other terms of the 33rd America's Cup such as race format, venue or calendar.

[floatingkiwi]

Is this goin on now? What a kaffuffle.I remember when we,(NZ), built a huge sailboat called "Lion NZ",and under the impression, Connor and his team had a timeline to duplicate the making of such a vessel and defend our challenge for the cup, were left throwing up on our TV screens as Connor blitzed us around the marks in a little one man trimaran he dug out of his back pocket, along with some loophole justification of it, I guess, similar to the one we had to challenge in the first place.
Bloody waste of time.
I agree, One Design or no boat race.

[John B]

que?

Lion NZ was Peter Blakes round the world maxi and had nothing to do with the AC.
Connors Stars and Stripes was a crewed Catamaran and it did win the AC.


My point is that that what I was told a few months ago is looking like its correct. The Alinghi multi will be a a yawl or ketch and significally larger than the Oracle tri.

[dhic001]

And the big boat was KZ1, now outside the maritime museum. It was the modern interpretation of a J class. Now a few of those racing is something I'd like to see. I won't start on Conner...

Daniel

[bamamick]

I find it almost impossible to keep up with this stuff anymore, but from what I understand it WILL be in the big multhulls, which is rather ironic when you consider that the IOC just dumped the multihull discipline from the Olympics.

If BMWO wins (which I doubt, Coutts or no Coutts) then the Cup will come back to the States, the Cup venue will take years and billions of dollars to prepare and it'll all be pushed back until no one will remember what the thing is like to watch. Instead of taking this thing to the people, as Bertie said he wanted to do before Valencia, he has more or less killed sailing as a sport on telelvision because it will wind up being about 8 years before there is a true America's Cup from the time the last one ended.

Mickey Lake

[WX]

Lion NZ was Peter Blakes round the world maxi and had nothing to do with the AC.
Connors Stars and Stripes was a crewed Catamaran and it did win the AC.

And that my friends was when I stopped watching the race. It ceased to be sporting at that point, it was borderline before that but the cat was the final straw.

[rbgarr]

John,

Tell me about the 'extra 25 feet of waterline'. Does this get around the 90' by 90' maximum length/beam proposal?

[Paul Pless]

It ceased to be sporting at that point, it was borderline before that but the cat was the final straw.the australian point of view...;):D

[WX]

Paul I will accept that however if you think it is sporting to build a cat to race against a monohull, then I will stay with my definition.

[rbgarr]

Tweaking Kiwis is a 'sporting' event the world over, popularized by the Australians IIRC. :D

[johnw]

John,

Tell me about the 'extra 25 feet of waterline'. Does this get around the 90' by 90' maximum length/beam proposal?

The deed of gift says the cup can be raced for in sloops up to 90 ft. on the waterline or two-masted vessels up to 115 ft. on the waterline. Or you can make a deal to race in whatever sort of vessels you want within those limitations.

San Diego Yacht Clup screwed up and didn't have a challenger of record, which opened the door for Blake to challenge under the deed. SDYC went to court and argued that by long tradition, the cup was raced for in 12 meters. The judge said screw that, the deed says 90 feet for sloops or 115 for two-masted. Lacking the time to build a 90' waterline sloop, Connor responded with s 60' catamaran. Blake went to court and said that by long tradition, the cup had been raced for in monohulls. The judge said screw that, the deed only says -- well, you get the idea.

SDYC screwed up the cup, I'm less inclined to blame Connor. But then it seemed the Aussies had given it a new life, it got more coverage in NZ than it ever did in Newport, up until this latest thing it seems like things were going pretty well. Then the Swiss failed to get a proper challenger of record...

[John B]

John,

Tell me about the 'extra 25 feet of waterline'. Does this get around the 90' by 90' maximum length/beam proposal?

Seems like a fine print issue to me Dave . I thought the multis were to be built to 90 ft box rule but evidently there's an exception if you sling another mast in .That would allow extra hull size.
Thats what I was told quite a long time ago and why I've dropped a couple of hints along the way here over the last few months.
Its beginning to look like thats how it'll be .. I'm not following the AC anywhere on other sites at all because I'm sick of it.. jaded just like everyone else.

or, its gamesmanship.;) Anyway.. I just came across that reference on Lat 38 and it seems the rumour is out there... wait and see I guess, they'll have to get the thing out soon and we might get to watch 3 days of racing , or totally mismatched competition just like the late 80's (with the cat and big boat).

[bamamick]

The whole world can see that if you want to do this properly you do it in some spiffy class of boat that is a fair design and gives everyone a chance to win without being so exclusive that it restrcits the numbers down to next to nothing, and you do it on a regular basis so that people know when it is going to happen. There you go. Not rocket science.

Once upon a time I had lots of non-sailing friends ask me about the AC because they knew that I sailed. Now I have one friend who asks and that's because he just finds it funny when I tell him that the thing is tied up in the court system. Can you imagine if the soccer or rugby world cup was tied up in the court system and they couldn't play for it?

Mickey Lake

[John B]

damn right.

but still... will they set a mizzen staysail?:D

[Paul Pless]

or totally mismatched competition just like the late 80's (with the cat and big boat).or like 2003:o

[rbgarr]

It would be interesting to see big multihulls forced to sail some kind of course that kept them in close contact with each other on all legs. Don't know how it would work off the top of my head.

IIRC the races between the KZ1 and the Connormaran seemed like they were sailing different races that just happened to have a few turning marks in common.

