MonoMarvellous YACHTING
The Louis Vuitton Trophy arrives in Hong Kong early next year, which spells good news for fans of monohull racing, says HK Golfer yachting correspondent Cameron Dueck
N
ow that Larry Ellison has carried the America’s Cup back to the US – only the second man to have done so in the cup’s long history – it’s time to start thinking about what the showdown between him and Ernesto Bertarelli meant for sailors and boats around the world. It was hard for weekend sailors to relate to the Matrixlike machines that soared up and down the America’s Cup course on the Mediterranean Sea. While most recreational yacht racers become giddy at 9 knots, the 90-foot BMW Oracle and Alinghi multi-hulls were skimming over the water at a steady 20 knots with the capacity for much more. Very few people have ever had the thrill of moving that fast using only the wind. 22
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But those races may have been the beginning of the end for premier monohull match racing. America’s Cup has long been the pinnacle of match racing, where two similar boats face off against each other. Watching the showdown between the BMW Oracle’s trimaran and Alinghi’s catamaran made watching the previous generation of America’s Cup boats a bit like watching lawn bowls. Monohulls just don’t offer the same level of excitement and speed on a short, contained course where yacht racing is staged for spectators. The popularity of the Extreme 40s catamaran class, which raced in Victoria Harbour late last year, further shows that more speed is needed in order to keep the public interested in watching professional “around the cans” racing. The Extreme 40s, many crewed by America’s Cup racers who were out of work due to the court battles, delivered twice the excitement at less than half the cost of the older generation of America’s Cup boats. But there’s one name that could keep monohulls on the front page for a bit longer: Louis Vuitton. The luxury goods company left the America’s Cup after the 2007 edition following decades of high profile sponsorship. While Ellison and Bertarelli bickered, Louis Vuitton brought together many of the top racing teams in the world, recycled the boats used in the last America’s Cup, and in 2009 started its own premier match racing competition for the Louis Vuitton Trophy. Louis Vuitton is bringing the sport back to its fans in ports around the world. Emirates Team New Zealand has just won the Louis Vuitton Trophy in Auckland’s Waitemata Harbour, and in January 2011 the boats are scheduled to come to race in Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour. The boats are very evenly matched and the crews have been sailing them for several years so they know them well, resulting in bow-to-bow racing and some spectacular boat handling in tight confines. While the multihull Extreme 40s have become famous for their spectacular capsizes and crashes, the Louis Vuitton series is delivering its fair share of catastrophic gear breakage and crew theatrics made public by on-boat cameras. Normally Louis Vuitton is a name associated with luxurious spending, but Bruno Troublé, the silver-manned creator and public face of the series, has created a more affordable and competitive racing alternative to the billionaire’s bickerfest that America’s Cup had become. Ellison and Bertarelli’s court battle to hammer out the rules under which they’d race disgusted much of the sailing world, and Louis Vuitton tapped into those sentiments. With a large fleet of previous America Cup class boats available, HKGOLFER.COM
the Louis Vuitton Trophy has become the more affordable, accessible and therefore potentially popular series. It is also truly international, with teams coming from all the major sailing nations, and proudly flying their flags off their sterns in an added touch of style. So while Ellison and Berterelli set a new high water mark for yacht racing in terms of speed, spending and extreme engineering, Louis Vuitton is building a series that could well help extend the life of mono-hull match racing. And staged in the tight confines of Victoria Harbour, these racing machines will still deliver a compelling show, even if they’re no longer the latest and fastest boats on the market. But for amateur sailors such as myself it was a bit disheartening to turn off the America’s Cup coverage and return to Hong Kong waters on what I thought was a quick and nimble 40-foot racing yacht, only to struggle and sweat to keep her going at a jogging pace. Technology used in the America’s Cup will probably never make your current boat go any faster, but you can bet that if you splash out on a new racing boat in five years time, some of those pro gadgets will have filtered down to the kinds of boats that go out racing weekend after weekend. In particular, you can expect to see a return of the “wing” after BMW Oracle used it with such
efficiency. I say return because similar wings – albeit less advanced – have been around for decades, particularly in the world of multihulls. However, they have never gained a real foothold in the market because materials had not been developed to make them light and strong enough to compete with rapidly advancing world of sail making. With new composites and carbon fibre materials available, the wing has another chance to take off. The showdown between a catamaran and a trimaran is also sure to boost the popularity and performance of multihulls. Until now, multihull sailing boats generally fell into two categories; those that were cumbersome upwind sailors but had fantastic cabin space, making them popular with cruisers; and those that were wet, cramped and unpredictable but so fast and fun that racers were willing to put up with some pain for the payoff in pleasure. Seeing how high into the wind the two America’s Cup boats were able to point and the sheer grace with which they moved is sure to send designers back to their desks to produce fast yet more comfortable and seaworthy multihulls. So it’s not just the billionaires who contested the last America’s Cup that got to enjoy the benefits. Its delays made room for creative new racing formats and its technology gave weekend yachties something to dream about too.
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