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Total and utter bore...

Posted 10 months, 4 days ago

Total and utter bore...
I'm just so ridiculously bored of the whole AC multihull story that I could cry. I think I speak, too, for the vast majority of you lovely (and quite good looking) viewers when I say this. It's just such a turgid set of arguments that aim to bore you to tears and totally lose interest in the whole Cup that no wonder the AC is going to be such a hard sell in the future. The deal makers really need to get on with sorting this whole mess out or they simply won't have an event to hang corporate sponsorship (ie the lifeblood of the competition) on anymore. But anyway, I am very grateful to my Asian correspondent for bringing me up to speed with his latest thoughts on this whole dumb ass debate and I don't really have much more to add other than "just get on with it!" Here's the scoop from someone I thoroughly respect in sailing: Hi Magnus According to the Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea Pub 1976 a ‘keel’ is the lowest and principal timber of a wooden ship or lowest continuous line of plates on a steel ship, which extends the length of the whole vessel. The same reference work describes a yacht as any vessel propelled either by sail or by power used for pleasure and not plying for hire. So if you simply consider the lowest layup of carbon along the bottom of the boat to be the same as the “continuous line of plates” and couple that to second part then surely “any vessel propelled either by sail or by power used for pleasure and not plying for hire that has a principal strengthening member running the whole length of the vessel you have a keel yacht whether it has one, two, three or more hulls. Some newer boats are indeed of a monocoque type construction but surely as long as the GGYC challenger has a main structural member that runs the length of the vessel then there is nothing wrong with the challenge of GGYC. As far as Mr Irens ‘expert’ testimony is concerned, well that can be discounted right away. As an employee or contractor of Mr Berterelli he is hardly unbiased and Mr Schuemann, who has just been made redundant because of the legal action, is hardly a non interested party. As far as I can see, there is nowhere in the GGYC submission that mentions anything about the keel being ballasted. Perhaps they were being a little bit to clever but so indeed was Mr Bertarelli in the recent interview on You Tube where he seamlessly switched from the term keelboat to keel yacht and his reference to the US Sailing material was so transparent as to be an attempt to confuse the matter. Give up graciously Mr Bertarelli, it is you and your organisations, Alinghi, ACM or SNG that have shown habitual disrespect to the memory of George Schuyler and his deed of gift by accepting not one BUT three non compliant challnegs for the America’s Cup. Not only did CNEV not comply by not “having an annual regatta” but two of the challengers for your "wonderful vision" of AC32 as well. Could it have been becasue sponsors were also promised (contracturally) a certain number of challengers for AC32 as well? I know so!   Full Story »

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