Paul Cayard – a candid portrait

Paul gives us a candid look at how he got here and where he wants to go. Whether its his early experiences with America’s Cup sailing with Tom Blackaller on Defender and then USA or looking into the future with his new team Artemis Racing, Paul let’s us in on some good stories about what it takes to sail the for the Cup.

Paul also tells us a little about the lessons learned on the EF Language Whitbread campaign as they raced across the Southern Ocean.

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RC44 Cup – San Diego

Katusha wins the Oracle RC44 Cup – San Diego, while Oracle Racing finishes second, TeamAqua third and Artemis 4th.

Three races were held today in light winds from the Southwest under overcast skies. That didn’t deter several thousand spectators from lining the end of the Broadway Pier in downtown San Diego.

With a 2, 2 in the first two races today, the Katusha team had a nice 8 point lead over Oracle going into the last race. The strategy for the last race became to simply stay close to Oracle as they were the only team left in contention. We finished right behind them for the series win.

We are very happy with our first fleet racing series win and for me it was fun to have it happen here in San Diego where I lived for twelve years.

For complete results go to www.rc44.com

Paul

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RC44 Cup – San Diego

Another good day today for Katusha and Artemis Racing. Katusha continues to lead the fleet here in San Diego with scores of 2, 6, 2 and 35 points. Artemis Racing had a 1, 4, 6 for a total of 46 for the series and 4th place. TeamAqua had the same points as we did for the day and remain 2 back at 37 and Oracle had 11 and remains in third with 42 points.

The big moment of the day for Katusha occurred in the second race when we rounded the last wind ward mark 10th and managed to gybe through the fleet to finish 6th. We have come back like that more than once this week and shaving points like that makes a big difference on the score card.

The racing is just fast and furious on the tight race track inside the Bay here. Lead changes and gains and losses of five places in three minutes are common in the fleet.

So, with three races left for tomorrow, it is still wide open. What we do take into tomorrow is a boat that is going better than ever and a crew who is sailing together well. So both Artemis Racing and Katusha will put that on the race track and we will see where the ships fall at the end of the day.

For complete results go to www.rc44.com

Paul

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RC44 Cup – San Diego

An excellent day on Katusha as we took the lead and Artemis strong in fourth.

Four very tight races on San Diego Bay and with scores of 3, 5, 2, 1 Katusha had one of its best days ever. Good starts and great speed are the key for us so far. We are now in first with 25 points. Aqua actually won the day and are now in 2nd place with 27. Yesterday’s leader Oracle Racing follows with 31 and Artemis on 35.

Still it’s early in the regatta with probably six mores races to sail. It is easy to shift up and down the leaderboard in this Class.

For complete results go to www.RC44.com

Paul

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RC44 Cup – San Diego

Another excellent day for Artemis Racing and Katusha. Both teams sailed well at the front of the fleet today, battling with the winner of the day, ORACLE Racing who has 10 points. Katusha had scores of 4,3,4,3 to end the day in second place on 14 points and Artemis Racing is in third place with 16 points, having won 2 of the races.

Once again, the conditions inside San Diego Bay were beautiful for the 11 boat fleet. The action is very tight and boats can overtake or lose six boats very quickly. It is truly “never over ’til it’s over” type of sailing.

Racing continues tomorrow with four more fleet races scheduled.

For complete results go to www.rc44.com

Paul

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RC 44 Oracle Cup – San Diego

San Diego,

A very good day for both Artemis Racing and Katusha with four wins each out of five races.

On Katusha we were happy with our results but I would not characterize our sailing as smooth. Yet, we got the job done.

For our first three races of the day, we had the “Curmudgeons” onboard as guests. First Craig for two races, including the all important Russian National Championship, then Tom for the third. As soon as the Lewecks left us, we lost. We pulled ourselves back together to win our last race of the day.

We ended up tied with four other teams, some of whom raced six races. There is no final scoring for match racing at each event this year, it just rolls on and the final score is tallied at the end of the year.

Tomorrow, starts the fleet racing which will see Bob “Peaches” Little on the helm and I will move to tactician.

The forecast for tomorrow is more of the same, Westerly winds at about 10 knots.

Paul

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RC44 Cup – San Diego

We just finished up two days of practice down here in San Diego. Beautiful, sunny but chilly both days with 10-17 knots of Northwesterly wind. The race course for this event is inside the Bay where it should be. The boats are berthed at the Broadway Street Pier. Looks like about 12 teams are here.

