The return of the Little America's Cup

Steve Clark tells us about the prospects and new format for next September's C Class spectacular

The next Little America's Cup, the competition for C Class catamarans, the world's most efficient sailing boats, is to take place in Rhode Island in September 2004.

With the Seacliff Yacht Club's Trustees choosing to rewrite their Deed of Gift of the International Catamaran Challenge Trophy earlier this year to change their competition into one for Formula 18HT catamarans, the future of the competition in the ground breaking C Class catamarans has fallen squarely on the shoulders of American Steve Clark. Clark's Cogito team won the Little America's Cup off the Australians in Yellow Pages in 1997.

The official title for the new event, for it will still be known informally as the Little America's Cup, is to be the International C-Class Catamaran Championship. This will be held out of the Bristol Yacht Club on 16-25 September. The trophy for this event is to be called the Winners of the Little America’s Cup Trophy.

"We have had 22 events in the Little America’s Cup in the C-Class and we’re going to recognise those people with the new Trophy," Clark told thedailysail. "It is a new era but we had a wonderful run there. We don’t see any reason we shouldn’t honour the participation of those people."

So why doesn't he simply call it the Little America’s Cup? "That’s not my choice. The problem we have is that there are at least three groups with the rights to that name. America’s Cup Properties LLC has the right for it to say America’s Cup on it, but they couldn’t stop it because both Seacliff Yacht Club and the International C Class have by long use and association some propriety rights to the name. That is the legal opinion as I understand it. 'Little America's Cup' was a sobriquet which was given to the event by journalists and it came to be known by that and it is a term out there in the parlance." Clark adds that aside from this there are a zillion little yacht clubs out there who hold their match racing championships and call it the Little America’s Cup.

"The situation is one where I think you gain the rights by walking the walk," Clark continues. "We’re not giving up on our rights to it, but also we’re not going to sit there and squabble. We’re just taking what we think is a reasonable decision, short of surrendering, and proceeding. I think it is a high ground position."

Like the big America's Cup, Clark is proposing some major modifications to the format of the event. Firstly the traditional roles of defenders and challengers is to be abandoned, as Clark says this excludes people and hampers participation.

The event will kick off with five days of fleet racing with three races per day. The results from this will sort the field into pairs for the match racing final (ie the top two boats will match race each other in the finals while boats three and four from the fleet racing will race in a petit-finals series). Again there will be three races per day and the winner of two of the three races on a particularly day gets one point. First to three wins.

"If you run three races it gives more competitive and tactical options for everybody. One boat can’t run away from the other and that is the end of that," explains Clark.

As with the big America's Cup, fleet racing should dramatically enhance the spectacle. "Even the slow boats in that pack if they got a lane and got a shift would be ahead at the weather mark and it would be hard to grind them down. In a match race the slow boat is a sitting duck and the fast boat will beat them every single time, whereas a fast boat mismanaged in a fleet race will lose to a slow boat well managed. You look at what could have been in Auckland where you had 14 Cup boats sitting around, it could have been a pretty impressive spectacle which just wasn’t allowed to happen." This would make for some action packed weather mark roundings. "You think Farr 40s are exciting… These things would all come in overlapped and maybe it would be carnage..."
With match racing alone, Clark feels the bar is just too high. "It is the same in the America’s Cup because in match racing fairly small differences in boat speed are just deadly." It also doesn't make for particularly exciting competition. "The 1983 series in Newport went the distance and then some, but it hasn’t done that since. I think the loser has won one race since."

The traditional courses for the event will be maintained but will be substantially shorter, lasting 35-50 minutes. "We’re not going to do the whole 18 laps or whatever it was. It used to be a one mile beat, zigzag thing – windward, zigzag, windward-leeward, three times around so there were something like 18 legs and you used to get completely lost, you needed an abacus to keep track of where the hell you were," recalls Clark.

This time the course will simply be a triangle with a reaching leg following by a windward-leeward. "Most people prefer windward-leewards," says Clark, "but there is something to be said for putting the beam reach in there. That does in fact test the ability of the boat to get to its highest speed and there is some point in tempting that and the broad reaches prior to that are also exactly at the ‘wild thing’ angle. Certainly the third reach is a real test of the efficiency of the boat. If the wind stays true and you can get down to the mark without gybing and the other guy has to sail 3-4 degrees higher to keep pressure in their rig, it is a real make or break moment."

