AMERICAS CUP – On Thursday, less than 10 hours after a no-sailing recommendation period expired, three America’s Cup teams resumed training on San Francisco Bay.
For ORACLE TEAM USA and Luna Rossa, sailing again meant a return to their
training programs on the Bay. For Emirates Team New Zealand it was their first
sail on the Bay since arriving en masse as a team earlier this month.
Check out the photos for the day HERE
TEAM EMIRATES – Welcome to America! Our AC72 has touched the waters of San Francisco for the first time
AMERICAS CUP – Tasked with running a review into the circumstances surrounding the capsize of the Artemis Racing AC72 on Thursday, Regatta Director Iain Murray says consultation with stakeholders is already underway.
On Tuesday, Murray has scheduled a formal meeting when all four teams competing in the Summer of Racing – ORACLE TEAM USA, Artemis Racing (SWE), Emirates Team New Zealand and Luna Rossa Challenge (ITA) – will be in San Francisco.
“The meeting with the teams is a crucial next step,” Murray said. “We need to establish an open flow of information to ensure this review meets its goals of fact-finding and putting us in a position to recommend changes, if necessary.”
One aspect of the review will involve study of all data that was captured at the time of the incident.
“Once we have the information, the basic facts, all the data, then we will be able to re-build the entire chain of events and start to assess why this incident resulted in a tragic loss of life,” he said.
TEA OMAN – A tricky fog bound day ended in a stunning success for The Wave, Muscat who posted two outright wins to climb to the top of the leaderboard of the Extreme Sailing Series in China with an emphatic 12 point lead.
Teams were forced to wait in the race village for three hours when thick fog enveloped Qingdao’s Fushan Bay but just as officials were preparing to abandon racing for day, it lifted, leaving enough time for four races before it fell dark.
A slow start in the first race set the Oman Sail team back but they were able to turn things around dramatically in the second, to record their first win which they followed up with a second victory in the next.
“It was boring having to wait for three hours but it turned out to be a very good day for us because we were able to stay focused,” said Musab Al Hadi, one of the crop of talented young Omani sailors coming through Oman Sail’s unique sailing programme.
“We had some good starts and were able to get into clear air. We messed up the first one in a major way but decided on a less risky approach in the second and waited for the opportunity to apply some pressure and it worked out well for us.
“It feels good to be back in the game though it is too early to start thinking about winning because there are a lot of races tomorrow including a double points final race but we will relax and try our best.”
Delighted skipper Leigh McMillan whose plans were thrown into chaos earlier this week when one of his crewmembers, the Omani multihull star Hashim Al Rashdi was forced to withdraw with appendicitis, cautioned against raising expectations over winning in Qingdao when there was still so much to do.
“There are still 120 points up for grabs so there is a lot of work to do,” he said.
“We have a morning and an afternoon session tomorrow which means a lot races so if we are remotely off our form, a 12 point lead can be turned around in a couple of races so we have to keep on sailing well.
“At the moment it is probably between us and Alinghi but 12 points is only two bad races. If we sail well we have every chance of defending well here in Qingdao.
“Everyone is in good shape and we have things working well on the boat so tonight we will recap on things like communication and decision making to see how we can improve and tonight we will relax.
“Then tomorrow we will go out and reproduce the team work and performances we have produced so far but so far this has been a good event for us and I am really happy.”
“Alinghi had a couple of difficult starts and it made things difficult for them. Two races like that and they were locked in which gave us the opportunity to get clear.
“It was very tight with lots of tacks and lots happening but we were able to sail through and it paid off, massively.”
TEAM EMIRATES – Meet the Shore Team: OLIVIER BRETON
ROLE: Hydraulics Engineer
BEST THING ABOUT YOUR JOB: Developing systems that are efficient and reliable.
THE AMERICA’S CUP: Its about winning the oldest trophy in sport with good team spirit.
Its a lot about the team spirit.
TEAM L’HYDROPTERE – Mounting a comeback. Day 1 Cleaning the bottom
TEAM ARTEMIS -Swedish Youth Challenge’s helmsman Charlie Ekberg will join Artemis Racing White during the America’s Cup World Series Naples.
