Gladwell's Line- 34th America's Cup - Just do it!

by Richard Gladwell on 2 May 2010 The Media Conference, next week in Rome, is now expected to set the timelines and procedure for the consultative process, which will be a forerunner to the Protocol and opening of the entry window for the 34th America's Cup.

That probably points to a Match date in 2014, venue will likely be San Francisco, as the mood seems to favour a home stadium option.

Boat - probably a monohull in the 70ft-80ft range to a box rule.

Nothing too surprising in all that.

However below that top line, the detail becomes very tricky and of the options, most have some upside and a significant downside.

The Bear Trap in the whole exercise is when the sailors and teams start deciding what will make an event attractive to media and fans. Remember that most of the audience is not at the event, but is generally thousands of miles away watching a screen of some type, on which they can easily switch channels.

The sailors and teams don't have too much experience of being remote viewers. They are participants, and what might be a great event in which to compete, does not necessarily make great viewing.

The first issue is the ramifications of the Match date, or rather year - 2014.

As has been pointed out before with the exception of Alinghi and BMW Oracle Racing the established teams, sponsors, designers, shore teams, racing crew and all the infrastructure that goes with those people, will have had to survive a seven year gap between Matches.

Quite how quickly they can gear up again remains to be seen, however it is probably not too long.

For the first time, or new teams the game is different. They will need all the time they can get to get sponsors board, designers, shore crew and sailing teams engaged. If they have a billionaire patron as a backer, they should be able to get off to a rolling start. Picking up a new set of sponsors in the current climate will not be easy.

The real first real issue will be how to fill in the four intervening years, and particularly 2011 and 2012, in a way that will build into 2014.

The obvious way is to continue with the Louis Vuitton Trophy series, but that itself raises several issues.

Firstly what boats to use?

The America's Cup Class V5 boats probably won't last the distance. They get a hammering through being raced by different crews.

There is no reason for an established team to want to keep a pair of V5 boats running. The rule is redundant, and therefore the boats are too. The smart move would be to sell them off, and use the cash to fund and build a team aimed at 2014. That assumes there is a market for the used Cuppers - and the reality is that there is none.

Remember these teams are in the business of winning the America's Cup, not sailing event management.

There is little incentive for an established team to keep their V5 fleet up to scratch, just to be used for events like the Louis Vuitton Trophy - one of whose objectives will be to bring the new teams up to a reasonable of level race experience. But there is no upside in that aspiration for the existing teams. Honing up the competition, at your expense, isn't on an established team's radar.

Another option is to build a fleet of say four boats, as has already been mooted, of the yet to be decided new rule for the 34th America's Cup. Although this is possibly the only alternative and realistic option, it has been done before in a different form. Essentially the boats are very conservative - and don't really add much to the competition. It's a bit like watching a Formula 1 race where the teams drive a set of supplied cars.

There is also the issue of who owns the boats, and handles the maintenance, dismantling, shipped and commissioning for each round of the LVT around the world. Plus what happens to them at the end of 2014. Running a two boat team is a significant exercise for most teams - four is something else again.

But all the above is rather irrelevant as the rule for the yachts has not been determined or developed.

And that starts getting us to the crux of the of the Cup dilemma, which extends beyond the 34th America's Cup.

If it is held in San Francisco, the 34th America's Cup is likely to be a big-breeze event. The last of which was in Fremantle in 1987 and was riveting viewing - thanks to the standing appointment the regatta had each day with the Fremantle Doctor.

The other issue is how to avoid the four or five year gap between Cups when there is a change of Defender or a change in design rule.

Part of the design rule conundrum can be resolved by using a box rule(setting overall length, draft, and beam maximums for the hulls and within those dimensions any design hull shape and option is acceptable).

In the 1992-2007 America's Cup era, we saw all the boats getting into the same corner of the AC rule, by the second or third cycle - the design tradeoffs become well known, and the hull distortions increase to take advantage of rule idiosyncracies

The way out of this hole, or corner, is to have unlimited sail area - save that wind limits for racing will be set - at say a maximum of 35kts, and a minimum of 5kts.

In a windy venue such as San Francisco, the boats clearly have to be capable of sailing at the top end of the wind range - implying a need for strong hulls, boats capable of sailing in all conditions, and a means of reducing sail area at the top end of the range. Engines should be banned. canting keels may be an option, crew numbers need to be restricted to say 18.

Of course, unlimited sail area also gets designers out of the rut of endless tank and computer testing to achieve a small but vital edge out a tight measurement rule. Much bigger gains can be made by packing on more sail - provided the crew and boat can handle it.

That also gets us into the area of shifting the premium on to boat handling and away from clever design nuances on yachts with fixed sail areas.

Of course, when the America's Cup does shift venues nothing really needs to change with the Rule itself. The designers just design for the new conditions which are expected to prevail - and work through the trade-offs of sail area, against stability, against drag.

From the ongoing Louis Vuitton Trophy viewpoint, that issue is also resolved, since existing boats can be used - maybe with the boats being paired off that are relatively similar in dimension and sail area.

As an aside the re-use of existing boats also lends character to the Louis Vuitton Trophy. We can all remember the names of the great boats of the past - Courageous, Constellation, Australia II, Stars and Stripes, NZL-32, Alinghi and so on. Bringing the boats which became household names in the previous Louis Vuitton Cup to the Louis Vuitton Trophy venues adds a real lustre to the current events.

