America’s Cup Management (ACM) delivered on time yesterday with the issue of the rule for the new America’s Cup class, as required under their Protocol for the 33rd America’s Cup. The process, as we’ve reported previously, has been lead by Tom Schnackenberg, with input from the six challengers currently entered – and Alinghi.
The new boat is 90ft overall maximum length, 6.5m in draft when it’s racing, with a displacement of 23 tons and designed to a box rule. It was the displacement that the challengers were apparently allowed to set, to negate any prior knowledge of the rule that Alinghi might have had – and hopefully any headstart on the design process.
ACM issued a press release about all this, but more interestingly they also issued the rule itself. I don’t think anyone was expecting that, as ACM had previously made a big deal of withholding knowledge of the rule from anyone that hadn’t entered the 33rd America’s Cup, and therefore accepted all the other (disputed) conditions of the Protocol. But now the rule is out there, and the ball is definitely in the Golden Gate Yacht Club’s (GGYC) court.
GGYC, who, along with Oracle have led the attack in the New York State Supreme court on the 33rd Protocol, had previously issued a press release on the 25th October stating that, ‘The American team (Oracle) has told challengers it is ready to agree to wide ranging new proposals discussed over the last 24 hours if it can confirm for itself that the design rule developed by Alinghi is fair for all competitors.’
Well, now the rule is out there, we’ll all be expecting to hear from the GGYC next…
Meanwhile, the Spanish bloggers have been getting much exercised over the issue that’s pivotal to the court case – the credibility of the Challenger of Record, Club Nautico Español de Vela (CNEV). The Valencia Sailing blogspot has a nice story on efforts to join the aforementioned club - revealing that you can’t. While Scuttlebutt have translated a blog by Jaime Soler, who writes in Spanish, about the Notice of Race for the CNEV’s third attempt to hold an ‘annual regatta on an arm of the sea’ – one of the conditions for any challenging yacht club. It's not pretty...
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Mark Chisnell ©
The new boat is 90ft overall maximum length, 6.5m in draft when it’s racing, with a displacement of 23 tons and designed to a box rule. It was the displacement that the challengers were apparently allowed to set, to negate any prior knowledge of the rule that Alinghi might have had – and hopefully any headstart on the design process.
ACM issued a press release about all this, but more interestingly they also issued the rule itself. I don’t think anyone was expecting that, as ACM had previously made a big deal of withholding knowledge of the rule from anyone that hadn’t entered the 33rd America’s Cup, and therefore accepted all the other (disputed) conditions of the Protocol. But now the rule is out there, and the ball is definitely in the Golden Gate Yacht Club’s (GGYC) court.
GGYC, who, along with Oracle have led the attack in the New York State Supreme court on the 33rd Protocol, had previously issued a press release on the 25th October stating that, ‘The American team (Oracle) has told challengers it is ready to agree to wide ranging new proposals discussed over the last 24 hours if it can confirm for itself that the design rule developed by Alinghi is fair for all competitors.’
Well, now the rule is out there, we’ll all be expecting to hear from the GGYC next…
Meanwhile, the Spanish bloggers have been getting much exercised over the issue that’s pivotal to the court case – the credibility of the Challenger of Record, Club Nautico Español de Vela (CNEV). The Valencia Sailing blogspot has a nice story on efforts to join the aforementioned club - revealing that you can’t. While Scuttlebutt have translated a blog by Jaime Soler, who writes in Spanish, about the Notice of Race for the CNEV’s third attempt to hold an ‘annual regatta on an arm of the sea’ – one of the conditions for any challenging yacht club. It's not pretty...
www.markchisnell.com
Mark Chisnell ©