ACC boats blown over by monster gust

"It looks like they're sailing upwind - except without the water," claims ACM spokesman. Anne Hinton reports

Time line:

0220 Start of violent thunderstorm overhead Marseille

0240 67 knots of wind gusts through the J4 base, where the boats are stored out of the water in Marseille. Alinghi blown over in cradle. BMW Oracle Racing blown out of cradle. Emirates Team New Zealand blown over in cradle

0300 - violent storm passes. Security calls AC Management directors

0330 AC Management and team reps. arrive on site to inspect damage and assess situation

0600 photos record taken by AC Management

0700 dawn

0800 insurance assessors arrive on site

0900 manoeuvres to clear wreckage and prepare major crane positioning begin

0930 official statement posted on America’s Cup website

1200 press gathering at the J4 base with Chris Dickson (BMW Oracle Racing), Grant Simmer (Alinghi), Grant Dalton (Emirates Team New Zealand) and Michel Bonnefous (AC Management)

The team leaders all echoed the same feelings: great shame, not sure yet what (especially unseen) damage might have occurred, but the show must go on.

Chris Dickson, head of the BMW Oracle Racing team summed up their position: “It’s clearly a major setback, not just for our team, but for the three teams involved. It’s a bizarre appearance obviously. These boats are very fragile, although very strong when sailing. They’re obviously not designed to be dropped on their keels.

“For our particular boat to see the keel some 3 metres away from the cradle - it clearly had a major shock, with a hole in the concrete underneath. We know there’s some internal damage as well as what we see cosmetically outside, so it is a major for all three teams.

“We do have a second boat, like Alinghi and Team New Zealand. We’re fortunate that ours is in Valencia. It’ll take us a week or 10 days to get our second boat ready but we hope to be sailing USA71 in 10 days and to be ready for the next Louis Vuitton Act.

“The Marseille regatta has been an huge success. We don’t want this mishap to cloud what a great regatta it has been and we need to move forward together with the other teams and with AC Mangement to make the best out of the situation, assess the damage and to move forward for another successful regatta in the future and be grateful that it happened at night time and that there were no people involved and that there were no injuries."

Grant Simmer, joint-MD of Alinghi summed up the position of the Swiss team: “Alinghi now has a crane next to it where we’re working to bring it back upright and then put it back into its cradle. The damage is quite extensive on the port side of the boat. We are unable to assess the damage yet in the internal keel structure.

“Our plan is to get the mast out this afternoon, get the boat loaded on a ship in the next day - on schedule loaded on the ship back to Valencia - to take the boat inside our boat shed in Valencia, keel off, upside down, do a really thorough assessment of what the extent of the damage is. These boats are not designed to be dropped - that’s not a design criteria, dropping the boat - so the extent of damage will be hard to determine.

“What we’re really concerned about is there could be extensive delamination in the hull structure, and the structure is the hull in these boats. There’s just a few little bits of internal structure which hold the keel in and the mast in. So, as I said, we can get her back on the cradle today, we want to get it back into our boatshed in Valencia then we’ll
really know the extent of the problem that we’ve got.

“It is an option [to use SUI 75 in the next Louis Vuitton Act]. At the moment our preferred option is to look at repairing 64 over the next couple of weeks. We’re going to make that decision, as I say, once we’re in the shed in Valencia.

“The other boat has not been sailing since Auckland. It’s completely stripped and there’s several issues relating to using that boat. We weren’t planning to prepare that boat until January of next year to sail in April, so to get that boat ready for the next pre-regatta is also a major exercise.

“One way or the other we’ll be there on the starting line, we’re just not quite sure which way that will be at that time."

Finally at the press conference, Grant Dalton, head of Emirates Team New Zealand gave their position. “It’s one of those freak things that happens and out of adversity good things can be done. Emirates Team New Zealand has probably taken it the worst.

“We can see before we lift it up that it’s impossible to fix it before Valencia, if ever. You can fix everything, but it took the container right in the corner and the container is stuck inside it at the moment. 82 will not sail in Valencia, it’s just not possible.

“We don’t really have other options, frankly. We have another boat, but it’s still being refitted and re-built in New Zealand and that’s 12,500 miles away and it would take six weeks to get it here.

“At the moment, subject to us just looking at our options, and I’m not even sure what those options are, we won’t be in Valencia, but you wouldn’t write Kiwis off that easily, frankly."

Chris Dickson added that USA76 had crushed their office and they were fortunate that there had been no one working in the office at that time of night. "If it had been during the day there could well have been serious injuries to people and we’re very fortunate it was night time and no one’s been injured. We haven’t been into the offices. With 25 tonnes of America’s Cup boat pushed into the office we’ve kept well clear and we’ll be working to minimize the damage to the boat as soon as we can before assessing what
that damage is."

In the clean-up operation Alinghi must be righted before BMW Oracle Racing can be. “Yes, it makes a lot of sense to put all the resource into securing one boat at a time and everyone working together to minimize the damage,” said Chris Dickson.

Michel Bonnefous dismissed the idea that the cradles in which the boats are held ashore might be inadequate or inappropriate for the task and blamed the elements, saying “we just didn’t expect the storm”.

It is certain that, had the storm been forecast, all the teams, not just K-Challenge (who took down their mast at the end of racing), would have taken precautionary measures, such as taking down their boats’ masts, and all would have both strapped boats to cradles and anchored the wheeled cradles (used for moving the boats around the dockside) even more firmly to the ground. However, it is impossible to say whether any such measures would have prevented any of the damage that has occurred. There were not generally high winds - simply an isolated intense cell associated with ferocious storm activity in the immediate vicinity. No under cover storage area is available for the America’s Cup class boats near to the water in Marseille.

There was also localised intense flooding in the city due to the storm. Several people sleeping at ground level were flooded out of their rooms. It is further rumoured that four small boats sank in the harbour as a result of the storm.

By dawn, all was peaceful and, other than the damage and a few pools of water, there were no indications of the violence of the night. It has been yet another warm, sunny, day, with light to moderate breezes in Marseille.