Update from Dubai

For the past three days I have been working on the World Sailing Teams Association (WSTA) and the Louis Vuitton Trophy regattas that will be held over the next 12 months. I represent the Artemis Racing Team and last November, during the Louis Vuitton Trophy in Nice, I was elected Chairman of this association of team owners.

Friday WSTA had meetings in Paris with representatives of all the member teams to focus on marketing and commercial issues. We also held a competitors meeting to talk about the organization of the Louis Vuitton Trophy Auckland which will be held in March. Then on Saturday morning we had a WSTA board meeting.

Saturday afternoon, a group of us including Yves Carcelle, Chairman and CEO of Louis Vuitton, flew to Dubai where we arrived at 0100 this morning. Then today at 1000, we participated in a press conference today to announce Dubai as the Middle East venue selected to host the Louis Vuitton Trophy this coming November. HH Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al-Maktoum, Chairman DIMC and Chairman & Chief Executive Emirates Airline and Group, hosted the press conference and confirmed his support for the Louis Vuitton Trophy and his enthusiasm to host sailing’s elite racing teams.

The Louis Vuitton Trophy regattas use four 85-foot America’s Cup Class yachts in a Match Racing format. Ten Teams – sailed by world champions, America’s Cup winners, Olympic medalists and round-the-world sailors – will compete in Dubai this November. The countries represented by these teams are: Sweden, France, Italy, New Zealand, Great Brittan, Russia and Germany.

The event will be held at Mina Seyahi, the home of Dubai International Marine Club (DIMC) next to the Palm Jumeirah, while Emirates Airline – a leading sponsor – will be flying in many of teams and their support staff, as well as race officials and spectators from around the globe.

Dubai is a great venue for sailing with excellent wind and moderate temperatures in November. The hospitality here is ‘gold star’. I am sure it will be a fantastic event.

Tonight, I am flying back to the United States. I fly a great deal but this has been a record four days. Not quite sure what time it is. I will be back in Dubai mid-February for the next RC 44 regatta.

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LOUIS VUITTON AND WSTA ANNOUNCE REGATTAS FOR 2010

The World Sailing Teams Association (WSTA) and Louis Vuitton today announced more Louis Vuitton Trophy regattas for 2010 and early 2011. Each Louis Vuitton Trophy regatta is a stand-alone regatta sailed in event-supplied 85- foot long AC Class yachts that require a crew of 17 top sailors to sail. The regatta concept is designed to transform a port venue, regardless of its previous sailing culture, into the capital of professional yacht racing for two weeks, along with all the associated activities and excitement, on and off the water. The schedule for the next events covers four distinctly different parts of the world:

Louis Vuitton Trophy Auckland: March 9-21, 2010
Louis Vuitton Trophy La Maddalena, Sardinia: May 22 – June 6, 2010
Louis Vuitton Trophy Middle East: November 13-28, 2010
Louis Vuitton Trophy Hong Kong: January 9-24, 2011

The venue in The Middle East is embargoed until January 15, 2010. Newly-elected WSTA board Chairman Paul Cayard commented: “The Louis Vuitton Trophy is gaining momentum following the great regattas held in Auckland and Nice in 2009 and I really believe 2010 is going to be an even better year for our teams, their crews and supporters.”

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Louis Vuitton Trophy – Nice, France

Artemis ended the Nice event with a loss today against All4One. It was a close race but the French/German team had the upper hand at the first cross and they did a nice job to protect their lead.

Two matches were completed early this morning in the northerly drainage wind. In those matches, Emirates Team New Zealand scored a come-from-behind win over Synergy in the last 100 meters of the race as the wind was dying and the boats sailed downwind into a very large sea rolling in from the east. In the other match, BMW Oracle handed Team French Spirit-Pages Jaune a loss in what was never really a close race.

