Case for the defence

Since winning the definitive race of the 32nd America's Cup by just one second on 3 July 2007 Alinghi have sailed turbulent waters. The plans for the 33rd America's Cup were not properly presented to the sailing community and Ernesto Bertarelli's vision for a two-year format, new class of racing yacht and a financially sustainable event got lost in the wash caused by the lawsuit brought by Larry Ellison's BMW Oracle Racing.

Fast forward to today and while the legal proceedings are ongoing – now at the Appellate Court where Justice Andrias recently granted the Société Nautique de Genève an expedited appeal – the Swiss team are putting sport back at the heart of their day-to-day activity. Brad Butterworth, race skipper and tactician, and Grant Simmer, design team co-ordinator, explain where the Defender is at in terms of design and build of the monster multihull anticipated for the 33rd America's Cup, plus how they are preparing for every eventuality on the water.

Seahorse: What sailing plans do Alinghi have for the summer?
Brad Butterworth: We've got quite an extensive schedule this year for the guys who we've retained. After all the uncertainty since winning the Cup in 2007 we have organised a broad programme to keep everybody sailing. Ed Baird, Lorenzo Mazza, Piet van Nieuwenhuyzen and Rodney Ardern are doing the iShare regattas on the VX40; Ernesto is racing the D35 on the lake with Yves Detrey, Nils Frei, Peter Evans and Pierre-Yves Jorand and we will also be doing some more training on the Orma 60 Foncia. We have already flipped the 60 over, but hopefully we'll get it fixed up to do some more sailing in Valencia – if the weather is good enough. Other members of the team are sailing on high-performance boats in different regattas around the Mediterranean; some are on Alfa Romeo with Neville Crichton and others with Dan Meyers on his new Vrolijk 66 Numbers.

SH: Is this a case of Alinghi preparing for anything...
BB: We are certainly putting a big effort into the multihull side of things now to make sure we are prepared for all eventualities, but we are also continuing to keep our hand in on big monohulls.

SH: How are Alinghi adapting to multihull sailing?
BB: We have a lot of multihull experience here. Pierre-Yves Jorand, Luc Dubois and Dirk Kramers are all multihull sailors and we are adding some French guys and of course Nigel Irens is working with us on the design. We also have a Swiss multihull team coming down from Lake Geneva, but we want to add to that too.

We've got a pretty good basis to build on. This type of sailing is a bit new to the sailors we have from the last America's Cup, but they are professionals. They will be able to catch up and cope and will probably become better than the guys that have been doing it for a long time who don't necessarily have the legacy of the pro sailor who sails year in year out.

SH: Have you done much multihull sailing yourself?
BB: I have done a bit over the years, now and then, but not to the extent of the Swiss guys on the team. It's definitely going to be something quite exciting if we get these boats on the startline. These big multihulls will be something that the world hasn't seen before – it is going to be pretty unbelievable.

SH: If the Deed of Gift Match goes ahead, what can we expect?
BB: You can expect to see something utterly spectacular in terms of design and technology, because there are no real restrictions. The designers are not constrained by what laminate they employ or what pieces they use for any given area, so the boats will be bigger and better than has ever been seen before. I think multihull technology will take quite a big jump.

SH: Will it be traditional, dial-up, America's Cup racing?
BB: I don't know. That's something that we will have to think about! The rules of the event aren't sorted out yet as it has only just come out that we are going to be sailing these big multihulls. We will have to see on that one...

SH: Turning to you, Grant, how did Alinghi come to be in this legal quagmire?
Grant Simmer: Immediately after the 32nd Cup we announced Desafío Español through the Club Náutico Español de Vela (CNEV) as the Challenger of Record and we then presented the Protocol for the 33rd America's Cup. Generally, the Protocol was badly accepted throughout the sailing community.

We probably did a poor job in terms of presenting it and explaining it. I don't think we need to go over that again now, but our plan was to introduce a new class to the Cup – the AC90 – and we wanted to introduce it over a short period so that we'd be racing in 2009. We restricted the development by saying teams would only be allowed to sail one boat at a time and sat down with the five challengers who had actually entered to create the class rule. Together we also created the competition regulations that govern the event and worked out the event regulations that control the commercial aspects. Twelve teams signed up to challenge for the 33rd America's Cup, but as you know the court's summary judgement in November brought all that to a halt.

SH: What went wrong?
GS: What went wrong is that BMW Oracle saw a legal opportunity through the status of the CNEV because they were a created yacht club to be the Challenger of Record. That was very much part of the deal of running the 33rd America's Cup in Valencia. However, even though many 'created' yacht clubs had challenged for the America's Cup since 1987, the court initially decided that CNEV was not a valid Challenger of Record and took no credence from any of the previous challenger clubs created in this manner.

SH: Was the Golden Gate Yacht Club move premeditated?
GS: Hand in hand with the legal challenge, the GGYC and BMW Oracle submitted a Deed of Gift (DoG) challenge to our yacht club, Société Nautique de Genève (SNG). As has been well publicised, they defined their vessel in the broadest possible terms as a keel yacht that is 90ft by 90ft. We know that as early as last July they had started designing a boat using Marc van Peteghem, who's probably the most widely acclaimed multihull designer in the world today. They were proceeding on the basis that if they were successful in court, they could go immediately to a Deed of Gift challenge and race us one-to--one in a multihull.

