YouTube – The Friend of Big and Small.
Why sit about waiting for the ‘old fashioned’ broadcasters to decide if they like your sport or not? There are people out there who want to watch. They want to watch now. No faffing about with setting the ‘Tivo’ or fiddling with the Red Button or even the good old VHS – want to get fired up about A-Class Catamaran sailing? Google it or search it on You-Tube and consume cool video.
It doesn’t matter if you are promoting the A-Class Catamaran Australian Championships at Safety Beach in Victoria in January, or justifying millions of bucks on Deed-of-Gift trimaran – You-Tube is here to help. Here’s the promo video for the A-Class Championships:
And here is a sample of what BMW ORACLE have put up on their bright shiny new You-Tube channel. Oops – no, we can’t show you that one because the control freaks in BMW ORACLE PR have disabled embedding of their videos. If you are really really interested in the stuff that the folks in San Diego have been pumping out over the last few days, you can find it at: http://www.youtube.com/BMWORACLERacingTeam#play/uploads/0/2bWCULJRmwQ
Alinghi 5 On the Water.
July 21, 2009 by admin
Filed under Americas Cup, Europe
No matter what your opinions of AC33, or multihulls, or the personalities of the remaining teams, it’s hard not to be impressed by a 90ft catamaran flying a hull. Apparently, hundreds of specatators were on hand in Le Bouveret, Switzerland for the maiden sail of Alinghi 5 on Lake Geneva yesterday. The images, by Carlo Borlenghi play tricks with the eye – the scale of the boat is almost impossible to imagine, even with the crew abpard to give perspective.
Murray Jones, who is running the initial trials of the giant multihull that represents a first step in the development process towards the 33rd America’s Cup, gave his comments on a good first day on the water:
“We went out this morning with a list of objectives to work through: testing the boat, checking the structure, doing some manoeuvres and seeing if the sails would all sheet and it went pretty well; we ticked off just about everything. There are a lot of systems on the boat that are complicated and new, but it was fantastic. To fly the boat upwind and downwind with gennaker was awesome for the first day of sailing. The boat is a tribute to the designers and the boat builders. To deliver a boat of this complexity that works straight out of the box on the first day is impressive; really impressive.”
Grant Simmer, design team coordinator, was observing the trials from a RIB:
“It’s been a good day, we had a list of things we wanted to tick off and we took it slowly and carefully and have finished the day achieving all those things. It was exciting to see the boat sailing for the first time after so much time designing, boat building, sail making and spar making; seeing all those bits come together and seeing the machine working is great! We’re looking forward to tomorrow.”
View all the images here: http://www.alinghi.com/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=7476
Is it a Boat? Is it a Plane. Alinghi 5 Flies.
July 9, 2009 by admin
Filed under Americas Cup, Europe
Alinghi’s giant new catamaran has hit the water. How these things are going to get to the eventual venue for AC33 is anyone’s guess. Press release from Alinghi follows.
At 16:00 this afternoon, Alinghi 5, the Swiss America’s Cup Defender’s new catamaran, was lifted out of the tent where it was built in Villeneuve, Switzerland, and into the air by a Mil Mi-26 helicopter, the biggest and most powerful in the world, to be launched on Lake Geneva.
Alinghi 5 represents a first step in the development process towards the 33rd America’s Cup and the team will now focus on preparing it to sail over the coming weeks.
Ernesto Bertarelli, Alinghi team president, who was present to congratulate the team and for the boat christening by his wife Kirsty, commented:
“As a passionate multihull sailor I am extremely excited to see Alinghi 5 launched and for the next stage of this campaign to begin: over the coming weeks and months the team will work towards defending the 33rd America’s Cup next year. The team has done an excellent job to make this happen; we are all looking forward to going sailing now.”
Watching as the helicopter lifted Alinghi 5 out of the tent and on to the water, Grant Simmer who, working alongside a team of designers, boat builders and sailors, has coordinated the project said:
“I feel very proud of what we have achieved; there have been so many people involved who have worked really hard. They have done a fantastic job and this is the product of their hard work.”
Photo Copyright Stefano Gattini/Alinghi
Alinghi Reveals The Cat To Defend the Cup
July 4, 2009 by admin
Filed under Americas Cup, Europe
The America’s Cup is back in the headlines after a few weeks of relative quiet from the two sides. The unveiling of Alinghi’s catamaran has re-ignited the pundits and no doubt there will be all kinds of armchair speculation for a few more weeks until the boat is seen actually sailing. Here is the press release:
Alinghi, the Defender of the 33rd America’s Cup, unveiled its 90ft catamaran this weekend in Villeneuve, Switzerland. This multihull represents a culmination of Swiss multihull heritage and is the first step in Alinghi’s development process towards the 33rd America’s Cup in February 2010. The boat will be launched by helicopter next week on Lake Geneva before the process of ‘debugging’ begins and the boat goes sailing for the first time.