Then we had the long wait as the wind transitioned to the easterly. We had a few issues on our boat before the start with a broken mainsail batten but we finally got underway around 1330. After our race, Emirates Team New Zealand and Synergy raced again and it was Synergy who took the win in a very close race with a few penalties being given to Emirates Team New Zealand. In fact, there was contact in one situation and the jury penalized Emirates Team New Zealand 1 point and Synergy 1/2 a point. So currently, Synergy leads that semi final with a score of 1/2 to 0.

In the other semi final, Azzurra was over the start line early and made things easy on TeamOrigin. So that semi final is tied 1-1.

Racing continues for the top four tomorrow but the bottom four are finished.

Artemis finishes up in 7th which is not what we were aiming for. But we have made a good investment in our future by getting the team together and competing here. We have learned a lot and will be stronger in New Zealand in March for it.

I am off to Dubai tomorrow with Robbie Naismith, Marco Constant and Jared Henderson where we will race next week on Katusha, the RC 44, with the rest of our team.

Despite the difficult conditions here with the wind in Nice, it has been a fantastic event and all the sailors have enjoyed the racing. This morning, at 0730, there was a line of people right out of the village gate waiting to get on the spectator boat list. Not bad for the middle of November!

Thanks to Louis Vuitton and the city of Nice for all of their support!

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A hundred feet up at Fifty

Going up the mast is a young man’s job, or it was thought to be until this regatta when Paul Cayard, aged 50, went up the rig for the first time in his career as windspotter for Artemis…

As the skipper, or ‘team captain’ as he prefers to call himself, Paul Cayard could probably have put himself anywhere in the afterguard of the boat, his feet safely on deck. Instead, he banished himself to the windspotter’s position a hundred feet above deck.

“The view is beautiful, but the boat sure does look skinny from up there,” said Cayard after his first foray up the rig. It goes without saying that you need a head for heights, but you also need to be ready to take the knocks. Every time the boat crashes through a wave, the top of the mast is moving arcing back and forth by a matter of metres. Hanging on is not easy, and bruises are inevitable.

So why is the oldest man on the boat the one who gets hoisted up the mast? Cayard laughs and describes his new role as “a man facing up to his mid-life crisis”. More seriously, he continues: “We talked about it for a while and we decided for Artemis that it would be better to have Terry [Hutchinson] be the helmsman. Morgan [Larson] is his tactician in the Quantum Racing TP52 campaign they’ve been doing.

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Louis Vuitton Trophy – Nice, France

Only one race was completed today and that was a semi final match between Azzurra and Origin. The Italians continue to sail well beat the Brits by over a minute to take a 1-0 lead in their best of three series.

No other racing took place. We have struggled here a bit with the wind but it is the end on November in the northern hemisphere.

We are first up tomorrow with a 0830 start which means 0730 dock out. We race All4One in a one race knock out. The winner of our race will race the winner of BMW Oracle-French Spirit for 5th place.

We had a few meetings today one of which was the shareholders of the World Sailing Teams Association. We had a very good meeting that included planning for next year. The Auckland event in March and Sardinia event in May were confirmed. We are working on two more and they will be confirmed by the end of the year.

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Louis Vuitton Trophy – Nice, France

One win and one loss for Artemis again today. The bad news is that Synergy beat Azzurra so that ended our hopes of being in the top four and going onto the semi finals.

Artemis beat French Spirit PagesJaune in our first race of the day. There was a 6 tack tacking duel up the first windward leg and an interesting obstacle in the form of Azzurra and Synergy coming downwind on starboard tack. All four boats got very close at one moment and we lost the tight grip we had on the French while keeping clear of the starboard tack boats coming downwind. But we managed to maintain control and lead around the top mark and stretched from there. Synergy locked that match with Azzurra, when the Italians spinnaker exploded on the final run to the finish.

In our final match of the second Round Robin, we faced BMW Oracle. We got the right side of the course that we wanted off the start. This gave us starboard tack right of way at each intersection as the boats come together about 10 times up the first 1.5 mile beat. On the last one, BMW Oracle was able to live to windward of us on port tack and pin us out to the starboard tack lay line. We had to follow them into the windward mark and we never got a chance to take back the lead.