TEAM EMIRATES – Emirates Team New Zealand has completed its last days sailing on the AC72 in Auckland.
It’s time to pack the containers, wrap the boats and put them on a ship to San Francisco. After one of the best days sailing in the past couple of weeks, everyone is ready to get up to San Francisco and change focus to the business end of this America’s Cup campaign.
TEAM EMRITES – Two days ago Emirates Team New Zealand escaped near catastrophe when the team’s 130-foot tall wing sail clipped the side of a building during a launching exercise. Today team CEO Grant Dalton was breathing a heavy sigh of relief.
“It was windy the other day when we lifted,” Dalton says in a video from the Kiwi team. “We did a bit of damage, but Joey Allen says God’s a Kiwi and maybe he was looking after us because we could’ve gone out there and put it on its lid. It was a good lesson.”
The team attempted to mount the wing on the AC72 platform in winds that reportedly were gusting into the 20s. The wing suffered damage that temporarily kept the team shoreside yesterday, but it was business as usual today.
“We’ve got the wing in now, normal, up already, and life goes on,” Dalton says. “We haven’t got very long now. We’ve done 50 lifts or so and we’ve got about 10 to go and we’re packing up. We’re almost at the end. Boredom’s coming, you can feel it today. It’s time to get to San Francisco.”
AYSF NEWS – SAN FRANCISCO, California March 15, 2013 – The American Youth Sailing Force (The Force) greeted twelve international youth teams vying for four spots in the Red Bull Youth America’s Cup (RBYAC) in last month’s trials. With the competitors now selected, today’s the day the Force gets down to work training on the AC45. They know what’s needed to win the Red Bull Youth America’s Cup.
During the international trials, The Force’s yacht management and local skills made them instant experts while forging friendships with many of the would-be competitors. Team member, Mikey Radziejowski is excited about The Force meeting the international sailors, “It was awesome getting to spend some time around our future competition. Whether they made into the Red Bull Youth America’s Cup or not, it was great to get to know fellow youth sailors who were all here with the same goals.”
The Force’s detailed knowledge of the high-performance AC45 catamarans made them the go-to guys on the compound. “Being in charge of the two Oracle Team USA AC 45s and already being selected, instantly made us experts in front of all the international teams, and we had a lot of questions being asked about rigging and sailing the boats, even though we had only three days of sailing beforehand. The other really cool thing is, we ended up bonding with some of the other teams, and becoming good friends with some,” Mikey explained.
During the two weeks of the international trials, The Force hosted parties for the visiting teams. Mikey reports, “The parties…were a total success. It was very valuable for the team, we managed to create some awesome contacts as well as meet some great people like (multi-hull legend) Loick Peyron and the Maserati team who had just shaved 11 days off the New York to San Francisco record. It was also a great place for all the teams unwind and mingle…swap sailing stories.”
To get ready for racing this summer, The Force will begin with mock drills on stationary AC45s. Due to the, “logistical hurdles of launching an AC45, our time on-the-water with these boats is rather limited”, says sailing team manager, Ian Andrewes. To address this, “We do mock sailing scenarios on the boats which include grinding weighted tires 15 meters on each side. We have a line setup at centerline to mimic the height of the wing and do drills which require running across boat, loading the winches, grinding the tires in, run across the boat again and do the same thing over and over until we completely run out of steam. This sort of training really fine tune’s the teams ability to carry a high heart rate and still complete the tasks that each of us are required as part of sailing these boats”.
Getting on the water is vital to making these big powerful catamarans go fast. The Force will spend the next three days sailing the AC45’s under the watchful eyes of the ORACLE Team USA coaches. The team concentrate on how to make the boats go fast with sail trim and good boat handling, the same boat handling that they’ll refine in their dry land practices. Time in the boat is key to standing on the podium at the conclusion of the Red Bull Youth America’s Cup in September.
In addition to the time on the AC45, The Force practices three days a week on an SL33, essentially a scaled down version of the AC45 that some of the professional teams have used to get ready to compete in the America’s Cup World Series. Ian continues, “this really helps round out our team’s training regimen…As much as we are a part of ORACLE Team USA, we are also our own team and having access to the SL33 allows us to work/train on our own terms.”
