If you can believe everything on the web... Scuttlebutt just posted a link to this article:

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hPuKC1liAAJ6ZtClHM10RjpXropwD9BJIN0G0

Mike

Sailing Anarchy broke it live with in-courtroom "reporters" :P

So, will they keep that RAK venue and just slide the date to after May 1? Or will they find a southern hemisphere location and do it in Feb?

So much dramma...so little time.

Oh, wait, they have lots of time.

Maybe we can talk them into Tampa Bay in May! Macho Man, size Large!

Feb 8th is a court mandated race date in conjunction with the statment "Valencia, Spain or anywhere else" and requiring SNG/Alinghi to announce the venue with a 6 month notice. As ruled today by Kornreich, the location statement had to be read harmoniously with the Deed of Gift which prohibits a northern hemisphere location in the winter months (including February) unless mutually consented by both parties. "Anywhere" meant anywhere that is compliant with the Deed...not "anywhere"...like on the moon.

Now that there are only 100 days left to Feb. 8th date, there is no way SNG/Alinghi can give 6 month notice and still host the event on the court mandated date.

(Before you jump on GGYC/BMW-Oracle, they've written SNG/Alinghi no less than 7 letters on the subject, the first being the day after the venue announcement, stating that they didn't believe RAK to be Deed or Court compliant and that they didn't consent...SNG/Alinghi refused to discuss it).

Also to be considered here is that we expect a few more rulings out of the court this week based on today's litigation - whether or not the rudders should be included in the LWL measurement, some possibility of revisiting the prior decision that Alinghi/SNG can change the rules at will with direct implications on the ISAF agreement and the formation of a neutral race management.

I don't expect anything much to happen until early next week until these decisions are known...but here are the options:

1) both sides could remain stone faced and unwilling to negotiate (the ball for this is really in the Alinghi/SNG hands right now). The event will default to Valencia on Feb. 8th and we hope both teams show up.

2) the teams negotiate and the rules change to be more fair for BMWO and the event stays in RAK (unlikely given the high profile BMWO gave the security issues).

3) we end up somewhere else in the world racing this event on another date under agreement from both teams.

Options 2 and 3 require mutual agreement. Given the nature of the game and the type of the players, we should not expect any agreement.

Chances are that the match will be in Valencia.

I wonder how welcome either one of the teams will be in Valencia, especially since GGYC just said that the Spanish govt are a bunch of corrupt crooks.

The upside is that Valencia is only a 17h drive away.
*roadtrip*

They didn't say the Spanish government acted crookedly - they said the Bertarelli family (specifically, their pharma companies) benefited through political and financial negotiations relating to the hosting of the cup in Spain...which has negative implications for the very people who were supposed to be honoring the charitable trust of the America's Cup - you can't use a charitable trust as leverage for personal gain. There's nothing specifically wrong with the political negotiating on part of the Spanish Government and none implied...If that kind of political dealing made politicians crooks, the local tax breaks we give big companies in the US would put all our politicians in jail (unless people are getting paid under the table). Spain was simply trying to find ways to get the cup in Spain - for the betterment of Spain. The claim made in the suit filed this morning was to illuminate the self serving of Ernesto with everything involving his part of the America's Cup.

You dont think that whole stem-cell accusation is a bit far fetched?
Like that wouldnt have happened anyway?

Is anyone here planning on going?

Lawyers are lawyers..

Not planning to go. I think I will see more of the action on TV/web than if I went there to stand in the crowd or trying to get a spot on a spectator boat.
Would much rather go to the F18 worlds or europeans in 2010

I didnt know you had an F18? Secret project?

(There is only a F18 Europeans when the Worlds are not in Europe though, so far this happened only once).

No secrets. The F18 class have finally taken off in Norway as well so we are looking at options. No F18 yet, but will add one to the fleet.



That I did not know.

Absolutely it's far fetched! So was all the drama about the security concerns with RAK....but it's a legal tactic - noise to keep the defense busy trying to fend off everything while the crux of the matter is drilled home. The RAK security stage show was all the same - a distraction to bring RAK into the fold and for the SNG legal team to spend their time refuting the security evidence while the crux of the matter was the fact that it wasn't Deed of Gift legal...a point made well by the GGYC team and barely addressed by the SNG legal team. It's an unfortunate nature of this game and is akin to two comical prize fighters - one with his left arm wildly swinging high in the air poised to punch...his opponent's focus is drawn to it and never saw the right hook coming.

What confuses me is that the Judge ordered that a race must be sailed in Feb in Valencia while that is also not Deed legal?

Do you guys think a cat will be faster than a tri?
Is there a theoretical way we can analyse this?

Judge Cahn ordered Valencia because he *thought* that there was mutual consent to race there.

As for cat vs. tri, DZ is more Cat than tri now. The centerboard in the center hull is gone now - as is the rudder.

If nothing else, makes for interesting speculation and it is keeping us talking about it...

Is the sail plan limited by DOG?

I would say that the weight and sail plan would be more important than the number of hulls.

The BMWO tri probably is heavier, just because they have more hulls, and in light air, they have more wetted surface area, so if everything else is the same (total weight and sail area) then the cat is faster.

Whats the stats on the Alinghi cat? Its not listed on their website in any easy to find way. The BMWO tri stat's are listed prominently.

Fact Sheet - BMW ORACLE Racing 90.
Hull
Boat Type: Trimaran of carbon composite construction
Where Built: Core Builders, Anacortes, WA, USA
Hours to build: over 130,000 hours to date
Overall Length: 100-feet/30 meters
Waterline Length: 90-feet/27 meters
Beam: 90-feet/27 meters



Mast
Height: Up to 185-feet/55 meters
Where Built: Hall Spars, Bristol, RI, USA; Core Builders, Anacortes, WA, USA


Sails
Mainsail: 6800 square feet; (630m2)
Genoa: 6700 square feet; (620m2)
Gennaker: 8400 square feet; (780m2)

Sail plan is not limited by the DoG. Also, Dogzilla will only have two hulls touching the water at any given time, and has been reported to fly both hulls in as little as 7 knots of wind.

Also, there's a big old C-class style hard wind in the tent at the Oracle Base in SD. They haven't unveiled it yet.

Comparing apples to apples (racing tri vs. racing cat), the tris have usually comes out as faster around the course. The design envelope have a tremendous impact on which boat is favoured though.

In the current deathmatch between the two antagonists, I would say the trimaran is faster. Why, becouse they have more time on the boat and more experience sailing it. Nobody will know until they match up though.

BMW Oracle won big time yesterday. Precious time have been lost shipping the catamaran to RAK, and now it will have to be shipped anew to whatever venue is choosen (Valencia?). Wonder how and when BMW Oracle will ship its trimaran.. Perhaps they have a boat being built in europe somewhere

Someone already found the request for shipment that BMWO put out. It was big news at the time because then, the dimensions were not known - and the shipment request put some numbers to the beam and some insight into the weight.

One of the stipulations of the shipment order was that the transport vessel must be able to take a 90' wide boat with NO part of the tri overhanging the container vessel.

Hey, why not just Sail it to Valencia!

I keed, I keed!