AC Acts helping newer teams

by Michelle Slade on 4 Oct 2005 The lone Spanish challenger for the 2007 32nd America’s Cup is Desafio Espanol 2007. A late entry to the event, the team launched its boats ESP-65 and ESP-67 (formerly the One World boats that competed in the 2002-3 Cup), just several weeks before the beginning of Acts 4 and 5 in Valencia, in June. As a very new team they’ve suffered the usual growing pains shared with other second tier teams – trying to build a racing team while getting basic infrastructure sorted.

Finishing a very satisfactory fifth equal with Victory Challenge in the match racing series in Valencia, the Spanish team dropped to eighth place in the fleet racing. In Malmo, they picked up their pace to finish fifth in both the match and fleet racing events. That they picked up the OneWorld package of boats and design information has been a bonus for the Spanish as the Reichel & Pugh designed boats were fast in Auckland.

For mainsail trimmer Hartwell Jordan (from Discovery Bay, California), the first few days in Trapani have been tough going for the Spanish, sailing out to the racecourse on Day 4 with just 1 point on the board. But smoother seas and steadier winds appear to be the ingredients that get this team cooking.

On Sunday, Desafio Espanol (ESP-67) took bullets on both its matches against Shosholoza (RSA-83) by 26 seconds, and Mascalzone Latino-Capitalia Team (ITA-77) by 1:09 seconds.

Hartwell, a well-seasoned sailor with plenty of Cup experience as well as a solid career in the Soling class (US Sailing Team 1999-2000; 2000 Soling World Champion; 1999 Soling World Match Racing Silver Medalist), is optimistic as to where the Spanish team is headed.

Q: What’s been challenging for Desafio Espanol in Trapani?

Jordan: For our team the main challenge is the different sea conditions. There are many more wave conditions here, that’s one of the differences between here and Malmo, and most definitely Spain where we’ve been doing our training. We’re trying to understand our opponents’ boats in these conditions and as we’re doing that, we’re making small adjustments to make our boat go faster and taking into consideration new equipment on the boat.

Q: What’s made the difference today?

Jordan: We’re logically figuring out what to do in these types of conditions and slowly chipping away at it all. We’re approaching each race one at a time and we had success with that today. It would have been easy to mistakenly lose against some of the newer teams like Shosholoza and we’re keenly aware of that. All those teams are trying really hard and at this time of the year, we’ve all finally gained experience through the different Acts so you can’t take anybody lightly.

Q: What have the Acts done for your team?

Jordan: They’re invaluable - there’s absolutely no question. I did the America’s Cup in ’87, the Louis Vuitton in ’95, I was part of a team in 2000, and raced with Prada in 2003. Then, the only thing you really got to do was the Louis Vuitton and you spent two weeks or a couple of months racing and then you were gone. I think with these Acts, if you’re a start up team you are able to convert the experience you gain at any one of these Acts to become a much better team in a much shorter period of time, so I think they’re fantastic.

Q: Is there any one aspect that your team is focusing on for this regatta?

Jordan: To be honest, the list is long. I think the best way to exemplify our team is that we’re a start up team and it was just a couple of weeks before Valencia in June that we had our boats out sailing. We’re now transitioning to a more experienced team, getting all of our infrastructure in place, that’s the big picture.

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