America's Cup update with Iain Murray

Upgrades to the AC45 and prospective teams

With the America’s Cup World Series in full swing in San Diego, Regatta Director for the 34th America’s Cup and CEO, America’s Cup Race Management Iain Murray took time out to bring us up to speed with the latest development in Cup-land.

San Diego looks set to be the last America’s Cup World Series event for the AC45s until Naples over 7-15 April next year, followed by Venice over 12-20 May. Negotiations to take the event down under to an antipodean venue has come to nothing and a decision has finally been made this week to pull the plug on this.

“Our ship is loading and heading to Naples and is planning to discharge there before Christmas,” says Murray. “It looks like a number of teams will get off at Valencia. Emirates Team New Zealand is considering taking its boat back down under and I have heard that Oracle are considering taking their boats to San Francisco. The bulk of the equipment is going to Naples. We have informed the shipping company. The ship is coming back.”

There are no limitations on teams training over the winter on their AC45s and with GreenComm and Artemis Racing already based in Valencia it seems likely that the 32nd America’s Cup venue will once again be the hub of America’s Cup activity for a few months.

Murray says that ACRM will assist in the teams with their winter training, running informal racing if required, but they won’t be laying on an America’s Cup World Series event in Valencia. “We have built very strong standards in broadcast and regatta management, so for us to go back and put a public show on that is not what we are doing here is not really in our interests of promoting our assets of the America’s Cup going forwards.”

In the intervening period they will also be looking to upgrade the AC45s. Already for San Diego they have added three level stern lights on the camera mount, extending out and up from the aft crossbeam, to indicate the state of play of penalties and proximity to the course boundary.

“Next year we will be looking to allow an upgrade to the boundary electronic system on board,” says Murray. “We are yet to finalise the details, but some form of chart plotter will be allowed on the boat, where they can see the boundaries, rather than being given a number.”

In addition to this with several light wind venues on the schedule for 2012, the AC45 is set to be turboed. “We are looking at potentially upgrading the rig and putting an extension on the top of the rig, for when we are sailing in Europe,” says Murray.

The height of the AC45 wing is already 21.5m and Murray says the extension will be in the order of 3-4m. “If you are going to have a dog it might as well be an Alsatian,” as he puts it... “It will be something that is removable quite quickly. We have completed the design of that. Obviously there is a lot of stuff happening at the top of the mast with the antennae and TV equipment and there are tooling requirements. All of that has to be integrated into the design and now we are working that up how it could be done and how it will be implemented and much it is going to cost.” So it sounds similar to the arrangement that Oracle had on their USA-17 trimaran.

For Naples it is likely that the format of the racing will be modified. Since Cascais, more match racing has been introduced into the format with matches having taken place in San Diego on Thursday and Friday with the conclusion yesterday. However Murray says that it is likely they will be go back to having more fleet racing.

“We are talking to the teams and trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t work. I don’t think it is any secret - we had a cracker day on Wednesday with three fleet races and a speed trial. It was great. You come into Thursday and it is one-on-one match racing and it doesn’t feel strong. Not all the teams are out there and it is not the same picture. We tried to tackle that in the original format for Cascais and we got a lot of criticism about it not meaning anything, not understandable and now we have come back to ‘well, we kind of like all that fleet racing!’”

However this doesn’t appear likely to affect the format of the Louis Vuitton Trophy or the America’s Cup itself. “There is no question that the America’s Cup is a match between the two boats, and that is all laid out in the Deed of Gift and there has been a huge history of that.”

Meanwhile the teams are beavering away either designing, building or contemplating building their AC72s. At present the big three – Oracle Racing, Artemis Racing and Emirates Team New Zealand - look set to build two boats. The newly announced Luna Rossa team will certainly build one and possible two. But who else will join the wingsail maxi-cat party remains to be seen.

According to Murray ACRM is talking to three of the other teams competing in the America’s Cup World Series who want to take up ACRM’s off-the-shelf design package. However he says there are four other teams in waiting, two of which are present in San Diego. While most of these seem to be contemplating participation in the ACWS solely, Murray reckons that one could also be on for an AC72.

“There is one which we have been anticipating for a while that is here, but we will wait and see there. I think there is very strong interest in the World Series and shortly after this we are actually heading into the southern hemisphere to see a team with some well known scoundrels, which would be terrifically colourful people to have in the event.” So they must be Australian. “Whether they have the capacity to step up to the 72 at this stage, is probably a big call.”

Murray reckons that the latest a team could leave building an AC72 is April next year.

So the burning question is whether there will be British participation on the America’s Cup World Series. The only rumours at present are of Richard Branson and Virgin. Murray says the prospect of a British team isn’t pure wishful thinking. There was representation of a potential British team in Plymouth. “Certainly it would be great if we got a British team. We have had discussions with two British groups.”