The previous photo-post generated much interest, and more than a few emails. Several of you asked if we could identify all the team bases. Identifying them is easy; creating a suitable image is more difficult, especially when the blogging department's sole member has limited graphical resources and even less artistic talent! So please excuse the quick-and-dirty nature of the following.

Below then, to the best of our knowledge (and thanks to Grant "Guthrie" Davidson for once again serving as a fact-checker), is the final line-up of team bases in the Port America's Cup.


Click to enlarge. [17:00 Fri -- pic revised to more accurately reflect
the precise base locations on the west side of the basin, with thanks to
Pierre Orphanidis and Tom Weaver.]

And now several of you have asked for further explanation....

Choice of Base location was essentially based on order of entry to AC 32. Alinghi as Defender had first choice, then BMW ORACLE as Challenger of Record, then Plus 39 (as first-in challenger after BMWOR), then Shosholoza, etc. No surprise Alinghi took the base closest to the new channel. BMWOR took the base at other end of the "main street." Plus 39 and Shosholoza took the smaller base slots in between. All four are nearing completion.

Luna Rossa, after a delay getting under way, is next in line from ours, and is now well along. ETNZ are just getting underway with their construction. K-Challenge's base is also well along. Victory Challenge have yet to begin construction, and will go into the gap between K-Challenge and Desafio Espanol. The Spanish have a nearly completed two-building "double-base" similar to Alinghi, BMWOR, Luna Rossa, and (when finished) ETNZ. UITG, Mascalzone and China Team will be round out the southwest end of the basin with smaller bases. Apparently the fisherman will be moved to accommodate the latter team.

This summer signs like the one pictured below have gone up on the highway approaches to Valencia, helping point the way to the Port America's Cup (formerly the Dársena Interior). Team bases and other AC 32 facilities are rapidly taking shape, including the 800m channel that will run from the Port AC directly to the Med near the main race course area.

Christophe Martin, ACM's Venue Director, reports that most of the channel has already been dug, the foundations of the foredeck are built, and the construction of the AC Park and the IBC (International Broadast Center) will start in the next months.

Click on the photos below to enlarge.



Sign of the times in Valencia.



View from over the north (main) race course looking to the northwest
over the Port America's Cup toward downtown Valencia. The "Dársena
Exterior" is formed by the new groins in the foreground which will
protect the entrance to the new channel. When finished, it will make for
a quick 15-minute tow between the Port AC and the race course.



The new 800m (by approx 80m wide) channel is nearly dug.



View from over the bases looking back to southeast. Superyacht ("T")
dock has been in since June, and was used by spectator boats during Acts
4 and 5. In this shot the bridge over the existing cut out through the
commercial port is open. After the channel is completed, the bridge will
be closed more or less permanently. Maybe one of our readers will know,
and can post a comment, as to whether it was finally decided to fill in
that cut once the new channel is finished.

Last three photos courtesy of ACM's Christophe Martin.

Our search engines turned up two articles of note this morning among the many related to Larry Ellison.

First, there was this paragraph in the story on the website of Red Herring, the Silicon Valley business bible, about Larry's keynote address yesterday at OpenWorld:

The conference has been the Redwood Shores, California-based company’s biggest so far, with about 35,000 customers, partners, exhibitors, media, and analysts attending. Mr. Ellison occasionally strayed from weightier themes, joking about Microsoft’s security levels and answering questions from the audience about his sailing team. He’s an accomplished sailor, competing in the America’s Cup with his BMW Oracle Racing team.

Talk about promoting the sport. Whenever an ACC yacht is on display in the middle of 35,000 people from around the world, to say nothing of having the boss getting questions from them about the Cup and our team...well, "nice" as Ian "Fresh" Burns is fond of saying.

Then there are these quotes from Larry Ellison: The new software statesman by ZDNet's Dan Farber:

During his Oracle OpenWorld keynote, Larry Ellison outlined his major initiatives for the next 24 months. As I wrote earlier in the week, Oracle is becoming more stateman-like, talking about giving user choice, lifetime support (for a price as yet undetermined) and being a model open standards citizen. It shows that Ellison and team aren't living in a reality distortion field....

