Dalton seeks cash for twin Louis Vuitton and Volvo challenges

by Paul Lewis, NZ Herald on 27 Sep 2009
Emirates Team New Zealand boss Grant Dalton leaves New Zealand again this week - heading for Europe to look for financial support for the new world series and possibly the Volvo round the world yacht race.

Fresh from winning the Med Cup in Europe, Team NZ have moved from a potential yachting famine to a possible feast even as the America's Cup continues to choke on litigation.

They have now set their sights on the new Louis Vuitton World Series which will start in Nice in November before moving to Auckland in March and then Sicily in May, with other venues to be announced soon.

America's Cup holder Alinghi and challenger BMW Oracle continue to trade legal blows and press releases in a series of tedious actions in the US courts while both camps ready themselves for the 'big boat' challenge in the United Arab Emirates in February.

While there is no suggestion yet that the date for the showdown between Alinghi's giant catamaran and Oracle's giant trimaran is in peril, yet more legal action is expected - possibly over the venue. It is also highly likely there will be more legal action after the event.

Which is why the Louis Vuitton is so important to the other challengers waiting for an end to the seemingly perpetual, now almost impenetrable, legal battle which has plagued the Cup ever since Alinghi defeated Emirates Team New Zealand in Valencia in 2007 - and then announced a protocol for the next regatta deemed so self-serving that Oracle began the court action which has stymied another multi-challenger event.

Rather than wait for the rot to set in further, Team NZ (and Oracle) partnered with Louis Vuitton - a long-time America's Cup sponsor also disaffected with Alinghi - to stage the inaugural Louis Vuitton Pacific Series in Auckland last February. That event was so successful that it prefaced the new world series, which has venues like Athens, Valencia, Newport (Rhode Island), Cape Town, Hong Kong and Abu Dhabi interested in staging legs.

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