Laser designer in court battle, Jimmy Spithill interview pt 2 and more
by Jedda Murphy and the Sail-World.com Team on 16 Mar 2013
Exhibit 16 - ISAF Laser plaque SW
The most successful sailing boat in history is the single handed Laser, designed in 1969 by Bruce Kirby, launched in 1970 and more than 210,000 Lasers later, it is THE dinghy success story.
But there has been a long running dispute between the designer of the Laser dinghy Bruce Kirby and one of the Laser builders LaserPerformance, the builder and supplier of Lasers into UK, Europe and North America, because of non-payment of design royalties.
On March 4, 2013, Bruce Kirby, Inc., filed a complaint in the U.S. Federal Court District of Connecticut, alleging unlawful counterfeiting of the Kirby dinghy. Read more inside this issue...
This week we ran a two part feature interview with the America's Cup winning skipper and Oracle USA Defender skipper James (Jimmy) Spithill and these attracted interest worldwide. In Part 2 Jimmy says 'It is sort of like a rugby game. You might be in the back line but every now and again you have got to get into the ruck and get the ball out. It's not just Kiwis that can play that game!
'Grant Dalton (Emirates Team New Zealand) constantly whenever he gets asked something in the media about Oracle he makes the statement that we have got unlimited resources and we can do anything we like. It is just complete ...
The Sail-World team has been very busy in Auckland, where Emirates Team New Zealand and Luna Rossa are practicing and today we have lots of vision from Auckland and San Francisco Bay.
Beautiful weather in south eastern Spain over the last few days. The training regatta before the 44th Trofeo Princesa Sofia Mapfre will be held this weekend in Mallorca with around one hundred participating boats. The World Sailing Cup event will take place 30th March to 6th April. Sail-World will be in Palma, Mallorca, covering the event from start to finish.
Alicante, Spain will be the starting point for the 2014-2015 Volvo Ocean Race and as we move towards that start, the first VOR 65 One Design, after a six-day road trip from northern Italy to southern England, arrived yesterday at lunchtime at Green Marine.
'Everybody at Green Marine was delighted to have a boat to finally play with,' says Volvo Ocean Race’s Rick Deppe, who followed the convoy all the way from Bergamo, Italy, to Hythe in the UK.
'The boat looks awesome and everyone around here is talking about it. It's very exciting.'
RORC Easter Challenge 2013 is being held from Good Friday 29 March to Easter Sunday 31 March. With many of the UK's top IRC boats signed up to compete over three days at the popular event, the regatta is turning into a practice session for the highly competitive IRC Nationals taking place later this summer.
Lots more news, we will stand aside and let you enjoy.
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