america's cup 33

Larry Ellison won the America's Cup on his third try, leaving few stones unturned in the process.

This picture says it all for the week of reckoning borne by Ernesto Bertarelli.

The events of the last 2.5 years have dominated the narrative of the 33rd America's Cup, but the roots of the confl ict that was resolved in Valencia February 8-14 stretch back to the year 2000, and the events following the 30th America's Cup in Auckland. Back then Russell Coutts, Brad Butterworth and a whole host of Team New Zealand sailors, designers and builders jumped ship after successfully defending the oldest trophy in sports which they'd won in San Diego in '95. They signed with a hitherto low-profi le Swiss yachtsman Ernesto Bertarelli — who had founded a sailing team named for a nonsense word from his childhood. Bertarelli created the sailing machine that would come to be known not only as Alinghi, but also as the successful challenger of the 31st America's Cup some three years later. Coutts' contract with Bertarelli called for him to have complete control over the next defense, should they win. But after the glow of victory had subsided Coutts and Bertarelli had a series of contretemps over issues like where to hold the defense of the next Cup match. Before we knew it, the successful partnership had dissolved, leaving Coutts on the sidelines — hostage to a non-compete clause in his contract — while Butterworth and the rest of the boys he'd brought with him successfully defended the 32nd match, held in Valencia, Spain, in the summer of 2007. Meanwhile, software mogul Larry Ellison, CEO of the Bay Area-based Oracle Corporation, had also challenged in 2003, with a team bearing his company's name. Ellison lost to Alinghi in the Louis Vuitton Cup fi nals, but he and Bertarelli had formed a friendship and agreed that what would ultimately become BMW Oracle Racing would be the Challenger of Record for the commercially successful 32nd Cup match. Despite having one of the largest budgets in Valencia, Ellison's team, led by the abrasive Chris Dickson, ended up being swept in the Louis Vuitton Cup semifi nals. At the same time, relations between Ellison and Bertarelli had soured, and tension between the two began to surface during the work-up to the

event, as they established the conditions for the match. When Alinghi successfully defended in Valencia, Bertarelli and his team decided that it would set up a paper yacht club, the Club Náutico Español de Vela or C.N.E.V., to be the next Challenger of Record. They wrote a protocol that would make even the New York YC blush, giv-

other executive department, having for its annual regatta on ocean water course on the sea, or on an arm of the sea, or one which combines both, shall always be entitled to the right of sailing a match for this Cup." Bertarelli's and his lawyer Lucien Masmejan's understanding of the English language failed to recognize that "having," functioned as a present participle. The problem for the pair was that they interpreted the word as indicating that they could have an annual regatta whenever they wanted. So rather than playing it safe and hosting the sham of an Optimist pram regatta they called their Russell Coutts and Larry Ellison made a formidable team; this was "annual regatta" before signing Coutts' fi fth America's Cup win, his fi rst as a team CEO. the papers with their puppet ing them complete control over aspects C.N.E.V, they scheduled it for after that like the division of revenue, the jury, re- But what the New York Supreme Court gatta administration and, perhaps most ultimately upheld was that "having," importantly from the sailing side, the meant "having already had." right to sail in the challenger elimination Ellison's response? Challenge. So it series. While the latter point might not came to pass that the Bay Area's own seem like a big deal, the one advantage Melinda Erkelens, the team's General the Challenger has traditionally had in Counsel, and a Swiss Process server the America's Cup is that it's boat has walked right into Alinghi's home club, been battle-tested by the time it meets the Société Nautique Genève, and served the defender. the club's commodore, Fred Meyer, with Ellison, who later hired Russell a challenge for the 33rd Cup. Coutts to be his team's CEO, didn't The 2.5-year legal battle that ensued like any of it. But given that there was was, well, boring, so we'll spare you already a Challenger of Record in place, the details. But the short story is that there wasn't much he or anyone else C.N.E.V. was declared an invalid chalcould do about it. Except . . . Bertarelli lenger and the Golden Gate YC's BMW hadn't dotted his i's or crossed his t's. Oracle Racing Team became the rightThe Cup's Deed of Gift doesn't require ful one, and the rest of the time was that a valid challenger have a clubhouse, spent deciding how the match would be

