Foreign bodies

Ed Gorman looks at whether GBR Challenge has breached America's Cup protocol with their Japanese training boats

As the GBR Challenge for the America's Cup continues its impressive preparations for Britain's first return to the Cup arena since 1987, there are fears in some quarters that the syndicate could get itself into trouble as a result of having bought the two Japanese AC yachts, Idaten and Asura (above) and associated equipment and personnel.

The question is: has the GBR Challenge flouted the rules in the America's Cup Protocol which forbid teams from buying up "plans, specifications and design information" from another team - rules which are designed to ensure each syndicate entering the Louis Vuitton Cup has its own independent designers and is not the product of shared technology.

In the case of the GBR Challenge it is clear that the Japanese boats - both of which sailed in the 2000 Louis Vuitton series for the Nippon Challenge - have been the base point, or point of departure for the design team. (The core group led by Derek Clark started by looking at Idaten and Asura and by mocking up their own guesstimate of NZL 60, regarded as the benchmark at that stage).

The situation is further complicated by the presence in the GBR syndicate of two senior Japanese design engineers, Taro Takahashi and Akihiro Kanai, who came as part of the package from Nippon and both of whom were involved in the design of Nippon boats - including Idaten and Asura - in 1992, 1995 and 1999-2000. On the face of it, it seems the British outfit could have a case to answer.

However one of the senior designers for the team, Jo Richards (left), has told madforsailing he believes the GBR Challenge is "squeaky clean" as far as the Protocol is concerned. Richards said that the team had been aware of the issues from the outset and has not breached the rules.

"We've been squeaky clean on the Protocol because you can't afford not to be," said Richards. "We've addressed it from day one, essentially because we were aware there could be a Protocol issue," he added. "In actual fact, if you compare us with a lot of other teams, we have far less foreign involvement than most of them do."

Richards underlined the central point: "If you buy a boat you are allowed to measure it but you are not allowed the design files." He said the team looked closely at Idaten and Asura and "generated a file" for those boats but he said he has never seen the original design files for the yachts and does not know where they are. He said while the two Japanese designers "obviously (had) ideas where they thought it ought to go", there was never any question of breaking the rules.

The likelihood that allegations of shared design information are going to bedevil the build-up to the Louis Vuitton series, was underlined by the recent challenge to Team New Zealand by Oracle Racing. The American syndicate queried the status of Team New Zealand 2003, claiming it is a different corporate entity from the outfit which successfully defended the Cup in 2000. The upshot being that the new syndicate should thus not be allowed access to the design information about NZL60 and NZL57.

The Cup Arbitration Panel ruled, however, that the defender in both 2000 and 2003 was the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron and thus the yachts and the design information with them remained the property of its agent, Team New Zealand.