The return of the Rascals

We speak to Vincenzo Onorato's new AC skipper, Gavin Brady

After two America’s Cup campaigns with his Latin rascals, Italian shipping magnate Vincenzo Onorato is getting serious. His team’s club, the Club Nautico di Roma, is the Challenger of Record for the 34th America’s Cup and the new look Mascalzone Latino team looks set to be an A-lister, no longer mostly Italian, and with Annapolis-based Kiwi Cup veteran Gavin Brady at the helm.

Before the 33rd America’s Cup even took place, Onorato was already gearing up with the announcement of Audi as their principle sponsor. The German car maker has previously sponsored Riccardo Simoneschi on the Audi MedCup and despite these hard economic times appears to be ramping up their involvement in sailing even more with their recently announced AC involvement.

Brady himself has competed in the last four multi-challenger ACs, the first one in 1995 with Chris Dickson aboard TAG Heuer and most recently in 2007 was with BMW Oracle Racing. While he hasn’t sailed with Onorato before he says he has sailed against him a lot. “I have confident in his management stylea nd I always knew he was passionate about the America’s Cup – he’s done it twice now – that says it all. So it was a good option.”

Brady says he had been talking to Onorato about competing in the Louis Vuitton Trophy since December at which time his boss was patiently awaiting the outcome of the 33rd America’s Cup. “He was hoping for a win by Oracle and that happened. He has a good relationship with Russell and Larry, so it seemed like a natural fit to become the Challenger of Record for him. He is as passionate about the America’s Cup as Larry and he has got the bug. So this is what he wanted to do.”

So what about Karl Kwok? Brady has recently been skippering Kwok’s Farr 80 Beau Geste, last year in Europe and this year in the Caribbean and on the eastern seaboard of the US. Earlier this morning they were first monohull home in the RORC Caribbean 600. However their program is focussed on the offshore events rather than round the cans ones like the Caribbean race weeks, Key West, Miami, etc. Later this season Beau Geste will head north for the Bermuda race.

“The boat is just too deep and powerful to do those types of races,” says Brady of the inshores. “You can do them, but you are heavily compromised - as Highland Fling found out this year at Key West. It is tough to sail a big boat like that around the race course and Beau Geste just isn’t designed for it. I don’t think there is an IRC boat in the world offshore quicker than her for her rating. We want to keep her as an offshore thoroughbred, because that’s what she is - a special boat.”

However it is likely with Brady’s new job there might be some crossover. On the Caribbean 600 Brady brought along his fellow Rascal new recruits such as Jamie Gale and Chris Larson. His involvement with Kwok’s boat may prove particularly helpful if, as is likely, a new boat is chosen for the 34th America’s Cup it is likely to be a high performance boat around this size.

Having sailed and helped conceive Beau Geste, Brady has views about the new AC boats. “One thing I have learned with Beau Geste is that the draft and beam are big issues. They both go hand in hand - both are to gain stability – but they both create massive logistical problems wherever you go. Not only do you not fit in some harbours, but you can’t get the boat close to the people and one thing we know about sailing is that we have to bring it to the people. You can’t have it miles offshore.

“So draft is an issue, especially if you start going fast. Beam is a big problem because you don’t fit into any of the travel lift pens or you don’t fit on the road. No matter which way you turn Beau Geste it doesn’t fit on the road in America! We built Beau Geste beamy because we just wanted to go fast. But logistically for an AC team how do you bring a boat that is 6.5m wide to the people, because it doesn’t fit anywhere?”

Brady doesn’t subscribe to the notion that slow boats are better for match racing.  Lighter, faster boats which sail the angles downwind are what is required. So his solution given that high stability for this type of boat is a necessity? Go for a canting keel.

“I think if you are going to go above 60ft you have to be canting,” he states. “If you go bigger than that the only way to get the speed and stability, you either have to go down or go wide, which you can’t do. I don’t see any reason why a canting keel boat isn’t an incredibly fun match racing boat. Otherwise you’ll have some boat flopping around out there which can’t sail in more than 10 knots.”

