Mark Chisnell's Diary

The OneWorld navigator writes from Auckland with news of racing between the teams

The tempo has upped here in the past couple of weeks, with teams now starting to mix it up a little in informal races. We took the opportunity the week before last to race against Prada for three days, and somewhat more controversially, the Italians then went on to sail against Team New Zealand on the Thursday and Friday.
It was a big move - the pros and cons of racing against the Defender has always been a hot topic amongst the Challengers. The Nippon team took plenty of heat for lining up against TNZ prior to the last Cup. That was in their new boats, whereas this recent racing has been in what are now old ones - a less controversial move. And it looks like ourselves, the Brits and the Swedes will all get the opportunity to race the black boats in the New Year, as we've entered a warm-up regatta that Team New Zealand are organising. This apparently includes a fleet race down the harbour, so we've ordered a depth sounder for that one.

Another potential hot topic is the umpiring. The more racing we do, the more it emerges how important the quality of the judging is going to be in the main event. I guess that's hardly a surprise, barely a week goes by without some international sporting controversy centered on the umpire or referee. Only recently the Kiwis were complaining bitterly about being robbed of a huge cricket test series win over Australia, by an allegedly deaf umpire. And this is in a sport where at least the rules are straight-forward.

The same cannot really be said of sailing, where ISAF's new rules have attracted controversy in international match racing ever since their introduction. And because umpiring a match race is rarely a simple application of the rule book, it's even more important that those who do the job, during the coming Cup matches, have experience at the task. The dynamics of these big yachts changes the way the game is played, as compared to the much smaller boats used on the Swedish Match tour and other Grade One events.

Ernesto Bertarelli's Swiss Alinghi challengers out practicing in the Hauraki Gulf