Team Seacats

The Appellate Division of the New York court system shocked the sailing community yesterday with a complete reversal of the America’s Cup case of GGYC (BMW/Oracle) vs. SNG (Alinghi). In a nutshell, three out of the five judges deemed that Justice Cahn’s ruling to date were null and void and reinstated CNEV (Spain) back in as the official Challenger of Record (COR). Nobody was ready for this ruling and I don’t believe that CNEV, the yacht club, technically exists anymore after they disconnected their phone, removed their board of directors, and admitted they were a legal adjustment put in place just for the America’s Cup.

The judges went back to the word “having” and determined that in this sentence from the Deed of Gift (DoG) that the wording is ambiguous and does not necessarily mean that the club must have already had regattas as Justice Cahn had determined. Because it was deemed ambiguous, they went back to precedent and determined that clubs that did not meet this requirement were allowed to compete in years past in the challenger series – Alinghi is one of them. Alinghi has never been the official Challenger of Record but competed in, and won, the challenger series and beat New Zealand in the finals several years ago.

Any organized Yacht Club of a foreign country, incorporated, patented, or licensed by the legislature, admiralty, or other executive department, having for its annual regatta an ocean water course on the sea, or on an arm of the sea, or one which combines both, shall always be entitled to the right of sailing a match of this Cup…

The dust is still settling from the surprising result and while some commentary I’ve read questioned the ability of the judges to make some of the leaps they did, the fact that two of the three judges strongly dissented the ruling automatically gives BMW/Oracle the right to appeal the decision. The BMW camp is “evaluating their options” at the moment and Alinghi is touting justification of everything to date. It’s undoubtedly a black eye for BMW but I do think we’ll see them file a strong appeal. Rumour has it that their DoG Monster catamaran/trimaran is mostly ready for launch…but now it has no event….for the moment….