Feb 8th is a court mandated race date in conjunction with the statment "Valencia, Spain or anywhere else" and requiring SNG/Alinghi to announce the venue with a 6 month notice. As ruled today by Kornreich, the location statement had to be read harmoniously with the Deed of Gift which prohibits a northern hemisphere location in the winter months (including February) unless mutually consented by both parties. "Anywhere" meant anywhere that is compliant with the Deed...not "anywhere"...like on the moon.

Now that there are only 100 days left to Feb. 8th date, there is no way SNG/Alinghi can give 6 month notice and still host the event on the court mandated date.

(Before you jump on GGYC/BMW-Oracle, they've written SNG/Alinghi no less than 7 letters on the subject, the first being the day after the venue announcement, stating that they didn't believe RAK to be Deed or Court compliant and that they didn't consent...SNG/Alinghi refused to discuss it).

Also to be considered here is that we expect a few more rulings out of the court this week based on today's litigation - whether or not the rudders should be included in the LWL measurement, some possibility of revisiting the prior decision that Alinghi/SNG can change the rules at will with direct implications on the ISAF agreement and the formation of a neutral race management.

I don't expect anything much to happen until early next week until these decisions are known...but here are the options:

1) both sides could remain stone faced and unwilling to negotiate (the ball for this is really in the Alinghi/SNG hands right now). The event will default to Valencia on Feb. 8th and we hope both teams show up.

2) the teams negotiate and the rules change to be more fair for BMWO and the event stays in RAK (unlikely given the high profile BMWO gave the security issues).

3) we end up somewhere else in the world racing this event on another date under agreement from both teams.