Aucklanders ready to host Cup again

Wharf extension from Viaduct would provide a suitable site for syndicates to be based

The enjoyable British invasion of Auckland this week is a reminder that when the Lions’ tour is over, the city has no more comparable events on its calendar. What better reason, then, than to bring back the America’s Cup.

Ever since Emirates Team New Zealand went 3- 0 up in the finals last weekend, we have all been trying not to count our chickens before they are hatched. Remember San Francisco. But we have failed. With Dennis Conner and just about everyone else involved in sailing telling us Peter Burling and his boat have the edge, and there is little Oracle Team USA can do to catch up, we have started looking ahead.

The first chicken to count is where the “village” could be. The favoured site for syndicate bases, we report today, is a wharf extension from the Viaduct, already planned but not scheduled. Protruding into the harbour, it would need to be of significant size to hold the barns and boat- launching facilities each syndicate would need. But it would be close enough to the Viaduct and the Wynyard Quarter to use them as “party central” for the Cup.

It is thanks to Team NZ’s first tenure of the America’s Cup that the Viaduct exists as we know it. Sir Peter Blake put pressure on public bodies to fund a purpose- built base for the defence and the former Auckland City Council’s urban designers did the rest, ensuring it was a pleasant public place. Their work inspired, and was exceeded by, the design of North Wharf in the Wynyard Quarter. When it is remembered how much the America’s Cup did for Auckland the first time it was here, a return visit would be welcomed.

Last time it was raced in monohulls in the Hauraki Gulf on a course visible from clifftops along the East Coast Bays. Now it is raced in foiling catamarans on shorter courses inside harbours. Next time there might be possibilities for many more vantage points around the Waitemata. But Team NZ have not yet given much detail of how they would use the defender’s rights to dictate the terms of the event. They could even put the contest back into monohulls though if they have mastered the flying catamarans better than any team at Bermuda, why would they?

Almost certainly, they would change Oracle’s plan to start holding the regatta every two years rather than four. Two years would not be enough to get facilities planned, approved and built in Auckland. But there will be commercial reasons for Oracle’s proposal. To keep enough entrants in the event, sponsors have to be satisfied and sailors kept employed. Team NZ would need to meet those considerations too.

Oracle and its other challengers found Auckland too far to come for one of the preliminary regattas of this America’s Cup. The cost to prospective challengers would also have to be high in Team NZ’s considerations. For that reason alone, they should not contemplate a rule that boats have to be built in the syndicate’s home country. Oracle and its sister entry, Softbank, were largely built at the Warkworth factory we visit in the paper today, as were important bits of the other boats.

The America’s Cup is already a New Zealand industry and ought to remain so. But none of this will be on the minds of Burling and his crew this weekend.

Go Kiwis.

When it is remembered how much the America’s Cup did for Auckland the first time it was here, a return visit would be welcomed.