So, we ended the two round robins (shortened round robin 2) with a 5-6 record and finished in 5th place, BMW Oracle 6th, All4One 7th and French Spirit PagesJaune 8th. The four of us will race a knockout series later in the week to determine our final placings.

There is still one more match to be raced in round robin 2 which will take place tomorrow and pits Synergy against Team New Zealand.

Wednesday will be a maintenance day and starting Thursday the top four will race there best of three semi finals series.

For complete results go to www.louisvuittontrophy.com.

Also please visit the Artemis team site www.artemisracing.com.

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Louis Vuitton Trophy – Nice, France

One win and one loss for Artemis today. The bad news is that we lost to Synergy who are on a bit of a roll. We beat All4One so they are definitely out of the top four.

Synergy then went on to defeat TeamOrigin in the third flight of the day, so now they are one point ahead of us and our tie breaking advantage has gone away as we both have beaten TeamOrigin.

In the Synergy match, we were just ahead on the first windward leg, not clear ahead, but with starboard tack rights as we came together for the second time. We tacked to leeward of Synergy as there was 4 times as much port to be sailed as starboard. We call that 4 to 1. However, we were not able to close up to them on the long port tack and we ended up following them into the windward mark. Approaching the leeward mark, we had closed a lot and almost crossed ahead of them. However, they were able to gybe inside of us and make the left gate mark. We may have not made the perfect tactical decision here as we could not quite pull off the pass. Once they rounded ahead of us, that was pretty much it.

Against All4One, we had a split tack start with us out to the right. This means that when we come together we have the power of starboard tack. We forced them away once and then the second time, they shot through to leeward of us as we completed out tack onto port. There were many protest flags flown here by both boats. There was a green (no penalty) by the umpires for the first incident, our tack, and then a penalty on us for the second incident, probably windward/leeward. Terry is at the umpire debrief so we will find out exactly what they saw and why we were penalized.

Anyway, we sailed well from there as the wind died considerably. I was up at the top of the rig most of this race and it was a very rough ride because there is a fairly large southwest swell running. Morgan Larson did a nice job calling the shots on the last lap and we stretched enough to comfortably get the penalty turn in at the finish line and take the win.

BMW Oracle lost both of their matches today against Team New Zealand and TeamOrigin so they are not looking good for the semi finals. BMW Oracle were well ahead of TeamOrigin in the first race of the day but lost the lead when they did not cover TeamOrigin and left them on their own going right. TeamOrigin got a big shift over there and passed BMW Oracle to take the win in that race.

There are three flights left. Team New Zealand, and TeamOrigin are very safe in for the semi finals and Team New Zealand will win the Round Robins and therefore chose their opponent for the semis. With Synergy beating us and TeamOrigin, we have our work cut out for us to get into the semis. I think they have to lose both (they face Team NZ and Azzurra) while we have to win both (BMW and French Spirit). If they only lose one and we win both we will tie and I am not sure yet how that gets broken. In any case, all we can control is the races we are in so we have to go out and win two tomorrow.

For complete results go to www.louisvuittontrophy.com and the team’s site www.artemisracing.com.

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Louis Vuitton Trophy – Nice, France

We had a good day today and we never got on the water! Our Russian friends on Synergy did nice work beating BMW Oracle so we ended Round Robin 1 in fourth place thanks to the fact that we beat TeamOrigin. That was the tie breaker between Artemis, BMW Oracle and Synergy who all had 3 points at the end of RR1.

So, in theory, that should give us a slightly easier schedule in Round Robin 2 which has been shortened to 4 races for each team. However, as we saw today with French Spirit PagesJaune with no wins in Round Robin won beat Azzurra, any team can beat any other team on any given day so nothing is easy about racing here. The wind was again very light and fickle.

In the other matches, Team New Zealand beat All4One while French Spirit PagesJaune beat Azzurra. Then TeamOrigin beat French Spirit PagesJaune, while All4One beat Azzurra. The Italians had a bad day!