(We know Mr Farber was referring to his Oracle Corp team, not BMWOR. But you gotta love the expression "reality distortion field." That's how some used to describe working and living in the America's Cup. Now, LOL, seems more like MTV's "Real World Valencia.")

...If Ellison and Oracle can actually deliver on the goals set out for being most open in an open standards world and giving customers what they want, when they want it, the company will set the standard for others to follow.

...Ellison the conquerer and sometimes bawdy sailor has turned into Ellison the statesman....

Wonder what Larry will think of being called a "statesman." Sounds a bit old and staid for him, or maybe too spießig as our German friends would say. Nonetheless, very nice ink all around.


During Act 6 last month: afterguard member and alternate helmsman,
with Dicko (left) and tactician Bertrand Pace (right) the day we beat
Luna Rossa.


At OpenWorld yesterday: software statesman.

BMW ORACLE Racing will be prominently featured, as will the 32nd America's Cup event, at the seventh annual International Sailing Summit which takes place Monday, 14 November at Amsterdam in conjunction with the Marine Equipment Trade Show ("METS").

The ISS is a grassroots, non-profit initiative by the sailing industry -- working together with ISAF, the national sailing federations and other boating organizations -- to promote and improve the sport of sailing. The ISS has been held previously in Australia, the USA, the Netherlands and Portugal. This year's attendance is expected to top 200, bringing together many of the sport's "movers and shakers" from around the world.

“Winning Sailing Sponsorships” will be first in a series of all-day programs, and features an illustrious crew of panelists who will share what sponsors seek in partnership promotions. The panel will be moderated by Henri-Lloyd co-CEO Paul Strzelecki, whose company is a BMW ORACLE Racing Technology Partner.

Paul has been a regular at the various LV Acts, including Malmö where he sailed with us as 18th crew in one race, and is one our team's keenest supporters. The industry is lucky to have him contributing time and energy to the ISS.

Henri-Lloyd, of course, provides custom technical clothing and footwear for the BMW ORACLE Racing team and a merchandising collection for distribution worldwide. In addition, Henri-Lloyd also supplies the apparel and luggage for the shore crew and the team’s administrative staff.

Serving on Paul's panel will be a number of sponsorship experts including Louis Vuitton's Bruno Trouble and our own marketing chief, Mirko Groescher. Bruno will also be giving a keynote address that evening.

The day's program is available here. If you are interested in attending what should be a most worthwhile conference, you can register online at www.sailingsummit.com.



Paul and Dicko announcing the Henri-Lloyd deal in Valencia last October.



Click to enlarge.

BMW ORACLE Racing was the first team in the current Cup to have a show boat, thanks to BMW putting a nicely buffed out USA-61 on display around Europe for the past 18 months. 61 is currently on display at Munich Airport.

Now USA-49 joins 61 as a show boat for the USA market, to my knowledge the first time any AC team has had two showboats. This week 49 made its debut as a much-publicized centerpiece in San Francisco's Moscone Center during Oracle Corp's annual "Oracle OpenWorld" conference.

A positive development for the sport, fully six ACC show boats are now being displayed around the world. There is strong public interest, witness this recent post on the Challenger Commission blog that generated many more "hits" and "referrals" than usual, thanks in part to being picked up by Scuttelbutt yesterday.

Strategic decisions and those involving use of significant team resources are carefully reviewed by our team's Executive Committee led by CEO Chris Dickson (NZL). We had a hard think about whether to keep 49 sailing for training purposes, sell it, scrap it for parts, or create a second show boat. Given the low conversion and opportunity costs, and the publicity USA-49 has already generated this week, including this article in ZD Net's widely read tech/business blog Between the Lines, it seems the right call was made.

Once green-lighted, Mark "Tugboat" Turner (NZL) oversaw the conversion. In the corporate world Tugsy would be called director of manufacturing, but he prefers to be called, simply and modestly, "boatbuilder." Our San Francisco-based colleagues, Bill and Melinda Erkelens (USA), are looking after 49's logistik.

Anyone in North America interested in displaying USA-49 at a significant public or private event please contact Mirko via email: mgroeschner [at] bmworacleracing [dot] com.



USA-49 helping to create AC and team "awareness" at Oracle Open
World in San Francisco this week.



Carbonologist Mark "Tugboat" Turner, boatbuilder
extraordinaire.

