TeamOrigin update

Mike Sanderson on the Louis Vuitton Trophy Auckland, the AC34 and a Tp52 launching tomorrow

Possibly not the best day to be talking with TeamOrigin CEO Mike Sanderson following their terrible double race loss earlier today.

“We had an action packed day, it would be fair to say,” states Moose en route for his bed. “I summed it up in our debrief: ‘it’s amazing how when you drop a piece of toast on some days it is always going to land with the peanut butter, or whatever it is, on the floor. That was the sort of day we had for some reason. But we have another life line tomorrow and we have to use it.”

While TeamOrigin’s losses to Mascalzone Latino Audi Team and then their epic multi-lead change, multi-penalty dust up with Artemis left them in sixth place with just three wins on the scoreboard, there is a peculiar elimination round due to take place tomorrow.

The overall format we understand is called the MacIntyre System (named after Ken McIntyre who developed it for Australian Rugby tournaments in the 1930s).

The round robin just sailed is used to determine the ranking through the remaining stages of the event. Tomorrow in Elimination Round One the competitors sail a ‘sudden death’ knockout series, using the round robin rankings so 1st v 8th, 2nd v 7th, etc. Thus in sixth place TeamOrigin go up against third placed All4One (who they beat in the round robin). However, the two highest ranked (using the RR ranking) teams that win their matches in this round will advance directly to the semi finals while the two lowest ranked teams (using the RR ranking) that lose these matches are eliminated.

The remaining four go through to Elimination Round Two where they are again paired up as per the RR order and similarly compete for the two remaining semi -final berths, with the winner from each pair going through.

So TeamOrigin not only need to beat All4One tomorrow, but they also need the boats positioned below them in the round robin ranking – Aleph Sailing Team and Synergy Russian Sailing Team – to lose their races too. If they win then they will go through to the next elimination round and must win that too if they are to get a semi-final berth. Simple, eh? “It has taken me a fair while to get it sorted,” admits Sanderson.

Unfortunately so far in the Louis Vuitton Trophy Auckland, TeamOrigin have shown occasions of great skill – for example recovering from trailing and a penalty down at the end of the run against Artemis today to shed their penalty and be ahead by simply rounding the correct mark – but this hasn’t translated to the scoreboard.

“I sent a text to Keith [Sir Keith Mills] ‘a bit frustrating, doing some frustrating things in between acts of brilliance’” says Sanderson. “We are sailing really well and then we have let ourselves down a few times. Until today we’d led around the top mark for the first lap in every race.”

In today’s epic against Artemis, TeamOrigin led down the final run a penalty up, but Artemis appeared to do a dummy gybe while TeamOrigin gybed proper resulting in the most almighty broach from the Swedish team and a race losing double penalty for Origin.

So why did they gybe then? “What we had to do was to go all the way to a very very comfortable layline to the finish, gybe, they would have gybed on top of us, rolled us probably or had a go and then we would have just got clear air behind and there would have been no way they would have sailed far enough to get their penalty in. But we mucked it up.”

As to the specific incident he explains that for Artemis to gain luffing rights under Rule 17, because they had come from behind they had to flick their main through and flick it back [ie what appeared to be the dummy gybe]. “So they rolled into a gybe and our countermove is to gybe with them, so that they then don’t have room to gybe back. We thought - and our guys still think even after watching the footing – that they had gybed, but the umpires felt they hadn’t.”

The penalty was doubled when TeamOrigin just continued to the finish rather than offset their penalty. “We feel a little bit hard done by to be honest, but it is very hard to criticise anyone else for it, when in fact all we needed to do 10 minutes earlier was to gybe just 30 seconds later from port on to starboard and it would have been ‘race in the bag’. But the guys thought they had done the right thing and that they’d gybed on to a safe layline to the finish.”

So lessons learned the hard way.

Crew

For Auckland there have been some crew changes since Nice. Rob Greenhalgh is out of the afterguard and Argentinian Tornado medallist Santi Lange, who was with Victory Challenge in the last Cup and now works for TeamOrigin in Juan Kouyoumdjian’s design office is on board on the traveller/strategist role. On the bow is Matt Mitchell, while Matt Cornwell has returned (he was away getting married in Nice) in the mid-bow role with Julien Cressant moving back to the mast in place of George Skuados. A last minute replacement was Andy Hemings coming in for Christian Kamp on downwind trim, while Chris Salthouse is on mainsail trim. He like Heming, Ainslie and navigator Ian Moore were with Emirates Team NZ in 2007 and knows the boats well.

“We are definitely growing and trying different guys in different roles. Now is the time we see ourselves contracting, over the next couple of months, as soon as Oracle make some announcements. Ben [Ainslie] and I have been working closely on it. After Auckland [a year ago] we were pretty comfortable that we had 10 or so guys we wanted in the sailing team and after Nice it was 14 or so and after here it is close to a full line up. But the nice thing is that we have taken the time to make sure we have chosen the guys we want to sail with.

“Our ambition here is to keep pushing the crew work, so that we are giving the guys more tactical options to make late call changes like when we are coming into the gate or preparing for gybe sets at the top mark. All the teams are still having situations which look messy, but a lot of that is coming from our moving the goalposts pretty quickly on the guys. You are seeing people set up for a bear away set and you drag it round for a gybe set and there is a new method here now where people are swapping the topping lift over so that the pole gets on quicker. If you go back a year everyone was doing pretty conservative stuff.”