FOR MORE INFO ON ‘THE FORCE’ contact:
Vince Casalaina
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
(510) 504-2605
americanyouthsailingforce.com
RED BULL YOUTH AMERICAS CUP – Fact: The 12 crews that participated in the Red Bull Youth America’s Cup Selection Series can lay claim to an achievement that not even the America’s Cup World Series sailors can say – no capsizes, no collisions, and no paint swaps.
TEAM OMAN - With the onset of the Omani weekend, thousands of spectators crammed the beach off The Wave, Muscat for the penultimate day of Extreme Sailing Series racing.
For a second day in a row the wind was light, never rising above seven knots before dying completely. However it was enough time for the Extreme 40s to sail eight races. Unfortunately for The Wave, Muscat team, the lake-like conditions favoured the teams from landlocked countries. The team started today level on points with Red Bull Sailing Team, but the Austrians had an immaculate day, and start tomorrow’s grand finale 15 points ahead.
“Today was a difficult day for us,” admitted The Wave, Muscat’s Omani bowman, Hashim Al Rashdi. “We made some unsuccessful decisions which affected our position and widened the gap between ourselves and Red Bull Sailing Team. Tomorrow we are looking to avoid making any mistakes and improve our tactics in order to win the last races.”
Added to their difficulties Ernesto Bertarelli and his Swiss crew aboard Alinghi are challenging The Wave, Muscat’s second position. Thankfully the Omani team ended the day on a high: after a slow to start in the final race, they pulled through the fleet finishing just ahead of their Swiss rivals, to maintain a three point lead going into tomorrow’s final races.
For the three Omani crew – bowman Hashim Al Rashdi and 5th man Musab Al Hadi on The Wave, Muscat and Nasser Al Mashari aboard Team Duqm Oman – competing in front of their homecrowd, demonstrating their skill as elite yachtsmen to their family, friends and fans, is understandably a very special moment, the highlight of their season before the Extreme Sailing Series moves on to the Far East, back to Europe and ending up in Brazil.
“I’m very happy to sail in front of in a crowd of thousands of Omanis who attended the event today,” said Al Mashri. “Their presence encourages us to exert ourselves all the more. We are looking to see them all come back to support us tomorrow to help us make it to the podium.”
Al Mashri won this regatta last year competing with Morgan Larson on Oman Air. His ex-skipper is now on Alinghi, and Team Duqm Oman is gunning for tomorrow, in third place, 30 points ahead of them.
Team Duqm Oman managed to keep it together today to maintain fourth place despite the tough conditions. “It was very very light today,” confirmed skipper Rob Greenhalgh. “I guess it is about practice in those conditions, but it is the same for everyone – any little mistakes make a big difference. It was enjoyable, tense racing. We hung in there and had our ups and downs as did everyone.”
Nasser Al Mashari added: “We were lucky at some points today to gain us valuable points. On the other hand, the wind we came across on some areas of the race course was almost dead and this gave other boats the opportunity to move ahead of us.”
Considering that the three teams ahead of them come with considerably more experience in the Extreme Sailing Series, Greenhalgh is satisfied with their progress. “They’ve been doing this for years. We have been doing this for one event. I think we can learn a lot and take a lot forward to another event if we get to do one.”
Greenhalgh confirms that on board Team Duqm Oman, the new crew is gelling. Reflecting on bowman Al Mashari’s performance, the three time Volvo Ocean Race sailor and multiple world champion commented: “Nasser is awesome. He’s head down, does his job very very well.”
The Omani teams are keeping their fingers crossed that tomorrow Mother Nature will deliver more breeze, but more important is that as many fans as possible line the beach at The Wave, Muscat tomorrow to encourage them on.
TEAM EMIRATES – Grinder Chris Ward is one of the longer serving members of Emirates Team New Zealand.
He never set out to be a professional yachtsman, but after 22 years with the team he’s happy with the way his life has turned out.
After finishing high school he went to university and completed a science degree. He also joined the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron’s youth training programme.
It’s a pretty tough programme that requires promising young sailors to dedicate almost every weekend learning how to sail well.
Combining university studies with sailing, he went “with what interested me the most” and got a break with the team in 1991 when he was sent to San Diego to sail on the second boat.
