All quiet on Cup Front...JJ's success for young Kiwis...Frisco videos

by . on 24 Feb 2015 Welcome to Sail-World.com’s New Zealand e-magazine for February 25, 2015

The Volvo Ocean Race fleet is headed to Auckland and will be here around noon on Saturday, providing the weather holds to the forecast.

Sailing 1200nm in 3.5 days is a healthy pace - and average speed of just over 14kts.

The first two yachts, Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing and Dongfeng Race Team are expected to have a real arm wrestle as they rip down the Pacific Highway and are currently only a mile apart.

Time will tell if Dongfeng and her wily crew, have a special setting that will get them past Ian Walker and his team. At latest report that would seem to be the case.

Mapfre is also on a short tow, just 5nm behind Abu Dhabi. While they will be attacking hard, their objective must surely be to consolidate their third place, and then see what opportunities open up ahead.

The other three boats are out of it, with a 40nm gap, plus the leaders lifting away on the sniff of a new breeze that should give them a fast ride, in a straight line, to Auckland.

There don't seem to be too many passing lanes on this Pacific Highway. But the Northland coast and approach to the Hauraki Gulf/Waitemata harbour has been the undoing of at least one team, hasn't it Mr Dalton?

The shutters are down and remain so at Emirates Team NZ. It is not expected that the team will respond to the constant carping in the daily media, centred around a single unsourced comment..

The cry for Dean Barker to be changed out as skipper goes back over 12 months with a story that began: 'Sack Dean Barker. Okay, it's a bit quiet at the moment, and the adrenalin needs a workout.'

Since then the salvo of never ending negative stories on the team has continued unabated. Team New Zealand and the America's Cup seem to be a convenient whipping boy for the non-sailing media whenever it is a quiet news day. They know it pulls ratings and opinion, and the Team just gets frequent massages to keep the ratings and call-rates up.

For sure the Team has not helped itself by some injudicious comments at times. That is not unusual. The loosest cannons are often to be found at the top of America's Cup teams. But the situation is now at the point that the Team could not hold a Media Conference without being torn apart by a non-sailing media hell-bent on pushing various agendas.

The Catch-22 of the current situation, for the non-sailing media, is that they are incapable of writing a story without a quote/interview from the Team. The outcome is that they are now dead in the water. Un-sourced comments will only take you so far, as they have to be backed up with some research. You, their readers, are the only real losers out of that circumstance. We'll keep you up with the play on Sail-World.com, and hope to have something on the current issue by the end of the week.

Certainly premature talk of skippers being replaced is not new. Back in the 1992 Louis Vuitton Cup. Michael Fay told two of us that Rod Davis would be replaced by Russell Coutts, if Davis started losing races. The story would have been sensational, given the background tensions of sailing a very radical boat, and Spritgate, plus the fact that Coutts was very obviously pacing on the sidelines busting to get his hands on the wheel. Did either of us run the story? No, both realized the implications it would have had. But we certainly had out antennae up, so that when the move came - very late in the series - we were ready to go, and it wasn't a surprise.

The point is that these tips and pointers come up all the time in the America's Cup. Most experienced sailing media just put them on the 'watch this space' folder. More often than not, something changes in the interim and the bold move never happens.

Elsewhere on the America's Cup scene the action takes place in a rather dappled light.

In San Francisco, Oracle Team USA are continuing their training in their development AC45, along with some practice sailing with Artemis Racing in their development boat of the same genre.

We have video from San Franciscan videographer John Navas and the OTUSA Team in this edition. It is interesting to see how close the AC45 appears compared to the AC72, and how slick she appears now that the boat is an optimised foiler. Oracle Team USA are expected to break camp very soon and head for their new base at Bermuda, where they expect to start sailing in April/May. Artemis Racing will remain in Alameda on the other side of San Francisco Bay for the foreseeable future.

When Oracle Team USA move to Bermuda, they will be taking the development AC45 with them. A move by former crew member, Joe Spooner, has failed to have the AC45 arrested, however his civil claim against the Team for almost $1million continues through the civil court process.

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As reported in our last edition, Gotta Love It 7 won her seventh JJ Giltinan Trophy in the 18ft skiffs, sailing on Sydney harbour with a race to spare.

Young New Zealand crews performed well - showing very good potential for future regattas with Yamaha, placing 6th in the 26 boat fleet from three nations. They were pulled down by a couple of double-digit placings early in the regatta but recorded a string of very consistent top five places in four of the remaining five races.

Star turn was the rookie crew in Aon, skippered by Will Tiller, who placed second in the final race of the series, and was marked down by the commentators as a team to watch for the future.

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For those who think they are too old for 18fter sailing the third placed skipper was 61year old Howie Hamlin (USA) who placed in the top ten right through the regatta winning Race 6. His great rival, and similarly aged, John Winning almost emulated the feat, placing second in Race 2, but only once made the top eight after that.

Probably the most amazing record from the regatta is the fact that Iain Murray, a six times winner of the JJ Giltinan Trophy, and now designer, mentor, coach and chief water-boy for the Gotta Love It 7 program - has had an association with sponsor Channel 7 for 37 years. An amazing record, and one which also embraces his other program, the highly successful supermaxi Wild Oats XI.

Sadly, we note the passing of former Yachting New Zealand President and long-time servant of yachting in New Zealand, David Cook (74).

Dave was a Tamaki Yacht Club man and competitively was known mainly for his involvement in the Zephyr class, but was always one of those who put a lot more into the sport than he took out, being recognised as a Life member of Yachting New Zealand, as well as President.

An engineer, Dave also was a long-standing servant of the then International Yachting Federation (now ISAF), being recognised with a Silver medal from the international body for his service, one of only four New Zealanders to have won that honour.

Our condolences to his family and many friends.

Finally, best wishes for a speedy recover to Jimmy Spithill who is recovering from elbow surgery. The twice winner of the America's Cup has a very interesting realationship with the New Zealand sailing fans - typified by this anecdote: 'I flew into Auckland not long after the Cup and I was convinced that the customs guy wasn't going to let me through,' Spithill said earlier this year.

'I walked up to the window and I got about 20 feet away and he goes 'turn around, you're not coming in'.

'It was a bit like that the whole time I was here.'

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Good sailing!

Richard Gladwell
NZ Editor

sailworldnzl@gmail.com

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