The set-up of the Version 5 boats is also different to how they were in the 2007 Cup. “They have got rid of the symmetrical spinnakers and everyone is always using. So now we’re in borrowed boats without any practice gybing A sails in 24 knots of wind – it is great fun,” says Sanderson. “Anyone thinking that version 5 racing was boring, should have watched both of our races today. They were both sporting duels. We came off the water feeling that we’d been in a street brawl.”

Around the Viaduct Basin and out on the water there are a good number of spectators there come rain or shine, weekend or week day, the event also coinciding with Auckland Boat Show.

Compared to the Louis Vuitton Trophy in Auckland last year, Sanderson says there is more kick to the event, now that the 33rd America’s Cup has concluded. Teams are now looking to sign up personnel, sailing team, designers, etc, although everyone is still waiting on what BMW Oracle and the Challenger of Record, Mascalzone Latino Audi Team, are going to announce.

AC34 - still no news

Some form of announcement seems likely to be made by the end of this month, but whether this will be the Protocol itselfor something more broad brush remains to be seen. It is also believed that the defender is keen to try and get the next event to be held in San Francisco, where their club, the Golden Gate YC is based, but again at this stage it is just heresay.

BMW Oracle are also one of the ‘preferential shareholders’ in the WSTA, who run the Louis Vuitton Trophy events, and negotiations are currently underway to determine how these events will relate, if at all, to the 34th America’s Cup. “Obviously it would be a shame with 2010 with some good events in place, we need to make the integration with that and whatever the future AC plans are, are dealt with well to look after the teams, the sponsors, Louis Vuitton, etc.”

One thing we can deduce is that the option of a fast 34th America’s Cup in 2011, most probably on Version 5 boats in Valencia to get the show back on the road, is unlikely. If they had wanted that we would have heard by now, reckons Moose. “Even if they could give us a what coast of the US it would be on and what year, the teams can start structuring their commercial programs and things.”

As to whether TeamOrigin has had any involvement in the decisions other than the business with the WSTA, he says they haven’t.

When it comes to a type of new boat, Sanderson favours a fast monohull. “We need to work on a boat which can sail in the lightest possible wind range, so we are not faced with this terrible predicament ever again in our sport that come the first day of the America’s Cup that racing is postponed for the day.” It also seems likely that some aspects of the boats will also be determined by the venue and where the racing area will be.

“Personally I would love to see the boats as dynamic and for the racing to be close and a new version of some cool monohull.” So an RC80 or an RC90? “Exactly. You look at the RC44s and it is just a nice little skinny boat, which powers up early and is a handful in a breeze. It is not a million miles away from the AC90 or AC33 Alinghi rules. I think they were both pretty cool rules. I would think closer to 80-85ft. An AC90 would have been quite a brute of a boat had it even come into existence.”

In our interview with Gavin Brady recently he felt that a canting keel boat was the only way to go, not for performance reasons but simply for logistics, getting in and out of harbours. Brady is also a strong voice, being skipper for the Challenger of Record. However Sanderson doesn’t think a canting keel necessary. “If you build an 80ft boat and put a 5.5m draft on it and it will be a quick boat. I don’t see any necessity to go canting or lifting to be honest. If you have got two boats on TV and one pair of boats is doing 10.6 knots upwind and another pair is doing 11.8 knots, you can’t tell the difference. I think decisions like that that need to be made with a commercial hat on. I am obviously a huge canting keel fan, but boats sitting there flat bolt upright going down the run might not be that exciting to look at either.”

What is needed is a boat that can be reasonably powered up in 5-6 knots of breeze and can also be sailed in 25 knots and be a handful in this wind range. “We have to be able to handle them and downwind the guys are hiking it down and it is rocked up and tipped over and chucking a lot of water around. I don’t think a canting keel would make any difference apart from adding cost.”

TP52

TeamOrigin have their first new boat, a TP52 destined for the Audi MedCup, complete and due for launch in Auckland tomorrow with her maiden voyage likely on Friday. The teams are planning on getting a few quick sails on her before she goes on the ship. The reason for this is that the team are there in situ in Auckland as are the measurers.

So we can expect a radical boat, as usual from Juan K? “The bow is different. It is not as radical as people were thinking. The bow on it, the closest thing would be something like SUI100. It is pretty different to be honest. People have been pleasantly surprised who have seen it so far.”

Compared to the 2009 generation TP52s, the new TeamOrigin boat is the only new boat in build for 2010 and has to be built to a new set of rules. This includes having a bowsprit however they also aren’t allowed to have all or part of their pit down below (as the Emirates Team NZ boat had). Also, significantly, they had to build the boat to Germanische Lloyds classification and this is a potential penalty for them this season until more new TP52s are built for 2011. “The boat has quite a lot more structure in it about half of which we think contributes to the performance with stiffness and the other half is a bit of a penalty for this year. We still have plenty of lead in the bilge, so it is no problem.”

Another rule for 2010 is that teams can only train for a certain number of days in each venue. For this reason the TP52 is going to be shipped to Portimao (on the same ship as the BMW Oracle Racing v5 boats is on, bound for the LV Trophy regatta in La Madelena). Portimao is where ABN AMRO spent several months training with their first boat prior to the 2005-6 Volvo Ocean Race. They should be able to get about 9-10 days training in Portugal port prior to the first MedCup event in Cascais, reckons Moose.

However, entertainingly, before this most of the TeamOrigin sailing team will be competing in the UK in the RORC’s Easter Challenge aboard Charles Dunstone’s TP52 Rio. “It is going to be a little chilly! We have rated Rio with our MedCup downwind sails, our practice set, so we’ll get some time on those before we have to confirm our race sails.”