He adds that the only reason they went for a lifting, rather than a canting keel, on Beau Geste was so that they could race boat for boat with the likes of Ran. “We decided to gain stability by going down that route, but Karl still wanted to take his boat to the dock and not look at it out at anchor...” He wouldn’t recommend lifting keels for the new AC boats.

Brady reckons that returning to Version 5 boats is unlikely as has been mooted for a possible fast-turnaround 34th America’s Cup. He says that this is what the Louis Vuitton Trophy is about now. “I reckon there would be at least two or three lead changes in every race if we went to more dynamic boats. Where if you get a spinnaker up and it sets straight away you pass the other boat. You need boats that reward good sailing. I remember in race in the V5 boats against Alinghi where we had a gybing duel and they broke their spinnaker pole. We were still five minutes from the finish line and they still beat us. That is like getting a flat tyre in a Formula 1 car and still winning the race. That shouldn’t happen in professional sport. We just couldn’t get around them. They broke their spinnaker pole and they probably slowed down 3/10ths of a knot!

“One good thing about the LV series is that they make us use A sails. As soon as you have got gybing angles the guy behind has got a change. With S sails it is almost impossible to pass. They put in gates at the bottom to try and create passing but it is didn’t really work because the angles coming in were so deep.

“And you have to be able to catch waves. If you can’t catch waves you aren’t going to get passes. As you see in the TP52s the gains now in high performance boats are downwind. Upwind it is still pretty standard - you have wind shifts and starts - but downwind is where the future is and that’s what people want to see. They want to see boats wipe out. Why not? If you come out of a gybe and the spinnaker is overtrimmed and the runner isn’t eased you should wipe out. We shouldn’t be putting training wheels on these sorts of boats.”

Brady also favours having fewer rules as firstly this makes it easier to police and secondly having a large class rule book tends to favour the bigger teams who have the resources to investigate its nooks and cranies.

It is easy to imagine the new AC boat as being a larger equivalent of Coutts' RC44, somewhere in the 70-90ft range. We also put it to Brady that it would be good if the new boat was more versatile and, for example, can be competitive under IRC. Version 5 boats for example have no role outside of Cup racing. He agrees that they should be something more main stream. “No much of the technology that came out of V5 you can use, except the loads. The loads on Beau Geste were quite relevant to the V5 boats. But mast design, sail design, deck layout, etc none of that was relevant to Beau Geste or a TP52 or Ran. So I think it would be nice to see the technology from the America’s Cup class to filter across to other classes.”

We’ll be seeing interiors in Cup boats next!

Back to the team and when Brady was employed it was primarily to get up to speed ready for the LV Trophy with their new sponsors. As a result he and Onorato have a sailing squad that includes a few old faces such as Flavio Flavini, now mainsail trimer, Cameron Dunn who will be strategist and Jes Gram-Hansen now their match racing rules advisor. Flavio Grassi, Andrea Pavan, Saverio Giambi and Malta’s own Chris Dougall are also back on the payroll. However there are some other significant new recruits including Morgan Larson, who is tactician while Steve Hayles is navigator, Jamie Gale is on the pit and Scott Crawford is grinder, all having had those roles with Brady during his tenure at BMW Oracle Racing prior to the 32nd AC. Up the mast is Mark Mendelblatt who joins from Emirates Team NZ as does Rob Salthouse. On mainsail grinder is Massimo Gherarducci, who comes from Luna Rossa while on the bow is Greg Gendell, who was with Abracadabra in 2000 and Stars & Stripes in 2003.

“One of the things I’ve learned about Italian teams, and particularly Vincenzo, is that he is very passionate about building a family – he really believes in the team feeling right,” says Brady. “Every meeting they are pushing hard to have the right chemistry in the group. And that is something they do better than some of the other teams I’ve been involved with.”

This crew was put together for the LV Trophy events in Auckland and Sardinia and the future ones in Dubai and Hong Kong. Recently they have been out training in Valencia in preparation.

But crew selection is far from over, particularly so now the Cup has sorted itself out, the goalposts have moved slightly, says Brady. “Now we know we aren’t just a LV team, we are an America’s Cup team. Now you have to get sailors who can work with designers because we have to design a new boat. So you need a trimmer who can also design a sail, a bowman who can design a deck layout, a mast man who can design a rig, etc.”

