After 28 months of lawyers vs. lawyers, February’s high-tech battle of the billionaires will finally pit sailors against sailors
If the prolonged legal battles have made the America’s Cup seem dull, it’s time to pay attention again. The match is scheduled for February 8–12 in Valencia, Spain, and America’s challenger, BMW Oracle Racing (BOR), brings deep pockets, leading-edge technology and top sailing talent—ingredients that could return the Cup to the United States.
All of this hinges on the two billionaire backers—American software magnate Larry Ellison and Swiss pharmaceutical heir Ernesto Bertarelli—keeping their dispute out of court long enough for the contest to be decided on the water. By mid-December the two syndicates had agreed to a best-of-three series in Valencia, although some reports indicated they were considering expanding the series to five or seven races.
A New York appellate court lent weight to a February showdown by unanimously rejecting Alinghi’s Dec. 15 appeal to relocate the Cup to Ras al-Khaimah, United Arab Emirates. The court also refused the defender’s attempt to force a different interpretation of how the load waterline length should be measured on BOR’s 90-foot trimaran.
After more than two years of suits, countersuits and procedural fights, the protagonists seem prepared—at least for now—to set aside the briefs and contest the Cup in high-performance multihulls. These radical vessels are technological marvels, capable of sustaining speeds two to three times that of the wind. The spectacle promises to be dramatic, though whether the racing will be close depends on boat reliability and performance: small speed advantages on long courses—20 miles windward and back in the first and third races, and a 13-mile-per-leg triangle in the second—can become decisive.
The yachts and the sailors
BMW Oracle Racing’s BOR 90, nicknamed DoGzilla, is a 90-foot carbon composite trimaran. Alinghi 5 is a 90-foot carbon composite catamaran. Technically, BOR 90 appears more instrumented: the trimaran carries some 250 sensors that stream more than 26,000 data points per second from the mast, keels, rudders, crossbeams, hulls and foils to onboard systems. This telemetry allows the team to monitor stresses, airflow, wind conditions, heel and rudder angles, acceleration and other critical variables in real time.
BOR 90 was created by a design team of about 30, including renowned French multihull designers Marc Van Peteghem and Vincent Lauriot-Prevost. The trimaran may race with an extensive rigid wing—roughly 190 feet in height—that the team was still testing in November. The carbon-fiber and Kevlar wing covers about 6,725 square feet, roughly 80 percent larger than the wing area of a 747 airliner. Hydraulically trimmed, it rotates at the leading edge around the mast step and uses eight independently controlled flaps to shape the aerofoil. Observers reported more than 20 knots of boat speed in only 7 knots of wind.
“It’s mind-boggling,” says Dirk de Ridder, BOR’s wing trimmer. “The size and the power it produces at very low wind speeds are remarkable.”
Alinghi 5, launched about 10 months after BOR 90, follows a more evolutionary design path. Rooted in earlier Jo Richards and Sebastien Schmidt catamaran concepts—dating back to the Le Black 41 and the Decision 35—the 90-foot Alinghi 5 was developed to operate with powered systems driving hydraulic sail trim and water ballast. That shift removed the traditional muscle of manual grinding teams and introduced powered trimming as a Cup first. BOR contested the legality of powered trimming in court; when a judge sided with Alinghi, BOR adapted its trimaran to incorporate similar systems. Alinghi 5 also features a compact, hydraulically driven jib furler mounted on the bowsprit for rapid sail handling.
Alinghi’s design group, about 20 people led by Grant Simmer with Tom Schnackenberg contributing, built a boat intended for long up-and-down Deed of Gift match racing. “It’s what we need to sail a Deed of Gift match—20-mile windward legs,” says strategist Murray Jones.
The afterguards of both syndicates include experienced, high-profile sailors. Russell Coutts, BOR’s skipper and CEO, could become the first skipper to win the Cup representing three nations—if his campaign succeeds—having previously won twice for New Zealand and once for Switzerland. James Spithill is listed as BOR’s helmsman and John Kostecki as tactician.
Alinghi’s leadership features New Zealander Brad Butterworth as skipper and tactician—another multiple Cup winner who defected to Bertarelli’s team in 2003. American Ed Baird is listed as Alinghi’s helmsman, with Murray Jones as strategist. Both teams have also enlisted a wealth of French multihull expertise to help sailors transition to these large, fast platforms.
Franck Cammas, skipper of the Groupama multihull program and a consultant to BMW Oracle during early training, notes the learning curve: “Some America’s Cup sailors discover multihulls for the first time and immediately find themselves on the fastest boats in the world. We are careful—this is extreme and requires caution.” Before the rigid wing tests, Cammas says BOR performed strongly in winds under 15 knots; in heavier airs, controlling the soft sail was physically demanding, a challenge the rigid wing and hydraulic trimming are meant to ease.
Alinghi’s consulting roster includes celebrated French multihull sailors such as Alain Gautier, Loïck Peyron and Franck Proffit—names with deep ocean-racing credentials who bring vital multihull experience to the team.
The courts
The legal disputes that delayed the Cup began roughly 28 months earlier, following the conclusion of the 32nd America’s Cup. BMW Oracle Racing and Golden Gate Yacht Club alleged that Alinghi and the Société Nautique de Genève had orchestrated the creation of Spain’s Club Náutico Español de Vela so SNG could designate it as challenger of record and negotiate a protocol favoring Alinghi. GGYC responded with its own Deed of Gift challenge, arguing the Spanish club was not a legitimate yacht club and invoking the Deed of Gift’s defaults—insisting on a one-on-one best-of-three regatta held in 90-foot multihulls.
On several occasions GGYC made clear it preferred a traditional defense versus a field of challengers sailed in more affordable monohulls and was willing to negotiate a conventional protocol if Bertarelli would abandon the rules negotiated with the Spanish club. Bertarelli declined, and the contest remained a head-to-head billionaire match in 90-foot multihulls with no challenger series.
Since GGYC’s successful challenge, courts have continued to decide procedural and technical disputes: where the race should be held, how to measure load waterline length, whether powered systems are permissible for trimming sails and moving ballast, who appoints race juries, and when official notices and declarations of boat dimensions must be filed. Those rulings have shaped the conditions under which the teams will race.
After nearly three years of litigation, the focus may finally shift to sailing—the culmination of a legal saga into what promises to be a cutting-edge, high-speed showdown on the water.
This article originally appeared in the February 2010 issue.