We start out in the first flight tomorrow against Synergy and then we race in the second flight of the day against All4One. Both will be tough matches and the weather forecast for the next two days is for very light and tricky conditions. Furthermore, a southwesterly swell is expected to build up to 3 feet so I am thinking about my ride at 100 feet and how that may get a bit uncomfortable. I am getting more body armor.

For complete results and even live streaming of the races go to www.louisvuittontrophy.com and the team’s site www.artemisracing.com.

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Louis Vuitton Trophy – Nice, France

We had one race today and it was important. We raced BMW Oracle and if we had won, it would have put us in fourth place after Round Robin 1.

We knew the importance of this race and we were doing a great job half way through. Terry had gotten another great start and Morgan and Kevin did a great job of controlling the race. We rounded the first windward mark with a 20 second lead.

On the first run we suffered a hydraulic failure and lost all of our hydraulic controls. So we sailed up the second windward leg at about 93% of full speed. They got ahead of us and rounded the second windward mark about 2 boat lengths in front of us. We closed a bit on the run but they managed to hang on.

That was very frustrating to lose a race we had in hand through equipment failure. Did anyone else notice that it was Friday the 13th?

Now the Race Management Committee has decided to modify the format of the event. There will not be a complete 2nd round robin. Rather they had decided to pit the top four boats against the bottom four boats. So this will result in each team only sailing 4 matches over the next four days rather than the 7 we were supposed to sail. This is because the committee thinks it is unlikely that we could complete the full round robin give the current weather forecast.

So there is now a huge difference between being 4th or 5th after round robin 1. If you are 4th you race only 5-8. If you are 5th you race only 1-4.

There is one more match to finish from round robin 1 and that is between Synergy and BMW Oracle. If Synergy wins that race, Artemis will end up fourth. All three teams, Synergy, BMW Oracle and Artemis will be tied on 3 wins, an unbreakable tie, so it will go to the team who beat the highest placing team not involved in the tie. And that is us because we beat TeamOrigin.

So let’s keep our fingers crossed for our Russian friends tomorrow morning!

For complete results and even live streaming of the races go to www.louisvuittontrophy.com and the team’s site www.artemisracing.com.

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Louis Vuitton Trophy – Nice, France

More of the same today in Nice. Clear skies, cold temps in the morning leading to Northerly drainage winds for the first race, then a long pause while the wind switched to the Southwest. The wind never filled very strong from the SW today so there was only one race held in the afternoon.

In the morning race, we had TeamOrigin as our opponent. Artemis helmsman, Terry Hutchinson, did and excellent job against TeamOrigin Helmsman Ben Ainslie and won the start convincingly. We were ahead from that point on and the afterguard did a nice job of protecting and extending our lead. We were never threatened and went on to win the race by 45 seconds.

In the other match of the morning, Team New Zealand beat BMW Oracle.

Once the wind shifted to the southwest, one flight was held. In the first match, Synergy did a nice job to win the start over French Spirit leading from the start. In the second match, All4One had the early lead off the line but was on the left side of the course leaving Azzurra to the right. At the first cross Azzurra had the lead. Azzurra then let All4One get to the right of them where they promptly took over the lead and led comfortably around the windward mark. Down the run, All4One forgot how good the right was and gybed away from that side letting Azzurra have it and Azzurra promptly passed All4One. At this point, Azzurra recognized that the right was better and kept it going on to win that match.

We got in our boat and prepared for the third flight of the day which would have featured Artemis against BMW Oracle and Team New Zealand against TeamOrigin. However, it was decided that the wind was too weak at 5-6 knots, so we never raced. Those two matches will be first up tomorrow. Following that, there is just one match to be held and then Round Robin one will be completed. We start Round Robin 2 on Saturday.

Tomorrow night there will be the Louis Vuitton party. They are always special.

For complete results and even live streaming of the races go to www.louisvuittontrophy.com and the team’s site www.artemisracing.com.

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