Another pinnacle?

Editor James Boyd speaks to Paul Cayard and Russell Coutts about their new World Sailing League

It has only taken about 40 years since a few eccentrics began racing flimsy plywood catamarans and trimarans to two of the greatest yachtsmen in our sport announcing a ground-breaking international circuit based on a one design fleet of 70ft catamarans. So it is official: with Russell Coutts and Paul Cayard's launch of their new World Sailing League, multihull racing now looks set to become mainstream yachting finally.

To say that this announcement was long in coming would be an understatement. Rumours have been rife about Coutts-Cayard's plans for a new ground-breaking circuit for months if not years now.

"I’ve been thinking about it for a long time, but probably since towards the end of 2004 we started to put a real plan together and get some momentum going, saying this really is an idea worth pursuing," says Coutts. "We have talked about the fleet racing for quite a long time. I can remember having a conversation with Cayard after the 1995 Cup in San Diego. We were talking about the possibility of having say 10 teams in equal one design boats racing a fleet race and wouldn't that be attractive? Back in those days there was the 50ft circuit, but they were all in different boats and the whole idea has evolved since then."

While both Coutts and Cayard deny it was their motivation for creating the new circuit, it doesn't take too much imagination to see how this how this may have come about. The summer of 2004 was when Coutts' relationship with Alinghi boss Ernesto Bertarelli reached its nadir. The UBS Trophy series between Alinghi and BMW Oracle held in Newport, RI in June that year was the first regatta where Coutts was not to be seen at the helm of the Swiss defender's yacht. Cayard had suffered a similarly disillusioning experience when during the previous America's Cup he had been sidelined within Larry Ellison's team.

There are obviously financial incentives for both to make this move, but Coutts and Cayard maintain that their motivation for the new circuit is over the sailing world lacking a premier, fully-professional inshore fleet racing event. With their wealth of knowledge of all aspects of the sport one gets the impression they have also enjoyed the creative process of conjuring up what they view as being the ultimate inshore fleet racing circuit. In achieving this they make no bones about having plundered ideas from many different sports.

"Was it done through frustration?" we put it to Cayard. "I wouldn’t say frustration..." the great man pauses. "Maybe it is a little bit... you see golf transformed itself. The way they televise it, they cut from the guys teeing off and while they are walking they go and cover a guy who’s putting. So golf is a huge spectator sport. Then we say to ourselves 'sailing isn’t quite on the same curve - are there some things we can do using some of these elements: the fast, exciting boat, the global circuit, the fleet racing with the national flags hanging off the back of the boat.... These things are going to make an exciting event using sail boats."

We wonder if the World Sailing League could be described as the fleet racing equivalent of the America's Cup. Cayard is not so keen on this. "To be fair with that event, they have taken some hints and they have done a good job in the last four years: they have fleet racing and they have more events and it has progressed a lot compared to where it was six or eight years ago. But there are still some things about that event that are different to our event - the boat and cost."

While Cup boats are heavyweight leadmines and thus dog slow - Cup traditionalists maintain this makes for better match racing - 70ft catamarans will be very much more gripping to watch, particularly for non-sailors.

Initial reports about Coutts and Cayard's plans involved a radical, oversized canting keel, skiff-type monohull, but around the middle of last year, Coutts says, they came to the conclusion that multihulls were the way to go. Among his many sailing activities Coutts has recently been sailing a Decision 35 catamaran on the Swiss lakes near where he lives and has also been out on Franck Cammas' Groupama II trimaran.

"We looked at the whole inshore racing element, which is one of the factors," says Coutts. "To make those things effective they had to be pretty narrow and pretty deep keeled and also quite a bit heavier and heavier it is not just a performance thing, it is also a cost and a logistical challenge moving lead bulbs around. And the more we defined the racing plan, of racing in confined area and sometimes shallow areas, the whole multihull thing just made a lot more sense."

Coutts adds that the whole sport from the Olympics up is moving towards more performance-orientated boats. "You have to think: where will it be in 10 years time? And I have been trying a little bit of multihull sailing over the last few years. I realised that despite the stereotypes I had of the typical multihull sailor, it is actually incredibly tactical and in many ways more tactical than the sort of sailing I’ve been doing a lot of."

Cayard gives his views on this: "I think kids will look at a catamaran that is rocked up on a hull and shaped like an arrow and go, ‘that’s cool - that’s what I want’. It looks fast sitting at the dock. It gives some insight into me and Russ - we’re not trying to create a game we are necessarily going to win [yeah, right], we’re trying to create an interesting game and there are guys who will come from the Olympics in the Tornado who will kick our arse in the first year. It will be hard for us to win at this game, but that is not what it is about. It is about creating a really cool event in sport that hopefully will be attractive to the public and commercially successful."

While we wholly applaud the decision to go for more than one hull, there still remains considerable prejudice against multihulls from both singlehulled dinghy and yacht sailors for reasons ranging from 'they capsize' to 'it's not proper sailing'. My father, who spent much of his later life selling multihulls through his company Patrick Boyd Multihulls, used to compare these sceptics to Nintendo-wielding teenage boys who, when quizzed by their parents about relationships, groan that they'll never be interested in girls.

