Why RAK?

The 33rd America's Cup venue chosen is just 50 miles from Iran. Alinghi's Brad Butterworth tells us more

Brad Butterworth is midday through a much-needed holiday in Greece with his family when we disturbed him this morning to get his views on yesterday’s announcement by the Swiss America’s Cup defenders that the 33rd America’s Cup, should it take place as scheduled in early February, will be in Ras Al Khaymah, or ‘RAK’ as it is now known, in the United Arab Emirates.

While there was much joking a while back about Alinghi holding a Deed of Gift America’s Cup in somewhere inaccessible to a US team such as Cuba or Iraq or North Korea, Ras Al Khaymah is located just a short 50 mile boat trip across the Strait of Hormuz from Iran. And this brings us to an interesting aside. A Deed of Gift series of match races isn’t designed to fill a modern TV schedule with a couple of laps around a short course and back at the dock in time for the next ad break. With a Deed of Gift match races one and three (if required) are windward-leewards with a 20 mile beat, while race two is a 39 mile equilateral triangle (ie 13 mile beat). So if it is blowing from the north and the PRO is getting active in moving the whole show offshore to ‘find wind’, the weather mark on races one and three could be within spitting distance of Iranian territorial waters!

Why not Valencia? “I’ve lived there for years and we did three winters there and when we were doing the regatta in Valencia, we took the team to Dubai for the winter to get some good sailing,” says Butterworth. “And I was pretty impressed with the venue there. So that is really the primary reason. We just think that Valencia is just too hard to get everything going: either no wind or there is not enough wind and it is unsailable. We just wanted the steadier conditions so that both teams can benefit if they go there.”

So weather and not politics? “Yes. It was nothing to do with politics. Valencia is a great venue in the summer. If we are forced to February we just want to have a place everyone goes home afterwards having had a good regatta and whoever wins wins.”



According to Butterworth they have been looking at venues ever since the Court of Appeal finally ruled that the CNEV was indeed an invalid Challenger of Record and instated the Golden Gate YC and their team, BMW Oracle Racing, in their place.

While everyone moaned about Valencia when that was first announced – Mediterranean, no wind, why not Cascais, etc, Butterworth applies the same arguments to RAK in February as Valencia in mid-summer: there should be a healthy sea breeze. “It is like anywhere. They will have windy days. It is not guaranteed that we won’t have days that are blown out for too much wind or not enough wind.”

So why RAF rather than the more developed Dubai or Abu Dhabi? “We looked at the Emirates as a whole, we were dealing with them altogether, but RAK have a development there that is very good to host the teams.” He refers to the Al Hamra Village, a 1,235 acre (5sqkm, 772 US east coast city blocks) development, to the south of Ras Al Khaimah City. There is an existing resort on this enormous site, which is in the process of being transformed into Al Hamra Village. The site is based around a lagoon which has an island in the middle where, as reported, the two teams will be based. Around the perimeter of this to be a selection of luxury houses to be sold and, surprise, surprise an international level golf course (both Butterworth and his former skipper turned rival, Sir Russell Coutts, are avid golfers). “Also Tiger [Woods] is building a golf course further down the road which I’m sure we’ll get to play,” adds Butterworth.

Al Hamra Village development will include a large marina on the northeast side of the lagoon, but the facility for the America’s Cup teams will be purpose-built on the island in the middle of the lagoon. Having just been given the green light for the America’s Cup to be staged there, it will take just a few weeks for the necessary basic facilities to be built. As a result, with the Alinghi 5 maxi-cat scheduled to be airlifted by helicopter from Lake Geneva to Genoa tomorrow, Butterworth says they will be sailing for a month in Genoa before shipping the giant cat to the Gulf. He expects them to be there in October. “Also it is pretty hot at this time of year. It is not a great time to be there in terms of trying to get things done. But November and December are great and January and February are perfect months there.”

Having trained in Dubai about 50 miles southwest down the coast, Butterworth says that it was the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, who Alinghi work with in Switzerland particularly on the structural engineering side, who brought Ras Al Khaimah to their attention. EPFL are setting up a new campus there (as Harvard have in Dubai and MIT and the Sorbonne have in Abu Dhabi). “We were looking at the coastline, but we didn’t have an introduction to the Sheik there. And Patrick Aebischer [CEO of EPFL] did a great job in introducing us to him and introducing him to Ernesto and that is how we formed the alliance. He is doing this huge development down there, so it works - they are spending money on the infrastructure and part of that infrastructure is to host the teams, which is pretty nice.”

Unlike the deal with Valencia over the 32nd America’s Cup, we understand that no money is changing hands between venue and organiser for the 33rd and Butterworth acknowledges that the commercial side of the Cup is in disarray due to the amount of time spent in court recently. “The business of the Cup, as we know it from last time, was destroyed when the thing went to court. Had we wanted to do this in a professional manner we would have kept the venue a secret and announced it alongside our partners in it. It is pretty hard to give them the same bang for buck, that they got in the 32nd America’s Cup, because the business of the Cup has been eroded.”

And the prospect of raising any sponsorship for the event or the team depends entirely upon the court situation going forwards, says Butterworth. “If we are going to have a sporting event, yes. If we are going to end up going back to court about ever single decision that gets made – then no.”

BMW Oracle Racing maintains that Alinghi/SNG’s choice of venue for the 33rd America’s Cup according to the courts’ orders must be Valencia or the southern hemisphere (the latter in according with the Deed of Gift for the America’s Cup). Alinghi/SNG’s reading for the courts’ orders is that they can hold it ‘anywhere of their choosing’ irrespective of the Deed. So by this interpretation then theoretically they could have held it on Lake Geneva, despite the Deed requiring that races for the AC be held on ‘ocean courses’ (is Valencia on the Mediterranean Sea on an ocean?)

“Well, we could do, but we’d like to know that by tomorrow because then we won’t need the helicopter!” quips Butterworth, before acknowledging about Lake Geneva: “We looked at that, but you can’t get a 20 mile by 20 mile race course in there without being free of headlands. We don’t want to be sued anymore. We are going to a venue where we can have a regatta and have a 20 mile course without obstructions. We have picked a venue I think it is a good one for both teams. They are sailing in San Diego, so the environment would be pretty similar.”

So what next? Will BMW Oracle Racing continue litigation as they have threatened to over the venue or have they too become war weary of the long court struggle (both sides in any case return to court on Monday for a six hour stint hammering out why BMW Oracle Racing haven’t produced their Customs House Registration document). We hope the latter and that we can see these two amazing go head to head with the minimum of additoinal fuss.