He’s been with the team ever since. He knows what it’s like to win the Cup – and knows the crushing disappointment of losing.
“It’s a fantastic job and every day sailing is just fantastic. It’s just one of things that you’re so lucky to be doing it – I think to myself every day how lucky I am.
“I never expected to be doing it and it’s a pretty nice career but not a normal job by any stretch of the imagination.”
Chris knew all there was to know about the IACC monohulls. He sailed in the V1 design at San Diego in 1992; he sailed the V5 at Valencia 15 years later and at subsequent Louis Vuitton trophy regattas, the last at Dubai in 2010.
How does he find the AC72 catamaran?
“It’s pretty exciting – few boats are as quick and as exciting to sail. It’s hard work – there’s plenty of grinding and you’d never have a race where you’re not absolutely knackered at the end.”
How is the AC72 going?
“It’s always hard to know. It’s the same in the build-up to every America’s Cup. There’s a level of anxiety because you’re going into the unknown and you’re in a position where you don’t know how good the opposition will be.
“We were the same in 1995 before we left for San Diego (the year Team New Zealand beat Stars and Stripes). We were anxious not knowing how fast our boat was and how we were going to go.
“We discovered we had a brilliant boat then but we didn’t know it until we actually started racing.
“I don’t think this challenge is any different in that respect. We have what we think is a very good boat we don’t know exactly what the opposition’s got, and don’t know how good they are going to be. That always leads to a certain level of anxiety.”
TEAM EMIRATES – Lachlan Forsyth is aboard Team NZ’s new boat, to see how they plan on winning back the America’s Cup. Check out this cool video about NZ’s boat #2 by clicking HERE.
GUNBOATS – Nice racing at the 33rd St Maarten Heineken regatta with Elvis tacking the win over Tiger Lilly, Panthera, Coco De Mer, Tribe
TEAM EMIRATES – Grant Dalton blogs on the happenings of the past few weeks ….
I hadn’t written anything for a while but the PR Department says the changing landscape of everything, “it’s about time you wrote a blog”. So here I am writing a blog on a Saturday afternoon as the shore crew works away changing, maintaining, optimising as they always do.
A lot has happened over the last few weeks in this run up to America’s Cup although to many observers it may tend to look like business as usual.
Well it is to a degree, I guess, but firstly Oracle has re-emerged and Artemis has gone back to the shed. The landscape changed for us on those couple of days that Oracle and Artemis trained together.
We got an answer to the questions: Is foiling correct? Is the trade off worth it? We always thought we were right but could never be sure. Even if the answer is still not totally clear, all teams are headed in the foiling direction so that helps us put that one to bed.
Our present view of Oracle’s sailing probably matches those of other observers: They look really nice up-wind and are starting to sail well down-wind.
They look like they are getting their act together really well now (shouldn’t be surprised by that) and, with the new boat coming on stream soon, they will take a big step up.
Should we make the America’s Cup final we will have our work seriously cut out to beat them.
Within Emirates Team New Zealand, it’s all about the boat at present. Base set up in San Francisco is underway, the sponsors are great; it’s still very much summer in Auckland and the wind has been perfect for testing.
Next on the horizon is the AC45 regatta in Naples. We will be there with a full-strength crew. Is it just us or does anyone else think it is hypocrisy that neither Artemis nor Oracle is sending their A team to Naples?
These are the teams that said Emirates Team New Zealand wouldn’t support the “future”.
To be clear we simply didn’t support linking the AC brand (shackling a future Trustee if in fact that could even be done) to a class that may or may not exist in the future (read cost).
Whether the AC45 exists in its own right is not up to us, we fully supported, and still do, the establishment of a ‘ future’ series if that’s what Coutts and Cayard want. It’s not ours to prevent. So why not send their A teams if the AC45 is the future?
I imagine they intend lobbying for permission to sail their AC72s when the Naples regatta is being raced (which under the Protocol is not allowed without prior approval.
To compete seriously at the ACWS regattas teams need to be there to train a week or so before the first race if they’re to have any chance of a good showing. That means another week of AC72 sailing lost.
We’ve even heard that Artemis was thinking of paying the US$100K fine if they don’t get approval. Now that would be a beauty!
