A OneWorld Diary

Mark Chisnell writes from Seattle with the first of his accounts of the team’s preparation for the 2003 America’s Cup

Winter has definitely arrived in the Southern Hemisphere - the OneWorld team was back in Auckland for part of May and June to sail our two IACC boats USA 55 and 51 (formerly Stars and Stripes and America True), and the dress code was beanies and full foul weather gear. I hate the cold, but given our well-publicised financial strife of a couple of months ago, it was good to have the team back on the water.

What's bad news in the south is good for the north, and the summer racing season is fully under way in Europe and North America. With a pause in our work in Auckland, many of the OneWorld crew are out sailing everything from the match race circuit to Pegasus in the TransPac. But America's Cup racing is only partly about sailing, and a good few of the team are desk-bound at our Seattle base, working through the myriad issues that surround competing in this regatta. One that's bubbling close to the top of the list right now is the Notice of Race for the Louis Vuitton Cup.

Once the conditions for the America's Cup match are agreed with the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron, the Challengers are largely a self-regulating group. And so they get to decide the rules for their own event. Now this may smack heavily of the lunatics running the asylum, and you can imagine how hard it will be to reach a consensus. Everyone brings to the table their own agenda, and it's easy to forget the bigger picture in the rush to do the perceived best deal for your team.

But what's good for the event itself? There's one easy answer to a complex question - happy spectators. There's no one out there that isn't relying to a greater or lesser degree on sponsorship money.

In light of this, part of OneWorld's submission to the Notice of Race debate (and I'd have to admit the source of some heated internal discussion) was to suggest a radical alteration to the racing rules. We want the communications channels onto the IACC boats to be opened up for the Louis Vuitton - provided, of course, that Team New Zealand and the RNZYS agree the same rule change for the Cup match itself. We don't want to so much rip up the 'no outside help' rule, as shred it and make a papier-mache boat with the remains.

In the last America's Cup, spectators and media all had access during the racing to the sailing data and precise position of both the boats. Through the hard work and imagination of the people at Virtual Spectator, that information was turned into a graphic realisation of the yacht race which was available on the Internet to a world-wide audience. Ironically, the spectators often knew more about a race than the sailors - an uncomfortable thought for those about to go before an inquisitive and well-informed media at a press conference.

The same plan is in place for the 2003 event, all the technology exists to transmit data by the megabyte-load from the race boats. But we want to see the valve opened and the information flow both ways. This isn't without precedent in sailing, outside help in the form of weather routing is common in transoceanic racing, and Grant Dalton spoke highly of it after his first experience in The Race.

The America's Cup modelling itself on other professional sports? Read on ...