[John B]

2003.. yeah and thats another story not fully told. We all know that the boats were breaking on them and thats why they were too afraid to get them out in any breeze, which of course led to them breaking on the race course. Where a large proportion of the TNZ budget went was into a radical concept boat that still no one talks about or discusses to this day.There simply wasn't money in the coffers to even have a spare mast , it'd been spent on the prototypes and the conversion of 57 to a full size trial at the cost of millions. And the return to standard after so it could be sold ,to the french IIRC.

[dhic001]

San Diego Yacht Clup screwed up and didn't have a challenger of record, which opened the door for Blake to challenge under the deed. SDYC went to court and argued that by long tradition, the cup was raced for in 12 meters. The judge said screw that, the deed says 90 feet for sloops or 115 for two-masted. Lacking the time to build a 90' waterline sloop, Connor responded with s 60' catamaran. Blake went to court and said that by long tradition, the cup had been raced for in monohulls. The judge said screw that, the deed only says -- well, you get the idea.

SDYC screwed up the cup, I'm less inclined to blame Connor. But then it seemed the Aussies had given it a new life, it got more coverage in NZ than it ever did in Newport, up until this latest thing it seems like things were going pretty well. Then the Swiss failed to get a proper challenger of record...

If we can just correct a few things here, this is well pre Blakes Involvement in the cup, he only came to the America's Cup with the successful Black Magic challenge of 1995. It was Michael Fay who challenged with KZ1, officially the challenger was the Mercury Bay Yacht Club :D. I think Fay found the Mercury Bay Yacht Club in some woolshed, but they were a guenuine, but tiny yacht club.

Daniel

[Don Z.]

San Diego Yacht Clup screwed up and didn't have a challenger of record, which opened the door for Blake to challenge under the deed.

They had the Cup for what, ten minutes before MBBC submitted a challenge?

Besides that, the way that sentence is written, you're blaming the DEFENDER for not having a Challenger lined up? How much sense does that make?

MBBC was founded in an abandoned car overlooking the Hauraki Gulf. If that's the definition of a "legitimate Yacht Club", well then...

[floatingkiwi]

que?

Lion NZ was Peter Blakes round the world maxi and had nothing to do with the AC.
Connors Stars and Stripes was a crewed Catamaran and it did win the AC.


My point is that that what I was told a few months ago is looking like its correct. The Alinghi multi will be a a yawl or ketch and significally larger than the Oracle tri.

Thanks John,I thought I might of had that a bit twisted. What was the challenge we set for them for if not the cup? I cannot remember. All I remember is thuis huge sail filling the horizon with this tiny toy sailing ahead of it in the foreground.
No offence U.S.

[rbgarr]

One of the most active and the oldest junior yacht clubs in the US has never had a club building, the Cotuit Mosquito Yacht Club... and no one over 25 can be a voting member. It used to be that they couldn't be married either, but that ban has been lifted afaik. :D

I believe they could seek to be the challenging club if they desired... but the entry fee would be a little too steep for them. :D

http://www.churbuck.com/things/skiffs.htm

[johnw]

If we can just correct a few things here, this is well pre Blakes Involvement in the cup, he only came to the America's Cup with the successful Black Magic challenge of 1995. It was Michael Fay who challenged with KZ1, officially the challenger was the Mercury Bay Yacht Club :D. I think Fay found the Mercury Bay Yacht Club in some woolshed, but they were a guenuine, but tiny yacht club.

Daniel



Thanks, I had a brain fart.

[johnw]

They had the Cup for what, ten minutes before MBBC submitted a challenge?

Besides that, the way that sentence is written, you're blaming the DEFENDER for not having a Challenger lined up? How much sense does that make?

MBBC was founded in an abandoned car overlooking the Hauraki Gulf. If that's the definition of a "legitimate Yacht Club", well then...


The custom had been that before the last race was sailed, the defender had a challenger of record lined up. Of course, at that point "usually" the defender had been the New York Yacht Clup.

Don't think the Aussies had one lined up before the last race, but I'm sure the NYYC was waiting for them at the dock with a challenge.

[floatingkiwi]

New York Yacht Clup?

[johnw]

New York Yacht Clup?

And don't you forget it.

Okay. I'm posting way too late at night. I admit it.

[elf]

One of the most active and the oldest junior yacht clubs in the US has never had a club building, the Cotuit Mosquito Yacht Club... and no one over 25 can be a voting member. It used to be that they couldn't be married either, but that ban has been lifted afaik. :D

I believe they could seek to be the challenging club if they desired... but the entry fee would be a little too steep for them. :D

http://www.churbuck.com/things/skiffs.htm

CMYC has a clubhouse now.

Chapoquoit only has part of a barn that belongs to someone else and borrows a pier into West Falmouth harbor. It runs a full kids program in optis and 420s, as well as tennis and swimming and some adult weekend racing.

[rbgarr]

Where's their clubhouse? It isn't that phone booth near the racks for the rowing shells is it? ;)

[johnw]

Mercury Bay Yacht Club sounds a bit like the Kittery Point Yacht Club, which when I was a kid in the early '60s had one tangible asset: An 8' dinghy for members to get out to their boats on moorings. Meetings were in the basement of the store near the public pier and we raced Merrimacs and some bigger boats. Bet things have changed a lot since then.

Still, thinking about a club like that challenging for the Cup is amusing.