We had fleet racing practice yesterday which meant Bob (Peaches) Little was on the helm and I was tactician onboard Katusha. We competed in about three races with 10 other teams around a short 1.25 mile course. Today we had match race training with our friends on Artemis Racing in which Bob and I inverted our roles from yesterday. Tomorrow in the first day of racing and will be Match Racing and we are first up against the other Russian team Synergy in the first flight. The format of the regatta’s is different this year with the match racing becoming just one day of the event and having only an annual score. So at each event competitors will work their way through a portion of a round robin and by the end of the season we will have completed about three round robins in total. The podium for match racing will be determined only at years end.

The remaining four days of each event will be fleet racing which features the owners as the drivers of the boats. Unfortunately neither Torbjorn Tornqvist (Artemis) nor Guenaddi Timtchencko (Katusha) could attend the event in San Diego this week. Sarah Gundersen is helming Artemis with Morgan Larson calling the shots.

It is fun for me to be in San Diego. I lived here for 12 years. My son was born here and both kids started school here. I have lots of friends here some of whom I am hoping to get to see this week. I raced in the finals of the two America’s Cups held in San Diego in the early 90’s. I went for a run along the bay front this morning down to where the Stars and Stripes base was in 1995 when I sailed with Dennis Conner and his team. The base is now a harbor for large boats and the Rowing Club restaurant is no longer a Chart House but a Crab Shack.

Things change. That’s life.

Paul

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AC45-New Zealand

It was a fantastic day today on the Hauraki Gulf in the new AC45 prototype catamaran. Blue sky and 15 knots of wind from the Southwest made for a great training day for Artemis Racing.

Following a strange incident on Monday whereby the hard wing sail was damaged, the Artemis team worked alongside the ACRM team and Core Builders to get the new generation America’s Cup yacht back out on the water.

I was particularly pleased the boat was ready today as this gave me an opportunity to sail the boat before heading to the airport for my flight back to San Francisco tonight.

My impressions are that the boat is nothing less than spectacular. I am not a multihull sailor, but I was able to steer the boat around a couple of laps on the Hauraki Gulf under the watchful eye of Santiago Lange, two time Silver medalist and Artemis Racing team member.

The boat seemed very balanced and the typical multihull peril of leeward bow submersion was non existent. We easily skipped along at 20+ knots downwind and about 12 knots upwind. The crew (and helmsman) hike out just like on a Laser.

Hats off to Oracle Racing and Core Builders for taking this boat from concept to sailing in just 4 months!

Artemis will be sailing the prototype for three more days. Then we begin the assembly of our own boat for a mid-March training session down here in Auckland. The first AC45 World Series event will be in July.

It really struck me today that there is a new era of America’s Cup coming and I was very happy to be part of it!

Paul

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Update from Auckland

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Auckland February 23, 2011

Just a quick update from down here. The Artemis Racing team is based in Auckland this week for training and attendance in America’s Cup meetings. Auckland is approximately 450 miles north of Christchurch, the site of the large earthquake of February 22. No one on Artemis Racing was involved directly or injured in the earthquake.

Artemis Racing extends its sincere condolences for those who lost loved ones in the disaster and sympathy for those who are currently struggling to get their lives back in order following this natural disaster.

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Update from Auckland

Auckland New Zealand, February 21, 2011

It was Mid December when I last wrote an update. No racing has taken place for Artemis since the RC 44 regatta in Miami but a lot has been going on with regard to our America’s Cup project. I was recently in Valencia for a couple of weeks working with Juan Kouyoumdjian and our design team who are based there. We also had a team meeting that lasted three days.

I arrived in Auckland today for a week to follow two issues; 1) ACRM meetings to discuss the aC72 and AC45 class rules, new racing rules of sailing, logistics around the World Series events and the SF venue and 2) to test sail the prototype of the AC45. The meetings went well today. Unfortunately the sailing didn’t. Our team capsized in the AC 45. It wasn’t even a spectacular wipeout at 30 knots. Rather they were sitting head to wind, taking a break after the three hour training session and repairing something on the roller furler. The boat got hit with a gust from about 10 degrees off to one side and the boat slowly rolled over. No one was hurt and the boat was back at the dock within two hours.

There is very little structural damage to the wing but a lot of the “skin” of the wing came off. Our team will help ACRM get the wing repaired and back out onto the water asap. A cyclone is approaching Auckland and is due to hit later Wednesday so it will probably be after that when Artemis can get back to sailing the Prototype.

The team are going to make a “playbook” on the capsize. Yes, even in a unfortunate situation, there is a lot to learn. Hopefully if this happens again, we will be able to right the boat without losing the skin. One thing for sure, it was good it was a 72 footer capsizing today.

Simultaneous to the activities down here, Terry Hutchinson and part of the Artemis Racing team are in Oman racing the first Extreme 40 event of the year. This is a very nice reward for a lot of hard work by our team to up-skill in multihulls. Our team has put in a lot of hard work to get up to speed in multihulls and have been there training for almost three weeks.

Paul

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