EXTREME SAILING SERIES – The Extreme Sailing Series is set to become a brand new international fixture on the Singapore sports calendar until 2015, in a three year deal announced today between Series organisers OC Sport, the Singapore Sports Council and Aberdeen Asset Management. And for the first time ever, a team representing Singapore, skippered by a Singaporean sailor and supported by Aberdeen Asset Management, will be on the start line at Act 2 hosted in Singapore from the 11-14 April.
For Aberdeen Asset Management, the sponsorship of Team Aberdeen Singapore and their status as the main Local Partner for the Singapore Act, adds to the global asset manager’s growing sailing sponsorship portfolio, which includes ‘Aberdeen Asset Management Cowes Week’; an event where they had their first foray into Extreme 40 sailing in 2011, entering a British team into the UK leg of the 2011 Extreme Sailing Series. “We are delighted to bring the Extreme Sailing Series to Singapore as it promises lots of entertainment and we have developed a successful association with sailing elsewhere in the world” said Hugh Young, Managing Director at Aberdeen Asset Management Asia Limited. “We are happy to be able to support Singapore’s sailing ambitions and the inclusion of two young Singapore sailing stars will generate great local interest.”
An aspiring Olympic laser sailor, 22-year-old Scott Glen Sydney is the man charged with the task of skipper, making him the first ever Singaporean to skipper an Extreme 40. Together with fellow Singaporean and Asian Games keelboat match racing gold medallist Justin Wong, 27, the duo will line up against some of the world’s best sailors as part of Team Aberdeen Singapore as the invitational team in Act 2 of the Extreme Sailing Series. The ‘invitational team’ concept was introduced to the Series this year to provide a platform for host nations to compete on their home waters, yet be part of the full season leaderboard.
Thrilled to be part of the inaugural team representing Singapore, Scott said, “I’m very excited at the prospect of representing Team Aberdeen Singapore in the Extreme Sailing Series in Singapore. This is an immense opportunity and I hope to use this experience to become a more well-rounded sailor.”
Justin who is looking forward to race on home waters said, “The credentials of the competitors are very strong, racing against the world’s best sailors on home waters is a very rare opportunity. It’s a great privilege to be part of Team Aberdeen Singapore and I’m looking forward to exciting racing at the Extreme Sailing Series.” The three remaining crew members will be announced at a later date.
The action in Singapore will begin on the 11th April with the official media day before the free to enter public Race Village opens from the 12th. The Extreme 40 fleet will race in the circuit’s action packed ‘stadium’ format on Marina Bay Reservoir offering excellent spectator views of the racecourse from the Race Village and VIP areas and spectators will be spoiled with front row seats at The Promontory@Marina Bay. Whilst the conditions at this time of year are expected to be light, the tension on the racecourse will be enhanced by the enclosed stadium right at the heart of the city.
AC NEWS – Some important decisions have been made in the last few days on the afterguard of the AC72 Luna Rossa catamaran, who will be participating in the Louis Vuitton Cup – America’s Cup Challenger Series – in San Francisco, CA, starting from July 6th.
Chris Draper has been chosen as helmsman and Francesco Bruni will be the tactician, although he will still helm the AC45 Luna Rossa Swordfish catamaran during the upcoming ACWS event in Naples.
Luna Rossa skipper Max Sirena declared: “In all America’s Cup challenges you reach the point when this decision needs to be made. During these months Chris Draper has proved to be the best candidate to cover this role and I am convinced that his partnership with Francesco Bruni as a tactician will be one of our strengths. We may, for some races, decide to adopt a format in which Francesco Bruni will steer the boat in the pre-start, but this is a call that we will make from time to time, depending on the circumstances”.
TEAM ARTEMIS – The Artemis team spent some time at the Bay Model learning how the water flows through the San Francisco bay.
RED BULL YOUTH AMERICAS CUPS – Congratulations to Objective Australia, STG/NRV Youth, Team Full Metal Jacket Racing, ROFF Cascais Sailing Team, TEAM TILT SAILING, who have been selected to the Red Bull Youth America’s Cup in September.
FULL METAL JACKET RACING
ROFF CASCAIS SAILING
TEAM TILT
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