The alternative to this long selection period is to have the 34th America's Cup in July 2012. However that doesn't sit comfortably with many agendas, and 2013 is gone for similar reasons.

The shape of the Challenger Selection Series also needs refocus.

Historically the CSS, or Louis Vuitton Cup has been open entry - pay your money and meet the performance bond criteria and you get a start. That makes for a big variation in the standard of racing, as well as stretching the resources at the venue to cope with a large numbers of teams and their attendant facilities.

Assuming that the Louis Vuitton Trophy series is to be part of the CSS and Louis Vuitton Cup, the challenge is to make the LVT count significantly. That way you get fan interest, as the fortunes of the teams are followed throughout the season.

A similar system is used in the NRL competition (Rugby League) competition Downunder, and others football codes around the world, where the teams play through the rounds to make the cut for the final eight. Just making the final eight is a significant achievement. Some teams qualify early, and then focus on getting the benefits that finishing high up the Premiership, (as the qualifying rounds are known) can bring in the playoffs.

It may be that only eight or ten teams allowed to set up at San Francisco, and that performance in the Louis Vuitton Trophy Series is the way to make the cut for the Louis Vuitton Cup.

That being so, it is then possible to see how the four years leading into the 2014 America's Cup could run.

In the latter part of 2010 and 2011 - Louis Vuitton Trophy racing is conducted in the Version 5 boats, accumulating points towards making the cut for the Louis Vuitton Cup. In the latter part of 2011 and 2012, the teams could switch to the supplied boats that comply with the new rule, but are one designs (LV-80's).

At the end of 2012 the cut for the Louis Vouis Vuitton Cup is made, and the top eight or ten progress to San Francisco, and form the fleet for the 2014 Challenger Selection Series.

Year	Series	Boat	Venue
2010-2011	Louis Vuitton Trophy	ACC - V5	Global
2012-2013	Louis Vuitton Trophy	LV-80's (supplied)	Global
	Top 8-10 teams progress to the Louis Vuitton Cup
2014	Louis Vuitton Cup	AC-80's	San Francisco
2014	America's Cup	AC-80's	San Francisco

There are several advantages to this system.

It allows entry level teams to come in and compete against the established crews in the LVT - ACC V5 phase. That is relatively low cost, but does give the team a chance to build a track record, and if they finish well up the table in a few events, then they have a good deal to sell to their sponsors and backers, and can clearly start looking forward to bigger things.

The LVT also provides a taste for new sponsors, about the America's Cup and how it can be leveraged without having to commit to a massively expensive sponsorship package first up.

Obviously when points are involved, the rounds sailed by a team have to be equalised, or maybe averaged in some way.

Teams that don't perform will fall by the wayside, without a lot of funding and sponsors being burnt. It also saves the agony of under-funded, struggling teams cluttering the competition in the Louis Vuitton Cup.

That then allows the Louis Vuitton Cup competition to be structured so that the teams stay racing for a lot longer - maybe right through to the end - even if they are racing off for seventh and eighth placing, while the Louis Vuitton Cup Finals are underway. That again, gives sponsors much more exposure, rather than having some teams cut from the competition after the second Round Robin as happened in 2007, in Valencia.

There would have to be a limitation on the number of boats that can be built, by a team. Two each is workable - giving a spare boat, if there is a disaster.

Two boats also blocks the Defender from the Challenger Selection Series - although they should participate in the Louis Vuitton Trophy rounds (to the end of 2012).

History shows that when there is the two boat limitation, teams will launch even their first boat relatively late.

The tendency to spend endless time on two boat and tank testing to get that extra 2/10ths of knot from some nuance of design, will be curbed by the unlimited sail area provision coupled with the windy venue - since there is much more to be gained through better crew work and boat handling, than there is in the test tank.

An investment in coaching will probably pay more than an investment in design, although both are important.

For the fans, the crash and burn element will come back into the America's Cup viewing lexicon, as it did regularly in Fremantle, and occasionally in Auckland and Valencia.

Some of the technological edge that we saw in Valencia in 2010 will be present in the new boats. In terms of spectacle, there will be a lot more spin-outs and spray flying - which always makes for great TV.

Gone will be the tedium of the long drags to the layline, as teams tried to get that half boat length advantage which could be turned into a couple of boat lengths at the top mark.

This new game will be much more orientated around the sailors, rather than the design boffins.

Quite what comes out of the consultation process, to be announced on 6 May, will be watched with real interest.

For the America's Cup, this not a time for caution and incremental change. The event is, and will be increasingly under pressure from the likes of the Volvo Ocean Race - which is cheaper in terms of team participation, and events are adapting quickly to changes in media technology and the impact that has on the competitor, event and sponsor exposure - which is all driven by the fan base following.

The America's Cup vacuum that has been created by the legal hiatus of the last three years, has been filled to some extent by other professional sailing events. A conservative approach, along the lines of more of what has been done before will accelerate this shift - bearing in mind that the next America's Cup is starting from behind, not ahead of the sailing event pack as previously.

These are times for bold moves, and a preparedness to change and tweak things that aren't right during the America's Cup cycle, not leaving it to the next release.

The 34th America's Cup will not be the perfect event, but it needs to be a big step down the right path towards the 35th, 36th and 37th America's Cups, and their supporting regattas.