Notably absent for example are Adrian Stead and Jerry Mitchell, Onorato’s Farr 40 stalwarts, although according to Brady they were tied up with other commitments for the next two LV regattas.

Brady says that they are also soon to be in the market for a design team. “I had never sailed the Mascalzone [V5] boats and then we got to Nice and every skipper I spoke to was incredibly impressed with them. We knew from racing against them that they were fast boats. Team New Zealand rated them as having the same speed as them, so I wasn’t surprised they were good boats through the water. What I was impressed with was the deck layout and refinement through the boat. It is easy to copy a boat and a hull shape and get close, but a lot of teams struggle to make a boat refined. In Nice I hopped on and I though ‘this is as nice as our Oracle boat’. So clearly there is a lot of good stuff in the Mascalzone think tank.”

For Onorato the next few months will be busy ones. Aside from being in the thick of running MobiLines, he is putting together a Cup team, he is also Challenger of Record and has responsibilities with that role. And he has also been largely responsible for setting up the LV Trophy in La Maddalena to be held over 22 May - 6 June.

Larry Ellison’s choice of Onorato’s club to be Challenger of Record was made very late as the BMW Oracle Racing team were solely focussed on winning the 33rd America’s Cup. As Brady explains: “When all of a sudden it became apparent that Oracle was going to race and then they were going to win, I think Larry and Russell needed to find a team that was well structured with a passionate owner that would fulfil his commitment, so that they wouldn’t find themselves in a position like Alinghi did. So learn from their mistake and make damned sure that you get a really good reliable Challenger of Record that is going to not just follow and do whatever they say, but represent the challengers fairly. The bottom line is that Russell and Vincenzo can go and have a beer together – they know each other really well, they have sailed together. They know each other’s styles. It would take a lot for that relationship to go south. So quickly new relationships tend to form between the challenger and defender and it only takes a couple of meetings for them not to agree and that relationship falls over, the lawyers get involved and now we end up in another shit fight.” Coutts was tactician when Onorato claims the first of his three back to back Farr 40 World Championship victories.

As to the program going forwards, for Mascalzone Latino it is effectively the Cup and the LV Trophy. Brady says they have enough on their plates with this, rather than diving off to compete in other circuits such as the Audi MedCup or the World Match Racing Tour.

However to keep his hand personaly, Onorato will be focussing this year on the Melges 32. Brady explains: “Vincenzo’s plan is to maintain a certain level of his own sailing skills as that helps him to make better decisions within the team. And it is a lot nicer knowing that your boss can look at a race on Virtual Spectator or from on the boat or from a spectator boat or from wherever he is in the world and he can say ‘they had an even start’ or this or that happened and he can sit in an afterguard meeting and understand what’s going on. That is a huge plus for these teams.”

As to the venue for the 34th America’s Cup, Brady at this stage can only theorise. Picking a venue with permanent bases, like the impressive ones they have in Valencia could prove hard, particularly if the event goes to San Francisco or Newport. This, he says, also relates to the choice of boat... “The venue has a major effect on the boat because of wind conditions and just a simple thing like dredging. Just to get these boats in and out is a massive job. Then there needs to be sheds that the boats fit in and where do the masts go? The masts on V5 boats are 120ft. If you go to a bigger boat they might be 140ft! Where do you put it? So there are a lot of things that have to be thought about.”

When it comes to the sailing area he advises that we all have to keep an open mind. He cites the UBS Challenge regatta in Newport when the V5 boats racing inside the harbour (for previous Cups racing was always outside) and they did the same for the Moet Cup in San Francisco. “No one thought you could race an America’s Cup boat up the city front. Everyone thought that the tide would have too much of an effect. It didn’t. Once you start sailing faster boat, the percentage of time you are on the race course is far less. If you sail up the city front on a Farr 40 the tide has a huge affect on the outcome. If you do that at 12 knots the effect is less. Everyone thought it would be a one way track, but we had more lead changes there than we did anywhere, although we did have a few issues with shipping...”

So Mascalzone Latino back in the game, bigger and stronger than ever. Could it be third time lucky for Onorato and his popular team?