Fisher's View: What price an America's Cup handbag?

6:13 PM Mon 8 Feb 2010 GMT

'Bob Fisher' Daniel Forster

Bob Fisher reviews the first day's 'racing' in the 33rd America's Cup:

The handbags were hung from the hooks for the morning, not required for what it was proposed to do from before daylight until the early afternoon. The seconds were called out and the ring cleared for action. But that was as far as it went. The start was scheduled for 1006 CET, but at 1330 the handbags were lifted from the hooks and the 'ladies who lunch' got on with the real business of the day. There was no fight today.

What now seems likely is that there will not be a race until Sunday, if the tales of the seaweed watchers are to be given any credit. Whichever way they hang them, the outlook is as gloomy meteorologically as the overcast skies of a February day in eastern Spain.

The strict adherence to the Deed of Gift in matters of the racing was modified slightly, but only to make scheduling racing even more inflexible than George Schuyler had in mind when he prepared the trust deed in 1887. Happily his was an era of greater pragmatism than is being displayed in the early 21st century - where difficulties existed, they were overcome the hard way.

In today's world there is a permanent danger of information overload. In exactly the same conditions the race committees of yesteryear would have dropped a buoy at the weather mark and steamed downwind for twenty miles, set up the starting line and proceeded to hold the race.

By contrast, the SNG race committee set up the starting line and then discovered there was a considerable shift in the wind. The race committee vessel was moved and a new start laid, but then radio communication with a weather mark team indicated that the wind there was different in strength and slightly in direction. It should have been enough, but it wasn't.

Consult the Deed where the wording (Schuyler's own) is simple: 'In case the parties cannot mutually agree upon the terms of the match then the three races shall be sailed and the winner of two such races shall be entitled to the Cup. All such races shall be on ocean courses, free from headlands, as follows: The first race, twenty nautical miles to windward and return: the second race, an equilateral triangle race of thirty nine nautical miles, the first side of which will be a beat to windward . . .'

Where in that does it say that it has to be exactly to windward? That must have come from a piece of paper folded among the credit card receipts. Schuyler would have been riled by the inadequacy of decision. He nowhere indicated that the leg had to be held in the same strength wind, nor that it had to be steady.

There has been little mutual consent in the arrangements for this America's Cup, but one item seeks to prolong the action longer than necessary. It's contained in Sailing Instruction 5.4, which says: 'If a race is cancelled, abandoned or postponed that race will be sailed on the next scheduled date and the subsequent races shall be postponed accordingly.'

In that edict from the handbags, the organisers have been guaranteed the need for further help from those containers - Aspirin for the headache they have caused. There was simply no need for that and there could otherwise have been sailing on Tuesday 9th. Now it would seem that the 'ladies who lunch' will have a free run for a few days as the forecast weather looks to be unfavourable for the racing of these behemoths over a Deed of Gift course.

Handbags to the fore - can someone take me to lunch? I have free days on Tuesday Thursday and Saturday.

by Bob Fisher

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Fisher's View: What price an America's Cup handbag?

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