ACM have issued the Provisional Pairing List for Trapani Louis Vuitton Act 8, and a copy is available here. It gives the order of matches both day-to-day and within a given day, as well as which pairs will be on which of the two race courses.

The teams are "seeded" into the pairing list according to their rank in the current 2005 ACC Championship standings such that teams of similar ranking meet toward or at the end of the round robin. We, of course are second in the standings behind Alinghi and, hence, are the #2 seed. Note that our first and second matches scheduled the first day of racing (Flights One and Two) are against the #10 seed United Internet Team Germany and #11 seed Shosholoza. Our last two matches are against the #4 seed Luna Rossa (Flight Ten) and then, finally, #1 seed Alinghi in Fight Eleven.

For each pair, the yacht listed first is assigned the Blue Flag and the second yacht the Yellow Flag -- meaning the colour of the yacht-identifying flag the respective yachts will display on their backstays throughout that match.

The Blue Flag yacht will enter the pre-start from the port or "buoy end" of the starting line. The Yellow Flag yacht enters from the starboard or "boat end" of the line. Having the Yellow Flag is a tactical advantage, especially in light wind, because starboard entry gives starboard tack right-of-way over the Blue Flag (port entry) yacht when, normally, they engage just after the 5-minute signal.

The RC assigns these flags such that, over the course of an event and the year, each team has approximately the same number of Yellow and Blue Flags, and so that, as between any two teams, the Blue and Yellow Flags are swapped each time they race.

The Blue and Yellows Flags are used by the Race Committee and Umpires to signal the respective yachts throughout the match. If the RC displays a Blue or Yellow Flag (or both) on the bow of the Committee Boat just after the starting signal, it means the corresponding yacht(s) crossed the line prematurely and must return to restart. At the finish the RC displays the Flag corresponding to the winning yacht as it crosses the finish line.

Likewise the Blue and Yellow Flags are referenced by the Umpires when signalling a penalty. If the umpires display a Blue Flag and blow a whistle (and subsequently turn on the blue strobe lights atop their umpire boat), the Blue Flag yacht has been penalized.


Umpires' view: For this match in Act 6, BMW ORACLE was assigned the
Blue Flag and K-Challenge the Yellow Flag. The flag is attached to a leg
of the aerial frame ("roll bar") in the stern.


Mascalzone Latino Capitalia Team carrying the Yellow Flag in a match at
Malmö against their Italian rival, Plus 39. The Yellow Flag yacht gets star-
board entry -- a tactical advantage in the pre-start, especially in light wind.

Apropos our heading to Trapani this week, it seems worth mentioning that Sicily was the birthplace, in about 287 B.C., of Archimedes. While few facts of his life are known, tradition has made at least two stories famous.


Archimedes

In one, he was asked by Hiero II, the Greek ruler of Sicily, to determine whether a crown was pure gold or was alloyed with silver. Archimedes was perplexed, until one day, observing the overflow of water in his bath, he suddenly realized that since gold is more dense (i.e., has more weight per volume) than silver, a given weight of gold represents a smaller volume than an equal weight of silver, and that a given weight of gold would therefore displace less water than an equal weight of silver. Delighted at his discovery, he ran home without his clothes, shouting “Eureka,” which means “I have found it.” He found that Hiero's crown displaced more water than an equal weight of gold, thus showing that the crown had been alloyed with silver (or another metal less dense than gold).

In the other story Archimedes is said to have told Hiero, in illustration of the principle of the lever, “Give me a place to stand, and I will move the world.” Even that ties in to the Cup -- reminding some of us of a few former AC designers who made similar promises at the outset of their campaigns, but, sadly, were able to leverage neither their standing nor their syndicate's ample resources.

No doubt the naval architects and other AC technical types can explain better than I the significance of Archimedes' discoveries about density and buoyancy -- and how they directly relate to the America's Cup. Suffice to say that two of the three main factors of the AC Class Rule-formula are directly related: a yacht's Displacement and it's waterline Length while floating in still water and in measurement trim. (The third factor is Sail Area.)

A yacht's Displacement will vary slightly but significantly with the density (ok, specific gravity) of the local water. Accordingly the Length will vary -- if the yacht sinks lower its waterline grows longer; floats higher, shorter. Hence the need for a correction factor when the measurers "float the boat" in waters of differing salinity, which, of course, affects the specific gravity of the water. Needless to say, the salinity of sea (and lake) water varies significantly from place to place around the world.