Grant Simmer, design team coordinator, comments on the achievement:
“Firstly this boat only exists because of Ernesto Bertarelli’s 100% commitment to the team and his support and enthusiasm for this project. The boat demonstrates the talent and creativity of the designers and the skill and dedication of the boatbuilding and technical teams in building a boat of this complexity, facing many different challenges along the way and solving them to pull the project together. Finally, and more recently, the sailing team has defined many of the systems; they have worked with the designers to define the simplest possible solutions for what is already a very complex boat.”
Rolf Vrolijk, chief designer:
“People who see the boat for the first time seem surprised at how light and fragile it looks, that is really their first impression. Creating it has been a huge team effort, both in the design and the build groups; it has been a phenomenal team effort to come up with the concept and it really represents the depth of our group. For the moment we have pushed the envelope as much as we would like, this boat is really a base for further development and over the coming weeks we will collect as much information as we can and cross check it with the predictions, this will help us assess what level we are at and then to optimise from there. We have several opportunities and possibilities to change the concept but first we need a solid base to do our studies from.”
Murray Jones, strategist and design team responsible for mast and rig programme:
“This multihull is nothing like you’ve ever seen before in a big boat. It’s like a small boat but scaled up. It’s a highly finely tuned and engineered boat that’s light. It’s a piece of art. Alinghi 5 has evolved from the Swiss sailing boats, like the 41ft ‘Le Black’. The basic engineering concept has come from ‘Le Black’ but everything else has come from the Alinghi design team, starting from a completely blank sheet of paper, with no preconceived multihull ideas. We started designing it and building it and we’ve done a lot of sailing and testing on ‘Le Black’ and the Décision 35s so we’ve incorporated some of the ideas we’ve picked up sailing these boats.
The focus of the concept and the design and build of the boat has been on what we need to sail a Deed of Gift Match: up/down racing of 20miles. We haven’t focused on the other team at all, only concentrating on what makes our boat go the fastest. It’s been a big job for quite a small design team and we’ll see the results soon.”
Information about the boat
- Boat type: Catamaran of carbon composite construction
- Where built: Alinghi Villeneuve + Décision Corsier, Switzerland
- Length waterline: 90ft
- Hours to build: 100,000 manhours
- Square metres of carbon fibre used: 30,000m2
- Hours to build: 100,000 manhours
- Square metres of carbon fibre used: 30,000m2
10 Boats Will Compete in iShares Cup 2009.
April 17, 2009 by admin
Filed under Business, Europe, Extreme 40's, United Kingdom, iShares Cup
NASCAR don’t do sailing, but if they did, it would probably be the best sailing competition in the world. The OC Group does sailing and it is the closest that the sport gets to a product appealing to a mass market, with exciting close racing, visually stunning machines and sailing superstars. It’s entertainment and it makes no apologies.
The iShares Cup 2009, billed as ‘the perfect antidote to distant slow yacht confrontations!’, will feature 10 eXtreme 40 catamarans. Skippered by names that are recgonisable in the sailing world and some that might even be known to the public ( in France) include, Loïck Peyron and Franck Cammas, who are unrivalled in the oceanic multihull world.
In addition to having five World Oceanic Multihull Champion titles to his name, Peyron won The Artemis Transat in 2008 making it three career wins on the toughest solo transatlantic course and in doing so rising one step above French legend Eric Tabarly. Peyron joined the Oman Sail project in March this year and will now be charge of his own Extreme 40, Renaissance, for this season.
Cammas holds the North Atlantic speed record and has recently been “teaching” the BMW ORACLE Racing team how to use their brand new maxi (90′) trimaran. The young French skipper already had a taste of the iShares Cup having raced at the French event in 2007 and at Cowes last year, and wanted to come back for a full season with his long-term sponsor Groupama.
Double Olympic gold medallist Shirley Robertson will skipper Team iShares in 2009 and the Olympic contingent is also represented by Carolijn Brouwer on Holmatro, Yann Guichard on Gitana Extreme- Groupe LCF Rothschild, Darren Bundock on BT and Pete Cumming with Chris Draper on the helm of Oman Sail’s second Extreme 40, Masirah – not to mention the plethora of Olympian crew members throughout the fleet, including the Mourniac brothers aboard Erik Maris’s LUNA.
Australian Nick Moloney brings his eclectic experience as a round-the-world and America’s Cup sailor back into the fray with BT, after finishing the 2008 iShares Cup on the podium
Also coming from the prestigious world of the America’s Cup, James Spithill onboard BMW ORACLE Racing will be a real rival for the number one spot.
The final top-flight team will announce their participation in the coming weeks to make it ten teams in total coming head to head on the demanding, short and sometimes unconventional courses, competing so fiercely that heart-stopping close encounters always feature on the menu.
It’s a show as well as top class racing and the public has full access to the action from the shore, in carefully chosen venues that combine challenging sailing conditions and spectator-friendly configurations. Three of the European venues have been officially announced – Venice (ITA), Kiel (GER) and Almeria, Andalucía (ESP) – the remaining three venues in the UK, France and The Netherlands are confirmed and will be announced shortly.
The iShares format has a real chance at breaking out of the sailing bubble and into a wider consciousness, but it will be a while before sailors will be having their own action figures, or appearing on corn-flakes packets.
