The Summer of Sailing in San Francisco could well become a summer of embarrassing waiting. Firstly, for Artemis Racing, the team whose tragic capsize on 9 May set off an avalanche of consequences. The Swedes, it has been announced, intend to compete, but as YACHT online has already indicated, not at the start of the Louis Vuitton Cup on 4 July, but towards the end of the month.
"We are working around the clock to get the new boat ready and in the water and to prepare the team for the regatta," explained Artemis CEO Paul Cayard via the press office. "We still have the mountain ahead of us, but we plan to launch the new boat at the beginning of July to put us in a position to take part in the regattas at the end of the month." Provided, of course, that there are no major problems.
Secondly, we will also have to wait for a full and varied regatta programme, as the number of preliminary rounds scheduled for July has been reduced from seven to five by regatta director Iain Murray. This was done for safety reasons because the teams demanded more time between races for boat maintenance.
The modified Schedule however, has listed Artemis' round robin races, and as things stand, this means that Team New Zealand and Luna Rossa will compete against each other once per round robin and will have to sail their laps alone on the days when they should have sailed against Artemis. "The course is laid out every day," tweeted Stephen Barclay, head of the America's Cup Event Authority. "If one team doesn't start, the other has to sail the course to get the point."
If this were to happen, it would probably be the low point of the venerable Louis Vuitton Cup, in which almost a dozen challengers competed in Valencia 2007. "Would something like this happen in any other tournament, where if one team doesn't turn up, the other plays alone and scores goal after goal just to take the point?" asks Richard Gladwell of Sail-World. "General sports media may not understand the nuances of the Cup very well, but they understand stupidity and farce. And they'll have fun with that."
However, the organisers are in the crossfire of criticism. Not only because the safety precautions for the AC72 cats were only subjected to serious scrutiny after the death of Andrew "Bart" Simpson, but also because they gambled away their credibility with unrealistic forecasts regarding the number of participants, visitors, investments, jobs, advertising revenue and ticket sales.
The cynicism they display is striking: "Don't forget that the America's Cup is all about the America's Cup match," Tom Ehman told CBS TV. He is vice-commodore of the Golden Gate Yacht Club, for which Cup defender Oracle Team USA sails, and in this role is also Larry Ellison's chief cheerleader. "The final, that's the big thing." And the challengers? "What's going to happen with the rest of July, on which days, with which teams (sailing) is still up in the air."
Doesn't sound like solid planning. Yet the starting signal for the first race will be given in exactly one month.
Artemis is training again: outing on the AC45