Racing will be held between Prudence Island and Bristol, where using a buoy called Ohio Ledge. These waters were used by Cogito for training prior to their winning the Little America's Cup in 1997. The boats will be based out of Bristol Marine, the boatyard immediately adjacent to the yacht club where there is room for the containers in which the delecate wing rigs are stored.

Obviously key to Clark's new vision of the Little America's Cup is more than just three boats taking part. At present Cogito is in its container waiting to roll. The British Team Invictus Challenge is still midway through their build and despite their short build time, Clark has confidence in the Airbus team's ability. "You’re going to fly to Australia in something these guys says works."

The Australian team are currently sailing with their new wing rig which features a single slot and a twisting front element. Clark says that the weight numbers he has seen for the boat appear to be in the ball park, but as yet there is no evidence of them having had the boat fully cranked up.

However three boats alone won't make for a fantastic event. Another person getting keen on the event is Team New Zealand's Mike Drummond who is at present attempting to mount a Kiwi challenge maybe with a clone of Cogito. It is possible that under the new format the British team could field two boats.

Clark's Cogito team also owns the famous C Class cat Patient Lady VI and this will be undergoing major surgery in the Clark workshop this winter.

In order to improve the competition Clark says he is going to leave Cogito in the configuration she was in when she won in Australia and will not develop her further for the 2004 event. "There is very little incentive for me raising the bar. Having said all that… It is almost impossible to pull this stuff in the workshop, look at it and say ‘what would I happen if I…' and 'while we’re at it we might as well...' So Patient Lady VI needs some repairs anyway to be a useful trial horse for Cogito. She needs to lose a bunch of weight and will be getting reworked this winter so while we are at it, we’re going to try and find out some different things. So Cogito will be sitting there as the standard boat and VI is probably going to get a little bit unusual."

Clark says that on this occasion he will be sailing and at present it looks like he will be on board Cogito with Duncan Maclane. Patient Lady VI will also take part and maybe up for grabs if the right person with suitable commitment comes along. Clark says there are already some interested parties.

There have been small rumours of other C Class contenders coming out of the woodwork from Italy, France and even Switzerland (come on Ernesto, why not bag this one too?) but these have yet to prove themselves as having any substance.

Lindsay Cunningham's C Class catamarans are also doing nothing in Melbourne while the team concentrate on making further attempts on the ultimate world sailing speed record. They show little interested in campaigning their boats, but would they be for sale? The Australian boats are among the most intensively developed in the world and are ideal vehicles for toppling the Clark crown.

The new Trophy will come with its own Deed of Gift and Clark is looking at what rules it might include. Among the issues needing to be addressed are the nationality restrictions and trying to make the event and class as appealing to owners as possible.

"By having five days of fleet racing we hope there is enough sailing going on so that someone who doesn’t feel like they are necessary going to win still feels like they are going to get some value out of the regatta, so it gives you a way to start," says Clark. "Going to a match race is like going to war - you don’t do it unless you know you are going to win and that makes the bar that much higher. Whereas if you have a fleet race you can say ‘I am going to dabble here and see whether there’s something for me and I can do enough of that to provide some value’. So we want owners to see that there is an event here that is interesting and there is still the match race final."

Clark also wants to make the International C-Class Catamaran Championship a regular biennial event rather than the sporadic affair it has been to date, when traditionally competitions are held whenever a challenger get its act together. He is proposing that the next event be held in Perth in 2006. "Among the flaws in the previous format was that you never knew when the next one would be so if you can put it on a reasonable timetable with a reasonable amount of sailing and racing, hopefully you would build the value to the owners and sponsors that have to get engaged. The sums of money we are talking are here are not large by yachting standards. You don’t do a Farr 40 for what I’ve got in this. The only difference those guys see a value in sailing Farr 40s that they don’t see in managing C Class catamaran programs and you have to figure out a way to make people think it’s worth the value."