Rules over crashes unclear on eve of Cup
Management still to confirm what redress teams have if rival competitor is at fault
America's Cup race management is yet to confirm what redress the teams will have if they suffer damage through the fault of another team during racing.
The potential for a collision to have a catastrophic impact on a team's campaign was highlighted during last week's practice racing, when Emirates Team New Zealand were forced off the water for two days after sustaining a punctured hull when they were rear-ended by Ben Ainslie Racing.
The setback was minimised with the help of the weather gods, with light air in Bermuda preventing the other teams from getting any racing while Team NZ were in the shed.
But there are concerns that with the crews racing up to twice a day during the regatta, which gets under way on Saturday, one strike could end a team's campaign.
Team NZ chief operating officer Kevin Shoebridge said America's Cup Race Management (ACRM) are close to finalising the terms for redress if a team suffers damage through the fault of another.
“A lot of those things have been discussed for a long time now — probably over a year and a half. It's very close to being sorted, and hopefully there will be some concessions made if you're the innocent party and you're taken out in a situation like that,” said Shoebridge, who described the likely concessions as “meaningful”.
“It will be enough to get your boat repaired and back on the racecourse. Take the incident we had last week, we couldn't have done a proper repair, but we could have done enough to get it out there in 24 hours.”
But regardless of what opportunity for redress there will be, there is still a threat damage could decide the America's Cup. The reliability of the super high-tech catamarans has proven to be a key challenge for most of the teams in the build-up to racing, with small mistakes having the ability to cause serious headaches.
“There's going to be no delays for start times or racing the next day if you have damage brought on by yourself as such or have a breakdown or malfunction — that's too bad, racing will go on.
“So the reliability is becoming a big, big issue,” Shoebridge said.
“If you're racing two races a day, and you have a breakdown — you can see some big problems. So I think all the teams are working very hard trying to lock down what you've got and trying to make sure they're reliable.”
Team NZ pulled out of their final practice race yesterday against BAR after a “soft touch” on their foils.
There were no reports of damage but the decision to quit, while holding a strong lead over the British boat, highlighted how racing could be drastically affected by the most random of issues — including debris in the water.
Dana Johannsen travelled to Bermuda with the assistance of Emirates Airlines.
The closer the America's Cup gets, the more I fear for Team New Zealand's chances of keeping their campaign afloat.
The reason: the spectre of that Ben Ainslie Racing-caused crash last week — when the Brits ploughed into the TNZ boat causing considerable damage — won't go away.
A repeat to any boat could sink this single-vessel America's Cup quest, and in a packed schedule the difficult question of how to punish an offender and restore the innocent party appears to remain unanswered with racing just days away.
It's too easy to wash that “incident” away and see it in black and white terms, of Ainslie either acting deliberately or not. In reality, like a lot of life, there is far more grey than black and white.
First question: If Ainslie had been in exactly the same position, and regatta overlords Oracle Team USA had been in TNZ's place, would the crash have occurred?
The answer, I would contend, lies somewhere between no and unlikely.
New Zealand correctly portrays itself as the lone wolf in Bermuda — it's hard to find anyone who disputes that — with the other challengers in various degrees of cahoots with defenders Oracle.
That TNZ are the only victims of a crash so far only heightens fears that they are in the greatest danger. But for Ainslie's misjudgment, I would have dismissed the crash fears as unwarranted. But that severe smash was a shock which turned into a reality check.
Which doesn't mean that Ainslie set out to ram TNZ, or even had a moment of madness.
But the brain works in funny ways, as in people take a little more care with their gleaming new motor compared to when they are rattling around town in a wreck of a panelbeater courtesy car. You're not trying to crash either, but not all crash possibilities are created equal. And Ainslie got away with it.
Put it this way: if you were setting odds on the team most likely to be undone by a crash in Bermuda, TNZ would pay the least. And the odds on a crash are high, because this is knifeedge, power-packed racing using technology and design which is still fully capable of leaving the sailors behind, or in the drink.
This isn't just an America's Cup. It's also a testing facility. For Bermuda, read a softer version of the Edwards Air Force Base, a patch of desert where America broke a lot of barriers, and killed a lot of test pilots. Any time off the water, for repairs, is development opportunity lost.
And a couple of these America's Cup challengers could be loose cannons on finding they have no hope of staying on the pace.
The 35th America's Cup could go many ways, but what comes next is as fascinating as what comes now. Already, there are rumours that