Coutts maintains that the divide has narrowed in recent years between the mono and multihull fraternities with the advent of modern skiffs like the 49er or the Open 60/Volvo Open 70 where the style of sailing due to their high performance isn't that different, particularly downwind. "Obviously there are differences and the differences are more exaggerated but I remember when Roman Hagara came out and gave me some coaching on a multihull, I was super impressed with how precise his steering was and how good he is at reading the wind, because you have to to drive a multihull properly, because on the one hand you have to be smooth, but you also have to be right on the edge. So for me as a sailor wanting to sail high performance boats, I was taken by this whole thing. In a lot of ways this is a real test of sailing ability." Coutts says that when the Tornado Gold medallist came on board his cat he felt like a Farr 40 owner.

Cayard provides his view on the multihull decision: "It’s a little non-traditional and all that but it is a smart idea to go with a catamaran - I am really happy to go that way. It looks out there now, my guess is that in five or ten years, it’ll be that little bit more accepted. It was like on the Pirates - all the Farr boats had spinnaker poles and Farr was saying ‘you need the pole’ and we go sailing for a couple of weeks and we put the pole on once for two hours. We took it off and after a couple of legs it became pretty apparent that was an awesome call. I said to the guys 'imagine we’re going to be telling our kids "you know, we used to sail with a spinnaker pole". And they are going to go ‘what? You use to hook it on the mast?"' Its like we used to sail with bloopers,. As soon as you got the kite up you had to get the blooper. So I think the boat choice is a little avant garde now, but not that much - it is going to be pretty middle of the road here pretty quick."

While Coutts has had his Decision 35 experience, for Cayard the whole multihull side is a new departure. He has sailed on a 60ft trimaran once, but otherwise this is one of the few areas of sailing he has yet to master. "I think the reality is that we are going to get our butts kicked. Whether it is Hagara or even the best 49er teams - they have that instinct about speed more so than Russ or I. We’ve sailed Lasers and 505s but most of our lives we’ve spent sailing pretty heavy boats. Volvo was interesting, that was more in the line."

Money

Another significant difference the World Sailing League has to other premier events in our sport is that it will be heavily cost-capped. Teams will be able to participate for a fee of 5-6 million Euros per annum that will include everything including the lease of the boat and transportation between venues. "If we can get good exposure out of that by bringing it to the public that is a heck of a value proposition on the value side," says Cayard.

Cost-capping is seen throughout our sport to varying degrees, perhaps the best exampple being the Farr 40 class where pro-crew numbers are limited as is the number of new sails allowed per annum. Similar measures have been taken in the US with other sports such as the NFL, where teams are allowed to spend no more than $80 million per year on salaries. Because of this no one team dominates, says Cayard. "It has been great in the NFL the last few years, it is a different team winning every Super Bowl, different teams at the top and that is exciting to the public. They want to go watch a game where they don’t know before they go who is going to win. US baseball don’t have that rule and the US Yankees year in year out will spend $200 million a year on salaries and then you’ll go to the San Diego Padres who’s total budget is $20 million - and they are playing in the same league. Why do they let that happen?"

Nascar in the US is also cost-capped. "I don’t really follow Nascar, but I couldn’t believe how many lead changes there are in a Nascar race," says Cayard. "A guy can slingshot from 10th to first, and that’s exciting. It was with that eye that we looked at everything, and then we said let’s take this element, let’s take that element, and that is what is exciting to both of us - just to create a cool sporting event that you don’t have to be a sailing expert to get excited about."

While the WSL will be heavily cost-capped, neither Coutts nor Cayard feel this is the right way to go for all major events in yachting. "There is a place in the world for Formula One or America’s Cup-style events," says Cayard. "Some people want to have the creative side of being involved with the designer, thinking about the concepts and they are willing to pay the extra cost of that. Other people are just in it for the competition: 'give me an equal sword and I’ll fight you'. They have a lot of fun with that. In the old days of the Mike Tyson fights in boxing, they were terrible. The guy would go in the ring and knock someone out in 30 seconds. That is not a good fight. What you want to see is the thing last for ten rounds. So since we are trying to appeal to the public that is why we like the one design factor. It also fits perfectly with the cost control."

Cost capping will include crew salaries - they will announce more about how this will work in due course - and will also mean crews being only allowed to sail their boats for specific periods. "You won’t have unlimited practice time in the boat. Everyone will get the same amount of practice time and that reduces maintainance costs and most of the other costs," says Coutts.

Having started with a clean slate in their creation of the WSL, Coutts and Cayard have also considered the racing itself. This has yet to be finalised, but while a majority of the races will be conventional fleet racing, they are also looking at numerous other ideas to make events more spectator friendly. These include speed runs, slalom courses, etc.

"If they are doing a three mile course down the shore line on a 20 knot day, the whole town is going to stop if the guys are ripping by at 50 kmh," Cayard enthuses. "And the next guy goes and he knows the time he has to beat and he’s saying ‘don’t ease it, don’t ease it, etc etc’."

This article continues tomorrow where we take a closer look at the new hardware...

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