The America's Cup 2013; a guest post

Quintin Hogg is a regular visitor to Keeping Stock, and a semi-regular commenter. We've met him several times, and shared a couple of meals. And we know that when he leaves his office, he is a mad-keen sailor.

So we asked him for a yachtie's perspective of the America's Cup match series between Oracle and Emirates Team New Zealand. The syndicates go head-to-head in San Francisco tomorrow morning in the first race of the best-of-seventeen contest. Here's his guest post:

The Americas Cup Match September 2014

KS asked me to give my opinion as a sailor of the Americas Cup which starts NZ Time at 8.15 am on Sunday 9 September 2013.

I thought about waxing lyrical about the AC72’s, the teams (or lack of), the crews, the shenanigans, and the venue but the reality is that all that stuff is easily available online or in the print media so anything I say would only repeat what others have said more capably.

So what follows is, in brief, what I think about the event.  It is the opinion of a bloke with some modest experience as a sailor and as a race management volunteer including helping with the 2000 and 2003 defences.

I grew up with a sailing obsessed father. I grew up with the cup and NZ’s involvement.  Until the responsibilities of fatherhood landed on my shoulders I was sailing obsessed, going out on the water on average 3 times a week. 

The cup has for me been an emotional rollercoaster.  Despair in 1987.  Hope in 1992, Joy in 1995 and 2000.  Anger, later on, in 2000. Despair again in 2003 and 2007. And now hope again in 2013.

The most interesting feeling is dread.  I don’t know who is faster of the two boats that contest the Americas’ Cup on Sunday. 

We knew, sort of that NZL 32 was faster in 1995.  Again we were confident that we had the measure of Luna Rossa in 2000. The boats in 2003 had similar speed but the TNZ boat had frailties and in 2007 the word was that Alinghi had a boat that was a click faster, but even then TNZ only lost 5-2 (and one of those losses by 1 second if that). So we had an idea of the relative merits of each competitor.

I suspect that Grant Dalton is right when he says he doesn’t know. Oracle is said to be fast.  I know that Aotearoa is fast.  The telemetry data from their races is available online.  We will only know on Sunday who is faster.

Which bring me back to dread and I suppose anticipation.  If Oracle is faster then ETNZ have a problem.  Why? The course is short.  The races are completed within 45 minutes.  There are not that many passing lanes even if you can foil upwind at 30knots.  So I don’t know. No-one does.  We have to wait and see.

My hope is an evenly contested match with ETNZ beating Oracle on the water and leaving the shenanigans that have been recorded elsewhere behind.  And if ETNZ wins then "yahoo" for two or three days and then the hard work begins to build an event. 

If ETNZ are not successful well they deserve congratulations.  They have been innovative and creative. They have been an advertisement for NZ beyond anything we have previously had including the AB’s.

My heart says ETNZ will win.  My head would like to.

We thank Quintin Hogg for sharing his thoughts with us. In 24 hours time we will have an idea whose boat is faster, and where the next America's Cup regatta will be held. Here's hoping that it is in Auckland.

Rattue on the Oracle cheats

Herald sports columnist Chris Rattue is seldom short of a controversial word. And he's likely to upset some in the sailing fraternity with his piece today; check this out:

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water.
The international jury - now there's a flash title for the over-seers of a tub race - might be chuffed with their handiwork but it's done nothing for the America's Cup proper, which begins on Sunday.
I say proper with tongue poking through cheek, because there is rarely much proper about this fascinating, mysterious, random and often utterly stupid sporting contest that pits man against man, design against the elements and the rest of us against our better judgment.
Something we can definitely do without is a grand final contest in which one of the combatants starts in deficit, as defenders Oracle will do after the jury punished Larry Ellison's outfit for dark deeds in the America's Cup World Series.
This is like forcing a Melbourne Cup jockey to discard his whip because of a track work incident, or getting Mike Tyson to fight one handed for yelling at one of his pigeons. Who cares what happened in a convenient invention called the America's Cup World Series and who even needs an America's Cup World Series? The cup combatants are either in or out. Racing must start at nil-all.

The precedent also has nightmare legal-tangle potential. Wait for the claims of world series yacht rigging and even jury rigging to explode. There are already too many lawyers involved. Compared with the mad history of the cup, whatever Oracle did in what should be considered a separate lead-up series is irrelevant and trivial.
The successful history of the Auld Mug is one of a stand-alone contest, not part of a world circuit which doesn't even use the same class of boat under the command of Dean Barker and James Spithill out of San Francisco. If Team New Zealand were to win the Cup, by say a one-race margin, it will be a hollow and probably much-contested victory that will, justifiably, squirm in a pile of legal argument.
As for banning one sailor for "cheating", most of us will presume he acted under orders which creates the image of a jury that doesn't know what it is doing.
But here's the key point: a separate competition - which has the name but no direct link to the America's Cup contest - should not affect the cup scoreline.

Whilst Oracle's cheating in the AC World Series was serious, Rattue raises a valid point; should Oracle be penalised in the actual America's Cup match? But on the other hand, would a sanction which does not have any effect on their America's Cup defence be sufficient for a pretty flagrant disregard of the rules of fair play?

Chris Rattue is right on one point however; even though the international jury's decision is not able to be appealed, you can bet your bottom dollar that the lawyers will be involved, and they won't be nickel-and-dime lawyers either. The meters will be running at a number of high-powered law firms, if previous America's Cup contests are anything to go by.

And on a related matter, we've asked regular reader and commenter Quintin Hogg for a sailor's opinion on the Cup match, which we'll publish before the first race on Sunday. QH sails a little in his spare time, and knows far more about things nautical than we do.