The new masters of the America's Cup actually wanted to reorganise the rules so that the unsavoury reports of industrial espionage, intrigues and personnel changes would be a thing of the past.
Instead, they are now piling up shortly before the deadline at the end of the month. The latest news concerns Tom Schnackenberg, the head of the 2003 Cup defenders: the 59-year-old New Zealander, whose name is almost inextricably linked with the words of Dennis Conner ("the brightest mind in yachting"), has sued his team.
The accusation: Grant Dalton, the new boss of Team New Zealand, had only signed him for the design team to prevent him from moving to another team. Dalton expressed his disappointment at Schnackenberg's accusations: "The team thought he had left by mutual agreement."
The background to the lawsuit is apparently numerous attractive offers from other teams. However, the current Cup protocol, as amended by Alinghi, states that anyone who has worked for a potential challenger syndicate for more than 180 days is no longer allowed to switch. This rule was introduced, probably also to prevent Russell Coutts from switching after his dispute with Ernesto Bertarelli.
For the same reason, there is also trouble with New Zealander John Cutler, who worked for Oracle in the last Cup, then switched to K-Challenge, then to Mascalzone Latino (now Team Capitalia), and now appears in the Desafio Espanol team. Together with the American designer Phil Kaiko, who has travelled the same path.
In this case, the jury called by Mascalzone decided that a change of designer was not permitted in principle, but that only a hearing could bring a decision in Kaiko's specific case. However, this would cost around 70,000 euros.
The announcement of the signing of the design duo Reichel/Pugh may be an indication of whether the Spaniards want to go down this route. The Americans belong to the top design league. They built the yachts for Dennis Conner in 2003.