All that to say nothing of the technical teams being guided by Archimedes' principles in designing the yachts to fit within the Rule in the first place.

In Malmö our ACC Technical Director ("TD") might have been dubbed Ken "Newton" McAlpine. It was there that Ken and his measurement team used, for the first time in the history of the Cup, a gravity factor. Why?


Sir Isaac Newton

The earth is not a perfect sphere but a bit squashed at the poles and bulging at the beltline (seems age has a way of doing that to the best of us). Accordingly, the closer you are to the Poles the closer you are to the center of the earth; and the closer to the earth's dense core, the more gravitational attraction. So, nearer the Poles things weigh more than near the Equator (all other things being equal like your height above sea level and the local geophysics). [22 Sep update -- please also note the interesting comment by Frank Albina, below, about the centrifugal force factor.]

In a nutshell, when the yachts were re-weighed in Malmö it was soon realized that at least those which had not been changed in any way all weighed slightly more than they had in Valencia, hence the use of a scientifically-derived 50kg gravity-correction factor in Sweden for Acts 6 and 7.

No wonder we feel lighter here in Valencia than we did in Hamburg. And we thought it was the Spanish cuisine.

The TD has already announced that there will be no "gravity-correction factor" for Trapani. It has essentially the same gravity as Valencia where the yachts were all originally measured.

The ACC rule, however, has always had a correction factor for the specific gravity of the water in which a yacht is measured. Archimedes must have made a bigger impression on the rules writers than did Sir Isaac.

Perhaps, then, while in Trapani we should celebrate Sicily's famous native-son/mathematician by referring to the TD, with even more reverence if not gravitas than usual, as Ken "Archimedes" McAlpine.

Finally, and we have researched this thoroughly -- there is no truth whatsoever to a supposed historical footnote being offered around by that ersatz student of Sicilian history, Peter "Luiggi" Reggio, that right after Archimedes hollered, "Eureka," his wife muttered, "Whatever floats your boat."

Source (for the important stuff): "Archimedes." The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Columbia University Press., 2003. Answers.com GuruNet Corp. 19 Sep. 2005.


TD Ken McAlpine checking the gravity in Malmö. Now the measurers
take into account Newton's Laws as well as Archimedes' principles.

The Challenger Commission Blog has a post from yesterday entitled Costa What? that some of you may find interesting.

In response to that post, Valencia Sailing's Pierre Orphanidis emailed this afternoon with an explanation of how Costa del Azahar, the coastal region either side of Valencia, got it's name. Pierre's answer reminded me of our Multi-Culti post at the beginning of Act 6. He writes:

It is the name, in Castellano, of the flower of the orange tree. Its origin is the arab words "al-azahar" meaning “white flower”. In Valenciano it’s called Costa dels Tarongers. It starts north at the border with Catalonia and goes south to Javea. Obviously the region got its name from the abundance of orange trees -- that is before the real estate boom that transformed it into a coastal Hong Kong!!

So there you have it: a race for a British Cup; named after an American yacht; with Swiss organizers and a French title sponsor; based in a Spanish city whose coast has an Arab name and looks more and more like Hong Kong; with first-ever entries from China, Germany and South Africa, and multiple entries from Italy; several teams using the same towing tank in Canada, [23 Sep update] and one team testing in Bulgaria; race committee boats imported from New Zealand (to say nothing of a herd of Kiwi sailors); a Polish skipper for the "local" entry; an Australian gravity-checker; and all involved having fond memories of a recent regatta in Sweden.

Talk about multi-culti. Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore.

We had a small series of jazz concerts during the '92 Cup in San Diego, but Valencia appears to be pulling out all the stops. From this morning's Valencia Life....

OPERA CYCLE OPENS
The Palau de la Musica in Valencia will begin staging a series of Operas related with the sea as part of a season aimed at promoting the Americas Cup. The first opera – “Marina” by Emilio Arrieta – will be staged this coming Wednesday and Friday, and will feature soprano Milagros Poblador and tenor Ignacio Encinas along with the Valencia Symphony Orchestra and the Chorus of the Generalitat Valenciana under the baton of Miquel Ortega. Other operas with a maritime theme to be performed at the Palau include “Peter Grimes” by Benjamin Britten that is to be performed in May of 2007 – the year the Americas Cup races take place - and “Sadko” by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov that will be staged in October next year by the Orchestra and Chorus of the Marinsky Theatre of St Petersburg.