Local boy made hero John Kostecki was all smiles after fi nally adding a Cup win to his resume and completing the sport's triple crown of the Cup, an Olympic medal (silver '88, Soling), and Volvo Ocean Race (2001-'02 'Illbruck'); Kostecki's counterpart Brad Butterworth was left looking a little sheepish, if not stunned.

GILLES MARTIN-RAGET / BMW ORACLE RACING

GUIDO TROMBETTA / ALINGHI

but it does require that said club be, "Any organized Yacht Club of a foreign country, incorporated, patented, or licensed by the legislature, admiralty, or contended, as well as when and where, through the New York Courts. The Deed of Gift prescribes that a yacht that sails in the match must not be longer than 90-ft on the waterline if it's single-masted. In its challenge Ellison's team described their boat as 90-ft long by 90-ft wide, which ended up being USA, the 90-ft carbon-black trimaran they brought to Valencia. With their head start, Ellison's team initially had an advantage in that they had more time to build, test and sail the monster that would become known as DOGzilla — a nickname that marries the acronym for Deed Of Gift with everyone's favorite mythical monster, Godzilla. Built in Anacortes, Washington, and later modifi ed with a whole new set of longer amas at the team's sailing base in San Diego, the massive tri that went through three iterations of progressively-taller soft-sail rigs looked wickedly fast from the outset. The sailing world waited to see what Bertarelli and his team would produce, given that neither team yet knew where or when the match would be held. Alinghi's response was a 90-ft long by 80-ft wide catamaran named Alinghi 5, built in Switzerland, per the Deed of Gift's stipulation that the yacht and components be built in her home country. When it was revealed, it appeared that Ellison's team would have a fi ght on its hands. The cat looked much lighter than

the tri, and sported a complex but elegant system of compression struts and tension cables that distributed the loads from the massive 180-ft-tall sailplan. While in San Diego, BMW Oracle Racing unveiled what would become the most important factor in their win of the 33rd America's Cup, a massive 200-ft tall hard-wing sail, which had just about everyone guessing, "Would it last?" Fast forward to the February match date, and the wing had grown to 223-ft tall — too tall to fi t under the Golden Gate Bridge — and the question became, "Would it work?" The only way to fi nd out was to settle the dispute on the water. The only problem was that Valencia, which isn't known for reliable breeze in the winter, wasn't cooperating. The fi rst scheduled day of the match was a throwaway day, with massive shifts and little or no wind, making racing impossible. The following day was a deedmandated lay-day, so when Wednesday rolled around with breeze in the 15-knot range, the assembled spectators and press corps fi gured that the match would be on. But it wasn't to be. Alinghi, citing a 4.5-ft sea state they laughably called "heinous," declined to race, and the Race Committee — staffed mostly by S.N.G. members and the ISAF-appointed PRO, Kiwi Harold Bennett — capitulated. Back at the dock, the now-frustrated press corps and spectators demanded to know why the boats hadn't raced. Bennett appeared to be genuinely empathetic, but the day was history. Following yet another Deed-mandated lay-day, race number one fi nally got off on Friday, February 12.

