Alinghi, the Defender of the 33rd America’s Cup, unveiled its 90ft catamaran this weekend in Villeneuve, Switzerland. This multihull represents a culmination of Swiss multihull heritage and is the first step in Alinghi’s development process towards the 33rd America’s Cup in February 2010. The boat will be launched by helicopter next week on Lake Geneva before the process of ‘debugging’ begins and the boat goes sailing for the first time.
Grant Simmer, design team coordinator, comments on the achievement: ‘Firstly this boat only exists because of Ernesto Bertarelli’s 100% commitment to the team and his support and enthusiasm for this project. The boat demonstrates the talent and creativity of the designers and the skill and dedication of the boatbuilding and technical teams in building a boat of this complexity, facing many different challenges along the way and solving them to pull the project together. Finally, and more recently, the sailing team has…Â Details and Pictures
The July 3rd Daily Standings as of 0600 PDT for Transpac 09 have the Spanish crew aboard Charisma leading the charge to Hawaii. Charisma is 1,734 nautical miles from Hawaii and over 150 miles ahead of her nearest competitor in Division VII, Between the Sheets, a Jeanneau 50. The doublehanded sailors aboard Relentless continue to set the pace in Division 6. They have stretched their lead to 10 miles over the Canadian boat, Narrow Escape.
Lynx, the heavy tall ship, has only chipped about 220 miles off of the vast 2,225-nautical mile journey. They may be plodding along, but the Lynx crew is enjoying themselves.  They have left the near shore cloud cover behind and have shed a layer or two of clothing and are making the best of the Pacific High. Crews report that … Details
Alinghi hosted a group of media over their America’s Cup defender, overnight (NZT). Sail-World was not one of those invited, again, and we are reliant on images and information from others. However we will gladly report any information that comes to hand provided we believe it to be reliable.
One of the conditions of the invitation is believed to be an embargo on reporting any detail of the new yacht, and stories from those present will be released tomorrow. We believe those stories have to be cleared by Alinghi to avoid leaking any details of the new yacht. Quite why they bother is a little beyond us, as the boat will be revealed to all, including spy cameras in a few days and with no espionage rules in place, pretty well anything goes…Â Details and Great PicturesÂ
The Transpac boats in Divisions 3, 4 & 5 start their race tomorrow. Sailing crews from each of the 19 Transpac sailboats are looking toward their navigators to determine what route they are going to take initially, so that they can decide which sails to take and which to leave behind. While the navigators work through their strategy, the rest of the crews are out purchasing odds and ends and loading food onto their boats for the long passage ahead.
These Santa Cruz 50 and 52 sailboats, Andrews 53 and 56’s and a smattering of other yacht designs that rate between 106 and 159, are not in contention to break course records, but they are looking to win or do well in their divisions, have a safe race and maybe even win overall on corrected time, as did Reinrag 2, Tom Garnier’s J-125 did in 2007. Reinrag 2 not only won Division IV, but also beat the entire fleet on corrected time to become the overall 2007 Transpac winner… Details