SH: How long does it take to build one of these giants?
GS: Firstly the 90-footers are incredibly highly loaded. The righting moment of these boats is far greater than any boat any of us has ever experienced, and they are at the limit of what the French multihull community have ever built. The structures are at the limits of yachting technology. That's why it is not a simple boat to build and that's why it is going to take about eight months to build one of them. Then, of course, once you build a boat you have to carefully load it up, debug it and get it to a stage where you are actually brave enough to sheet on hard and realise its potential. You should never discount the amount of time that will take. With a V5 America's Cup boat we allowed six weeks to debug and tune our boats to get ready to race. In this case we have to allow a minimum of five months to get to a level where we will be able to sail the boat anything like at its potential and that is assuming no mishaps along the way.

SH: Where are Alinghi in terms of preparations for a DoG match?
GS: Since November we have been focusing on developing the tools that predict the performance of multihulls and obviously studying the state of the art. We are getting close to making a decision. We haven't quite made it yet; the next two weeks will be a critical time for the design team to make those decisions.

SH: What challenges does this present to the design team?
GS: Nigel Irens and Benoit Cabaret are a great team. Nigel is obviously a very accomplished naval architect, but by his own admission his knowledge is more based on experience and the fundamentals of naval architecture and multihull design as opposed to detailed analysis with his head buried in numbers and computer programs. Our design team, and to a large extent Benoit's background, are more numerical. We look at what we can predict in terms of the performance of the boats.

Rolf [Vrolijk] and Dirk [Kramers] are drawing and defining boats while Nigel is providing us with huge depth of experience and some commonsense on the dos and don'ts of multihull design.

Our guys are pushing it in terms of predicting what the boat should look like, what the performance of the boat should be and also in terms of structural analysis.

Obviously, we need to build something that will stay together and get around the course. As I said earlier, we are at the limits of the technology and that's extremely exciting if you're a designer but to some degree it's also quite scary.

SH: Looking forward to it then...
GS: To go sailing in this boat in the first months, as we work it up, will be exciting. And I fully anticipate also quite frightening!

LEGAL UPDATE

Lucien Masmejan, lead counsel for the Société Nautique de Genève, and skipper Brad Butterworth comment on the action off the water.

SH: Why have the SNG appealed and what is the latest news?
LM: We have spent eight months at Trial Court fighting a lawsuit brought by GGYC to force their way to the Cup Match at the expense of 12 other challengers. Justice Cahn's order of 17 March left key elements unanswered, including the dates for the event. We are now less than three months from the dates in the original GGYC challenge and still do not know when the 10 months' notice starts and what their boat will be. The Challenge submitted on 11 July 2007 does not supply the information prescribed in the Deed of Gift and is not only ambiguous but also contradictory. GGYC are tactically withholding the custom-house registry and key technical information regarding their boat from the Defender. This is against the terms of the Deed of Gift and the intentions of George Schuyler.

Our goal is to have the Cup decided on the water through a competitive Match in 2009. We have appealed to try to achieve that objective and Justice Andrias from the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court ruled for our request to expedite the appeal process. All briefing should be completed by 15 May 2008 and oral arguments will be heard during the June term, hopefully followed by a prompt decision. Justice Andrias' decision confirms our move to appeal was correct and taken at the appropriate time. It means that the case will be fast-tracked through the appeal process and we now look forward to addressing the matter of staying the case before the five Justices from the Appellate Division as it is important to ensure that significant resources are not wasted preparing for a defence that is voided before we take to the water.

SH: And your chances of a successful appeal?
LM: Precedent suggests our chances are good; the trial court judgement was overturned in the Mercury Bay Case of the 1980s. At the Appellate Court the case is heard by a panel of judges whereas at Trial Court all decisions are taken by one judge in isolation. We believe the opportunity to present our case to a panel of judges and the opportunity for them to discuss the merits and complexity of the case will lead to a positive outcome.

SH: Why did you appeal before Justice Cahn issues his final order stating the dates as requested in the 2 April 2008 hearing?
LM: We want to defend the Cup in a competitive match and to do so we need to have sufficient time to build a competitive boat. The Deed entitles us to a full 10-month notice period, which we want to protect in the best interest of the competition. The legal advice we received indicates that appealing now offers us the best chances of ensuring this outcome.

SH: Does this appeal change Alinghi's sailing programme?
LM: Absolutely not. We have a comprehensive programme planned for the season that is a blend of competitive multihull and large monohull racing to ensure we are prepared for all eventualities.

SH: Brad, there is also the lawsuit filed by Team New Zealand and the accusations made by Grant Dalton asking for compensation for the cancellation of a multi-challenger 33rd America's Cup...
BB: As far as the TNZ lawsuit goes, I look at the facts first and Clause 6 of their notice of entry states that they would not hold SNG responsible for any damages if the GGYC were successful with their lawsuit, which they have been. Here is the relevant extract from the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron's notice of entry, Clause 6: [...] The RNZYS and Team New Zealand each accept and agree that AC Management SA, SNG, Team Alinghi and their affiliates are not responsible for any losses or damages that the RNZYS and/or Team New Zealand may incur as a result from GGYC's actions or from any court or arbitration proceedings in connection therewith.

SH: And Dalton's claims that Alinghi agreed to bar BMW Oracle, Ellison and Coutts from the 33rd America's Cup...
BB: I can categorically deny that we ever agreed to exclude Russell Coutts, Larry Ellison or BMW Oracle Racing from the event. As long as I have been with Alinghi we have done exactly the opposite and encouraged participation. Alinghi received a letter from Team New Zealand through [attorney] Jim Farmer asking for this ban and Alinghi refused to agree to it. We do not condone this type of uncompetitive, dishonest tactic – our fight is on the water, sailor versus sailor, boat versus boat.