After winning a coin toss and electing to start the fi rst race from the starboard side, BMW Oracle Racing skipper James Spithill absolutely nailed the entry, accelerating to 24 knots in the 6- to 8-knot breeze while bearing away and preventing Alinghi 5 from crossing. With the pin-end favored by some 30°, Alinghi 5 was forced to enter the starting box at a much deeper angle, and as a result could only manage 14-knots of boat speed as she entered 'the box.' That left her as a sitting duck for the aggressive Spithill, who put to rest the widely-asserted notion that there wouldn't be a bare-knuckles pre-start between the two multihulls. Did anyone really think they'd be sitting there at the start, waving each other across, saying, "You fi rst," "No, you go ahead," "No, please, after you?" As the boats approached each other for the fi rst time, the speed difference allowed Spithill to attack and force Loïck Peyron to tack to stay clear; Alinghi was successful in the former but not the latter, and it wasn't long before USA's tactician — Bay Area born-and-bred John Kostecki — raised the Y-fl ag while USA followed suit. After 45 seconds of deliberation, the on-the-water umpires signaled a penalty against Alinghi. Penalty in hand, Spithill and company tried to hang head-to-wind near Alinghi above the starting line, but it didn't take long for the directional stability of those 100-ft long hulls to start working against the skipper, as the boat drifted astern with the wing stalled. Alinghi 5 was able to get clear and gybe away, re-crossing the line on time, while USA drifted backwards in irons before fi nally crossing the line a minute-and-a-half behind. What no one knew at the time was that USA would sail from Alinghi 5's lee, straight up and over the big cat, going higher and faster, and passing Bertarel-

GUIDO TROMBETTA / ALINGHI GILLES MARTIN-RAGET

From left — 'USA' had a lot of modes, they all looked a lot faster than any of 'Alinghi 5's; Alinghi's Ed Baird, one of the world's top match racers, was noticeably absent from the sailing roster; James Spithill, at 30, the youngest Cup-winning skipper ever; Loïck Peyron got the nod to helm 'Alinghi 5.'

Spithill attacks aggressively at the start of the fi rst race, setting the tone for the rest of the match.

From left — Société Nautique Genève Commodore Fred Meyer got served in his own club by the Bay Area's Melinda Erkelens; ISAF-appointed PRO Harold Bennett was stuck between a rock and a hard place, but proved his resolve in the face of pressure from the host club-provided race committee.

Golden Gate YC Commodore Marcus Young with the Auld Mug.

li's boys early in the 20-mile weather leg on the windward/leeward course specifi ed for the fi rst race of the match by the Deed of Gift. After completely dusting Alinghi, USA rounded the top mark almost 3.5 minutes ahead. Much to everyone's surprise, down the leeward leg, USA sailed even faster. They won by a stunning 15.5 minutes after Alinghi 5 botched their 270° penalty turn at the fi nish and required another fi ve minutes to fi gure it out. Back at the dock, the visibly stunned Bertarelli and company were already wearing defeat on their faces. After the deed-mandated lay-day, the teams hit the water for race two on Sunday, and were greeted with no breeze. With the 4:30 p.m. race deadline looming, and a forecast for days of inclement weather, the breeze finally fi lled in on the race course after Bennett had canvassed a 20- by 20-milesquare area looking for the best possible pressure. Just after 4:25, Bennett made the call to start the race, but the Société Nautique Genève-appointed race committee had other ideas, and went on strike. That forced Bennett to enlist the help of BMW Oracle Racing's mutually consented observer Tom Ehman, and the R/C boat driver to hoist the fl ags! To top it off, the Alinghi team — which includes a lot of people who should know better — was inexplicably inside the starting box when the sequence started, drawing a penalty right off the bat and ceding its starboard-tack advantage to James Spithill and company before the word 'go.' With Ernesto Bertarelli on the helm, Alinghi 5 looked like they were in their fi rst — and possibly last — rodeo. Having won the start by 24 seconds, USA headed left up the beat, while Alinghi 5 went right. The big cat hooked into a nice right shift and quickly pulled away from USA, amassing what became at one point a 550-meter lead. But USA stayed in touch, protecting the left in the process — in anticipation of a left shift, which they got. Kostecki and navigator Matteo Plazzi called a dead-nuts porttack layline and USA was fl ying toward the mark. The shift had eroded Alinghi 5's lead down to 100 meters, and Loïck Peyron — who'd taken over for Bertarelli during the previous tack — couldn't safely lee-bow USA or engage them in a dial-up. Had they missed, they would have been sailing the wrong way at 25 knots while USA would be accelerating through the duck, toward the mark. They were thus forced to cross, then tack for the weather mark. By the time they'd completed their painfully slow tack and made it to the weather mark, Alinghi 5 was 28 seconds behind USA. "John made it very, very hard for them by picking that shift," Coutts said at the Golden Gate YC's reception for the team. From there on out, it was all USA, as the black trimaran tore off at speeds in the high-20s in the 6-knot breeze, and led Alinghi 5 by 2,000 meters at the reach mark of the 39-mile, Deed-mandated triangle course which was comprised of three, 13-mile legs. USA generally sailed about 1 to 2 knots faster than Alinghi 5 upwind, and 2 to 3 knots faster on the reaching legs, as they extended their lead all the way around the course, with a margin of 2:44 at the gybe mark. In the fading light, USA had stretched out to a lead of over fi ve minutes, thus ending a brutal, but ultimately necessary, chapter in the history of the oldest trophy in sports.

