(Almost) Time to Play
Alinghi and Societe Nautique de Geneve - as ordered by the Court of Appeals - have accepted the Golden Gate Yacht Club's Notice of Challenge in a 90x90-footer and the team have trained their sights on a multihull 33rd America's Cup Match in May 2010. The Villeneuve boatshed on the shores of Lake Geneva is now humming again with a full boatbuilding and design group back in place, and in early May the team moved major elements of the giant Swiss multihull to an assembly tent closer to the water in preparation for a summer launch.
Alinghi skipper Brad Butterworth has an update on preparations.
SH: Returning briefly to the meeting in Geneva on 23 April - was there a real attempt at mutual consent from both parties?
BB: There was and is a genuine attempt at mutual consent, for sure. But a lot of water has gone under the bridge. We sat there and discussed a multi-national event - bearing in mind that Alinghi had just been through two years of working on that with 18 other teams and had finalised the process - and BMW Oracle wanted to start again from scratch.
We couldn't even agree on the one-boat programme; the two sides are poles apart and even poles apart with what the chal- lengers had agreed with us in the last round of talks. Having said that, we have offered since then to resume talks on date, venue, format and so on, but they have rejected the invitation point blank - basically saying 'see you in court'. Our offer remains open; despite our differences there are still things that can be discussed.
SH: So AC33 is definitely going to be in multihulls...
BB:The GGYC Notice of Challenge is with a 90x90ft boat, which is a multihull.