Valencia's Palau de la Musica

Since so many of our teammates are Kiwis, it seems appropriate to recognize this day in history 112 years ago. On 19 September 1893 New Zealand was the first country to grant women the right to vote. And today it looks like Kiwi voters -- women and men -- have returned Helen Clark to another term as PM, which should put her among the longest running lady leaders of any country, ever.

And, Dicko, given this development, how do we play the Kiwi dollar over the next year or two?

Meanwhile, in another of our "home" countries -- Germany -- in national elections over the weekend the challenger, Angela Merkel, has collected more votes than the incumbent, Herr Schroeder. However, unlike Ms Clark who appears to have enough support to form a coalition government, Ms Merkel has a tougher battle ahead if she is to become Germany's first-ever woman Chancellor.

Frau Merkel, like "Uncle Mirko" Groeschner, grew up in the former DDR, i.e., East Germany; and since the wall came down in '89 both have made steady climbs in their respective fields.

I don't know where our old friend and editor of Scuttlebutt, Tom Leweck, gets these closing dittys he run's in each day's issue called, variously, the Curmudgeon's Conundrum or, more often, the Curmudgeon's Observation. Some are pretty lame, some are funny as hell, and every now and then one appears to have been cleverly chosen to add subtle commentary to a particular story or letter in that issue (often the final letter just above the Curmudgeon's Observation).

This morning's, I guess, was just in the funny category and made me LOL -- "laugh out loud" in IM or TXT speak -- sitting here in a quiet, dark house at 06:00 on a very cool (10 deg C / 50 deg F) morn in Valencia while trying to wake up, read my mail and scan the various websites, and, for a change, get warm....

CURMUDGEON'S OBSERVATION
Why do they call it an asteroid when it's outside the hemisphere, but call
it a hemorrhoid when it's in your butt?

LOL, indeed. Seriously, for many in the AC, 'Butt is our Daily Digest of sailing news. Free, you can sign up for an email subscription here.


Join the Club. Not exactly
the Golden Gate, but a
good deal (free).

Another of the multi-talented, and multilingual Cup vets in our campaign is operations coordinator Saskia Green (GBR). Six or seven days a week you will find her beavering away at her desk processing a small mountain of paperwork for Laurent, Guthrie, and others, as well as handling any number of other important tasks such as keeping the team fed and healthy. In fact, by all appearances the only waking hours Saskia does not spend at her desk are when she is at yet another friend's wedding. Either she has a lot of friends, or her friends get married often! We all keep her mobile number handy -- even if no one else has the answer, likely Saskia will.


Good operator -- Saskia Green.

I like this kid. Always did, at least back in the days when I spent more time at F1 Grands Prix than AC "Acts." He is bright, personable and not infected with some of the "attitude" we have seen (infamously) from another F1 driver with whom BMW ORACLE Racing has had recent, er, experience.

Delighted to read that he has signed with the new BMW F1 team, and look forward to the day that BMW and our marketing department gets Nick on board with us as 18th man.


BMW's new F1 pilot Nick Heidfeld.

With all this talk about modernizing the America's Cup, it seems appropriate to take a look back -- at least to Newport and the 12 Metre era.

Some of you will enjoy this nice article in today's Boston Globe, by their long-time boating writer Tony Chamberlain who also covered the Cup during Newport's heyday, about the 12M "world championship" taking place there this weekend....


America's glory revisited
Cup challengers vie in 12-meter races
By Tony Chamberlain, Globe Staff | September 16, 2005

NEWPORT, R.I. -- It has been 23 years -- almost to the week -- that this onetime sailing capital was in its glory days of the America's Cup.

Twenty-three years since Dennis Conner, sailing his ruby red 12-meter, Liberty, became the first sailor to lose the America's Cup for the New York Yacht Club in 132 years, ending the longest streak in modern sports history.

Yesterday on the leaden gray seas, once the playground of America's Cup racers, 16 12-meters -- many of them America's Cup champions and challengers -- sailed three races in the first day of the Twelve-Meter World Championships.