Following the racing, Bertarelli and the team lobbed up the excuse that, "The American legal system favored BMW Oracle." While we never really saw any evidence of that, we did see some things that appeared to have a serious impact on the outcome of the match. For Alinghi's part:

Choosing the catamaran over a tri — It seemed like a good idea at the time, because it's a lighter solution. But the catamaran as a platform left little room for development. The main crossbeam, where the mast must be stepped, can't be moved fore-and-aft. Alinghi never had a chance to go bigger with their rig. If they had gone bigger, the sailplan's center of effort would have thrown the whole boat out of balance, thereby making it

GILLES MARTIN-RAGET / BMW ORACLE RACING

impossible to sail. With the trimaran, BMW Oracle Racing could move their GILLES MARTIN-RAGET rig foreand-aft because the center hull could be one of the modmodifi ed to accomodate more structure ern era's masters where needed; not a simple job, but ex- of multihulls, clusive to the tri. According to Kostecki, he doesn't have BMW Oracle ended up moving their mast much of a track step three times as the sailplan got taller record in match and taller. racing. We guar-

Where Was Ed? — American Ed antee you that Ed Baird helmed Alinghi's successful de- Baird would have fense in '07. An accomplished match made at least a passable entry in the an impressive team of some very talented racer, he took to the multihull scene with second race. and experienced sailors and designers. fervor, racking up wins in the Extreme Ernesto, get off the wheels! — Er- Ellison's two previous teams had very 40 class and putting in hours on ORMA nesto Bertarelli took the helm of Alinghi good personnel, but their chemistry was 60s. It was rumored that he fell vicitim 5 for far too long. That's like Mark Cuban off. Coutts got an impressive result. to a Kiwi antagonism perpetrated by suiting up for his Dallas Mavericks and The Wing — Wing Trimmer Dirk De Alinghi's anitpodean sailors, although starting at point guard. Ridder said that the mainsheet loads he would never confi rm it on the record. Ras Al Khaimah? — The non-Deed or on the soft-sail rig were in the neighborWhether or not the reason why is true, Court Order-compliant venue choice by hood of 20 tons; with the wing it was he was the best match racer on the team, Bertarelli, and his boat's detour to the more like 2 tons. That meant that the and although helmsman Loïck Peyron is Arab Emirate put a dent in the team's wing, as massive as it was, could easily sailing time. Meanwhile, be controlled and quickly adjusted for out in San Diego, BMW changes in wind velocity and direction. Oracle Racing, which Alinghi on the other hand had to resort had started earlier, was to hydraulics to trim theirs, which meant getting day after day that in the puffs they could only wind on of solid practice. If this leech tension slowly, and as soon as the isn't revealing enough, puff had passed, they would be really consider that Kostecki strapped. On a sailplan of this scale, a commented at the YC re- happy medium looks desireable. ception that, "The second "Without the wing, the fi rst race would race was the fi rst time have been closer," Kostecki said. "And we sailed the boat and they probably would have beaten us in didn't break anything." the second race." BMW Oracle made it The Tri — In addition to the reasons look easy; but accord- mentioned above, the team didn't end up ing to their tactician, leaving anything on the table structurwho grew up sailing El ally. They were able to take advantage Toros in the Richmond of the increased effi ciency because they YC junior program, "We were capable of going larger and larger, just peaked. It was a re- eventually setting nine vertical elements ally, really, hard boat to on their wing spar to get up to that 223sail." ft mark. Not knowing the venue from Spithill said they the get-go was a challenge all the way hadn't had time to prac- around, but the tri was able to adapt, tice their starting en- while the cat had to remain pretty close tries before the match, to its original design. so what you saw was apparently seat-of-thepants if what he's saying It didn't take long before Erkelens is accurate. That comes and Mascalzone Latino team owner down to one thing, time Vincenzo Onorato were inking a deal to on the water. make the Italian shipping magnate the For BMW Oracle there next Challenger of Record. Onorato was were three big factors: the only team owner to publicly back Russell — Coutts led Ellison from the start, and he has a long-

