Team Seacats

For your holiday treat, you can have your way with a few people that, in the opinion of Team Seacats, have contributed negatively this past year.  Click on the “shotgun” below to do that.  A few other fun interactive things are linked below as well.  Happy New Year!

First UP!  Ernesto Bertarelli who has imprisoned the America’s Cup into legal battle and delay…but who may ultimately guarantee that the world see two monster catamarans duking it out in 2009 (but not through his direct action).

Second UP!  The voting sheet from the ISAF meeting where the multihull was eliminated from the Olympics.  Bomb’s Away!

It’s hard to believe anything coming out of the SNG/Alinghi camp. They clearly stated earlier that should the New York Court case go against them that they would not contest the ruling. Two days ago, a new lawfirm for Alinghi filed papers seeking to “renew and re-argue” the case before the New York State Supreme Court effectively causing yet another delay in some agreement toward the next America’s Cup Contest. Having enough of this, and reciting multiple attempts to negotiate a mutual consent challenge since Justice Cahn’s decision, GGYC feels that it is time to move on. They are stating that they no longer desire to negotiate a mutual consent challenge and are committed to challenge under the basic rules of the Deed of Gift (DoG Challenge)…big MF’n catamaran boys and girls….we’re going to have big cats and a metric ton of bitterness on the water in a best out of long leg three race series. Although I believe it is likely that one team will likely show a large advantage over the other, it’s going to be a contest full of drama and with a lot of coverage.

Assuming that the SNG/Alinghi recent claims to re-examine the ruling are as hollow as they sound, the next thing we should hear from the courts will likely give Alinghi a time frame to meet GGYC on the water on a 90 foot X 90 foot sailing vessel or forfeit the Cup.

I stole this title from the Rule69 blog in reference to Francis Joyon.  He has less than 200 miles to go to reach Cape Horn and is an astonishing 9 days ahead of Ellen’s record now.  We are witnessing some major history in the making in that Francis is single handedly approaching the fully crewed RTW record pace.  We are not worthy.  What would the mariners of yore, who risked their lives sailing in these southern latitudes, have to say about such astonishing single-handed speed?

Reminder; the IDEC site is HERE.

According to BYM News, Francis Joyon on his IDEC sponsored trimaran has been dealing with survival conditions for the last 24 hours in the Southern Ocean.  Chunks of icebergs bob around in the 6 to 7 meter waves (that’s up to 22 feet) while the trimaran struggles to maintain orientation down the wave faces with no sails up and up to 50 knots of wind…only 20 knots shy of hurricane force.  Joyon has not slept much but reports that he is happy as long as the boat continues to make progress and at this point, he’s still making peaks of 20 knots of boat speed. He’s not looking forward to colossal effort required to grind the huge mainsail back up the mast but certainly will be appreciative of the easier sailing conditions to allow him to attend to some outstanding minor maintenance tasks.  He has roughly 1000 miles to go to Cape Horn and is now nearly 8 days ahead of Ellen’s record.

We’ve admired this project for a couple of years here at Team Seacats – and I’m happy to report that the boys in the UK have finally gotten Sailrocket to start showing some potential.  They seem to have finally gotten the handling issues worked out and have broken 40 knots.  Can they get it to 50 and break the world record for a water-borne wind powered vessel?