On a day of rain on the coast, a few miles offshore, the conditions were relatively clear with light to moderate breezes, not unlike much of the weather for Cup matches once sailed on Rhode Island Sound in September. The fleet was broken into four classes, representing the era the boats were designed and built -- Grand Prix, Modern, Classic traditional, and Vintage. (More...)


There are some great photos on the NYYC website. Below is just one, courtesy of our old friend, NYYC member, and sailing photog of considerable repute, Dan Nerney.



Courageous, left, the successful defender in '74 (Hood) and '77 (Turner),
with Tom Blackaller's '87 LVC semifinalist USA. Click on the image to
enlarge.


The late Tom Blackaller.

One of my several bosses -- in this case Blog Boss Roland Neubauer(GER) of BMW's web-agency Sport Media Service GmbH in Munich -- reports that the August and early September page-view and -duration numbers for the "BOB" (the BMW ORACLE Blog) have gone through the roof. I will try to drag some hard numbers out of Roland and Co. so that those of you who are web-savvy can get some comparative idea of how we are doing. Still a very small fish in the blogging pond, but among sailing sites apparently now one of the larger.

Also, we are pleased to note that yesterday's "Freedom" post struck a chord as it has been referred to on a number of other key sailing sites, has generated more than the usual number of emails (LOL -- which isn't saying much since most posts generate none), and the last time I looked there were fully ten (!) comments left by our dear readers -- where usually there are none or at the most one or two.

Thanks to all of our readers for your continuing, and apparently growing, interest and support.

Two of my other bosses, Russell Green and Mirko Groeschner, have asked that we keep it going at least through Acts 8 & 9. Time permitting, we will give it our best shot. Thanks, too, to BMW's Ralf Hussmann who pushed for it in the first place, and to Oracle's Judy Sim for her moral and other support especially when things get a bit hectic during the Acts.

As always, your feedback and suggestions to blog [at] tfehman [dot] com are much appreciated.


Judy Sim and Ralf Hussmann.



An "edgy" image of Roland Neubauer.



Onward and upward.

In Malmö BMW ORACLE Racing entertained some 1,000 VIP guests over the nine days of racing, an average of more than 100 per day split between our two VIP Spectator Boats. There were also a surprising number of spectator boats on the race course each day, well over 100 on the weekends, making for a lively scene afloat.

Alinghi and their sponsors also took good advantage of the excellent VIP hospitality opportunity the AC now affords, entertaining a similar number of guests in Malmö. The other teams and their sponsors are beginning to do the same.

Will be interesting to see how Trapani works out in terms of spectators, both afloat and ashore. While more remote than Malmö, which was only a 20-minute train ride from Copenhagen's international airport, Trapani is arguably a more interesting and beautiful destination. Our marketing jefe, Mirko "Uncle" Groeschner says we will have a smaller though nonetheless substantial group of VIP guests -- something north of 600. I would expect fewer spectator boats as well, as we are not in or near a major boating center.

However, the word from Grant "Guthrie" Dadvidson and the rest of our advance party now in Trapani is that the locals seem quite a bit more aware of and keyed up for this event. Apparently there are posters in many of the storefronts, and they can feel a buzz around town. So shoreside interest and activity could be exceptionally good, as it was when the Cup was in the smaller towns of Newport and Fremantle. Will be interesting to compare Trapani with the "feel" of the Cup in major metropolitan areas like San Diego, Auckland and Valencia.


One Malmö spectator we don't expect
in Trapani, the Swedish sub that was
"escorted" one day during Act 6 by
ACM Race Ops manager Niccolo Porzio.

You may recall our Cool People post on Bruno Trouble some weeks back when he authored a nice guest editorial in Scuttlebutt called "We Love the Cup." Bruno was responding to contrary-minded articles written by two old friends, Herb McCormick and Angus Phillips, in the USA's venerable Cruising World magazine and the Washington Post newspaper, respectively.

For the sake of blog-linking fairness, their grumpy (Bruno's word) articles can be found here and here.

There is little secret that Dicko and I, among many others, side squarely with Bruno in supporting (and working damn hard to make happen) Ernesto and Larry's vision to modernize the Cup.

