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
No-one understands the passion of the P1 fans in the town of San Benedetto del Tronto more than local hero Marco Pennesi, team owner of the #53 Metamarine Pignolo 53.
For the Grand Prix of the Sea in Italy, Pennesi teams up with Luca Nicolini with Max Ferrari unable to compete due to work commitments. The Metamarine boat made a solid return to the waters in Istanbul a fortnight ago following its accident prior to PowerPole in Malta.
Pennesi’s team-mate Luca Nicolini is the brother of Matteo Nicolini – throttleman of the #10 Cigarette Smash Poker hull. Matteo, in partnership with Luca Formilli Fendi, guided the boat to victory in Sunday’s Endurance race in Istanbul to leapfrog #77 Lucas Oil Outerlimits into second place in the Evolution-class standings. In San Benedetto del Tronto, Nigel Hook, Joe Sgro and Mike Fiore team up as they seek to regain the top spot they relinquished following the last round of action… 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