GGYC (BMWO) filed with the New York Supreme court on several points this morning (or last night). Copying from "Peelman" over at SA, here is the basic summary of pages of legal documents.




One of the surprises is that there is no contention about the venue - RAK in the United Arab Emirates...we kind of thought this might come up about how the deed specifies the match be held on an "ocean course free of headlands" while RAK is in a gulf and it could be argued that the arabian peninsula has an affect on the wind around RAK....but anyway...

The biggest point here is one of the recent rulings by the New York court granted Alinghi the absurd ability to change the rules at will up to the second before the match - that particular ruling will apparently be appealed by BMWO as part of this action.

In addition, SNG stated several times in court that they will not use the rules to DSQ BMWO - but their measurement rule that was published several weeks ago includes an unsual provision that the rudders will be included in the waterline length measurement. This is a particular issue for BMWO because their hull sterns are overhung (suspended above the water) forward of the rudders. By now including the rudders in the measurement, it increases the measured waterline length of the boat (there are not many instances of measurement rules including rudders in sailing long history).

This whole rule thing gets particularly weird because SNG copied the measurement rules from the 1988 DoG match when Conner's 60' catamaran went up against Mercury Bay (New Zealand). That campaign was also run by Tom Ehman - the same guy running much of BMWO's current operation. Those rules, while not specifically stating that the rudders were part of the measurement, established that water line length was measured between the furthest fore and aft planes where the yacht breaks the water line plane (emphasis is mine). The title of that section is called "hull measurement" but this detail was omitted in the published Alinghi rule along with all the procedures for setting up an impartial measurement committee staffed with personnel from both teams and the sport's international governing body. (Side Note: Alinghi has also stated that they will appoint a measurer and a "guy to hold the other end of the tape" and there is no need for BMWO to have someone on the measurement team.) The boats that ran in the 1988 match were completely unaffected by whether or not the rudder was included in the measurement so it's likely that there was no specific intent to measure them in some funny way. This clearly has a significant bearing on the current vessels that are set to contend for the cup in February and Alinghi has confirmed that the measurement rule is to include the rudders. By using these rules, Alinghi intends to either DSQ the BMWO boat or at least force some sort of extensive and expensive redesign on part of BMWO in the short 5 months leading up to the match in order to meet the rules.

But don't forget, Alinghi contended in court repeatedly that they would not use the rules to DSQ BMWO's boat.

Another sticky point in the new rules is that Alinghi contends that the BMWO boat needs to meet exactly the 90' waterline length and 90' beam specified in the challenge certificate. The wording in the deed is not entirely cut and dry on this issue but it does mention "which dimensions are not to be exceeded" in reference to the two sailing vessels. The BMWO trimaran has at least three different mast, rig, and sail combinations of pretty significant dimensional and weight differences. It is unclear exactly what these do to the waterline length of the boat but it's conceivable that they designed it so that the heaviest rig puts the boat at the limit of 90' while the other rigs see a slight drop in waterline length measurement. While it's conceivable to add ballast to the BMWO trimaran to mitigate the lesser weight of the smaller rigs, Alinghi did make one change to the 1988 rule stating that ballast used to make measurement cannot be moved or removed.

When Alinghi first showed their vessel to have a gasoline driven hydraulic system, they stated that this was an "open design competition" as well as a sailboat race. They then chucked rules 49 through 52 in the RRS to pretty much allow anything (power/computer assisted trimming/steering, friction reducing ejections from the boat into the water, movable ballast, etc.). However, the haven't sought to really make this an open design competition. Instead, Alinghi has used the rules to paint BMWO into a technical corner and make their entire design concept as unqualified as possible. Alinghi hasn't made this an "open design competition" and hopefully this round in the courts will set this back to a fair match.