America's Cup update

Nigel Cherrie looks at the form in next week's International Regatta

Challenger Week

While next week's America's Cup International Regatta serves as an 'official' event for the teams, the much hyped challenger week in March (2-7) will be an 'unofficial' event, as defined by the America's Cup protocol.

It takes over 250 volunteers to run the Louis Vuitton series so CORM (the Challenger of Record Management) are running a week of practice racing to blood 45 key people in the different scenarios they could face over five months of the challenger series. This includes setting courses, pre-start, course changes due to wind shifts through to finishes.

Dyer Jones, CORM's Regatta Operations Director explained that, "having two America's Cup yachts on the course with all the shouting, action and drama makes it a much more realistic dress rehearsal." Most teams are expected to join in at some stage.

illbruck

As New Zealand slept last night, the illbruck Challenge (see Andy Rice's interview with Michael Illbruck today) pulled the deck of their new ACC boat out of the oven in Bremen, Germany but the team has said that unless syndicate chairman Michael Illbruck finds partners to share the financial burden, GER 68 will not even make it to the start line, preferring to wait until 2006. But some of the other challengers have a different view on the step backwards.

The dockside view is that during the Volvo Ocean Race stopover in Auckland the illbruck team were simply overwhelmed by how by far down the road the other challengers have moved and this Louis Vuitton Cup could well just be a very expensive four weeks. Even if they are at the bottom of the ladder with a long steep climb to the top, there is still immense respect for the challenge as they show the world how to run a winning Volvo Ocean Race campaign, no easy feat itself.