From left — Australian multihull impressario Glenn Ashby brought his skills to BMW Oracle Racing; Alinghi design coordinator Grant Simmer did an admirable job in a short period of time, but it wasn't enough to beat Ian 'Fresh' Burns' 'USA'. Big, fast and hard to handle, both boats proved to be the most spectacular boats to contend for the Cup since the J Class — maybe of all-time.

CARLO BORLENGHI / ALINGHI

standing relationship with Coutts. We feel that a mutual consent challenge from these two teams will probably produce a desirable result. We're pretty sure we won't see powered winches — the only truly regrettable thing we found about America's Cup 33. And we've got to say it's about 50-50 for Monohulls or multihulls for the next match. Spithill said that the best thing about this Cup cycle was getting to sail such a sweet boat each day. That's a mighty contrast to a typical AC campaign — what the sailors have called 'sail jail' for its endless weeks of mind-numbing, two-boat, straight-line speed testing. The public loved the boats. They captured as much attention as their billionaire owners, and while they may not work on that scale, we won't rule multis out entirely.

The question of where and when the next Cup will take place is just as murky. Ellison had previously promised the mayor of Valencia that he would host the next Cup there if his team were to take AC33. Now he's telling San Francisco he'd love to hold it here. He also mentioned at the GGYC reception that he wants to see a Formula 1-type traveling circuit with visits to Hong Kong, Auckland and Newport, Rhode Island, as a prelude to the Cup. There are just too many red herrings as of now. But one thing is for sure, bringing the Cup to the Bay would have a huge impact on both the West Coast's sailing scene, and the ability to reach out to a more mainstream audience in the U.S. There are challenges, many of which can be overcome. Those that are likely to prove the most diffi cult are ones that almost every Californian faces — those that involve that sticky red tape. For those who felt as if the 33rd America's Cup was an exercise in egodriven, billionaire histrionics, keep in mind that the Cup's cache and mystique is built around names like Vanderbilt, Lipton and Turner that have kept it at the forefront of public consciousness for over one-and-a-half centuries. The Cup has survived two World Wars, and the Great Depression. While it wasn't the best-case scenario for the commercial side of the sport, America's Cup 33 was a momentous punctuation in the evolutionary equilibrium of the oldest trophy in sports.

Larry Ellison hoists the Cup; hopefully he'll defend it with the principles that made him challenge for it.

GILLES MARTIN-RAGET / BMW ORACLE RACING

— latitude/rg

We'd like to expressly thank Special Correspondent Ron Young, whose work on the ground in Valencia contributed immensely to this story. Thanks Ron!

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