SailJuice Blog

Team Origin and the Royal Thames Yacht Club are proposing a ‘third way’ out of the impasse between Ernesto Bertarelli and Larry Ellison. A couple of weeks ago the RTYC lodged a Deed of Gift (DOG) Challenge with the Société Nautique de Genève (SNG).  It called for a Match in 2011 in Valencia to be sailed in AC90 yachts and it outlined their willingness to consider a mutual consent match with a protocol along similar lines to the one signed in July last year.

Here’s what Team Origin has to say for itself, and the reasons for offering this possible exit from the current mess.

The RTYC’s most recent challenge was lodged in anticipation of a potential vacuum occurring should the currently disputed Golden Gate Yacht Club’s (GGYC) DOG Challenge be found lacking by the New York Supreme Court’s Judge… Read the rest

While his skipper Ben Ainslie was cleaning up in Sydney in his little 15-foot dinghy, Sir Keith Mills decided enough was enough today, and is scaling down operations at Team Origin until there is some resolution to the debacle formerly known as the 33rd America’s Cup.

Sir Keith Mills said: “I remain totally committed to the America’s Cup and to maintaining the competitive advantage that TeamOrigin has built. But I am extremely frustrated and disappointed about the current state of affairs. What we need is clarity and I urge the Defender and Challenger of Record to reach an agreement that provides the prospective challengers like TeamOrigin with the certainty they need to plan future campaigns.

“My principal goal now is to keep Team Origin together so as to be able to compete for the America’s Cup at some time… Read the rest

GBR 75 went sailing for the first time on Saturday, and did some speed testing against a replica of the winner of the first America’s Cup, the schooner America. Thankfully GBR 75 was a fair click quicker…

Thanks to ACM photo editor Carmen Hidalgo/ACM 2007 for her photos (captioned). All others non-captioned are from Carlo Borlenghi/ACM 2007, thanks too to him.

Mike Sanderson was there to oversee the test sail for the two days before the boat gets packed up and sent to the UK. There was a mix of sailors/support people onboard to assist with the test sail.

Now that Alinghi has announced a new 90-footer for the 33rd Cup, Hull 75 isn’t perhaps quite such a sweet purchase for Sir Keith Mills’ team as we originally thought. But every team has to start somewhere, and ‘75′ will at… Read the rest

Alinghi has sold its wonderboat of the 2005 Louis Vuitton Act Series, SUI 75, to the new British challenge for the next America’s Cup, Team Origin. Although SUI 75 was originally thought to be a bit of a dog in Auckland (with Russell Coutts’s team opting to sail the tried and tested SUI 64 to win the 2003 Cup), in its revamped Version 5 mode SUI 75 was a pure thoroughbred.

Alinghi dominated the match racing and fleet racing in 2005 with this boat, and SUI 75 was still a very potent weapon against the challengers’ 2006-generation boats such as USA 98 and ITA 86. Only the Kiwis’ NZL 84 could possibly claim to be faster.

So Sir Keith Mills’s new team has made a very smart purchase. Ian Walker, tactician of +39 Challenge, says that one of the great… Read the rest