So today we were pleased to see some very positive commentary regarding the 32nd AC on the sometimes controversial but often prescient Sailing Anarchy website. Click here and then scroll down a story or two to read SA's pithy post entitled, hilariously, "Crusty Old Barnacles."

While I would not go so far as to call Herb and Angus "crusty old barnacles" -- LOL, crusty maybe -- Sailing Anarchy makes a good point when they say that their downbeat pieces are unwittingly stirring more interest and awareness in the 32nd Cup, and therefore actually helping the Cup. Not that that will give much comfort to Herb and Angus!

You be the judge. Are "Herbacious and Anguish" right on? Or are they "nattering nabobs of negativism" (to steal a famous turn of phrase from a former USA Vice President)? Somewhere in between? If you are so inclined, please post a comment below.

Regardless, let freedom reign, especially freedom of the press.

Design team member Mat "Gimp" Bird (USA) and his wife Amy are expecting their first child in a few weeks. But, says the email from Amy that accompanied the wedding picture below (no, not Mat and Amy's wedding!), "Mat has broken a big toe, and we're not sure how he did it." Uh-huh.

Fine timing, Mat! She's due in three weeks and your toe will take 4-6 weeks to heal. You're lucky Amy finds some humor in this -- her email went on to say, "it was a funny site with us at the emergency room at 4 in the morning and me trying to convince Mat that he should be in a wheelchair, to say nothing of me waiting on him hand and foot at the wedding ...."

Not sure how you did it? 0400? Broken in two places? Matty, you are going to take some serious Scheiße over this.

Congrats to sailing team member (grinder) Andrew Scott and his bride Karen Amsbaugh, whose wedding Amy and Mat were all dressed up for. Mat says it was quite the international affair with at least 3 AC teams represented. So who's sending the Blogster some pix of the new couple?


A lame Mat Bird and la embarazada Amy, looking good at the wedding
of Andrew and Karen Scott. You can tell Mat is an AC 31 vet by the nice
LV tie.

Racing begins at Trapani in two and a half weeks, on Thursday 29 Sep. It is the same format as Malmö, with a week of match racing (Act 8) followed by three days (Fri-Sun) of fleet racing (Act 9). So the 2005 ACC "season" closes on Sunday 9 Oct, with not only the Act 9 winner receiving prizes but also the 2005 ACC Season Champion being crowned. The latter is for bragging rights, and is a series including Alinghi that is separate from the on-going and all-important CSS Ranking for the Louis Vuitton Cup.

For the record, the current ACC 2005 standings:

1- Alinghi, 47 points
2- BMW ORACLE Racing, 41
3- Emirates Team New Zealand, 40
4 - Luna Rossa Challenge, 40
5- Desafío Español 2007, 28
6- K-Challenge, 23
7 - Mascalzone Latino-Capitalia Team, 23
8 - Victory Challenge, 22
9 - +39 Challenge, 20
10 - United Internet Team Germany, 15
11 - Team Shosholoza, 7
12- China Team, 6

The scoring is simple: 12 points for winning an Act, 11 for second, 10 for third and so on. With Alinghi six points out front, it will be hard to catch up with only two regattas to go -- we would need to win both and have Alinghi finish no better than third in one and fourth in another. More important for us is to sail well, continue to learn about ourselves, our boat and the competition, and try to put more points between us and the other challengers in the above-mentioned CSS Ranking, which we currently lead by one slim point over ETNZ and Luna Rossa who are tied for second.

You may find interesting the nice satellite shots and map of the Trapani area posted on the Challenger Commission blog today. Below is a decent aerial shot of Trapani, looking westerly over the city.


Click on the image to enlarge.

Our websites have posted the standings of the 2005 ACC Championship (which includes Alinghi). However, there has been some confusion over the more important Challenger Selection Series ("CSS") Ranking Points.

Below, courtesy of Pierre Orphanidis and his excellent Valencia Sailing website, is a nice scoreboard with the current CSS Rankings from 1st (BMWOR) through 11th (China Team)....



"Bonus Points" above refers to the points each team, if so ranked at the end of the final Act in early April 2007, would carry into the round robins of the Louis Vuitton Cup, which begin in mid-April 2007.

For a full explanation of what the CSS Rank means, and how it is determined, please see today's comprehensive post on the Challenger Commission Blog.