I know this document is a little bit of reading.
But I was amazed about how accurate the analysis was BEFORE everything happened.
It seems that these guys know a thing or two about the whole AC universe.
G’day, Andy. Russell is sharp, no question about it. Paul Cayard’s insights are interesting too. I see Paul was predicting a 5 to 3 win for Alinghi, before the semi-finals, so maybe his thinking was that there was no major design breakthrough.
Wonder how he’d predict the result now, given that ETNZ does not seem to be that far behind Alinghi, if at all and that the Kiwi’s have proved they can get up off the mat and come back with a knock-out punch!
I have to say the waiting to find out is driving me NUTS! Cheers, David G
G’day guys. I’ve a creative block right now, so I’m having a bit of a rest from work. Not that work has got in the way of my enjoying this 32nd AC at all – after all, one must maintain correct priorities in life, right?
Anyway, possibly some of you weren’t even around when I first took up my interest in this wonderfully ‘friendly’ competition between nations, back in 1967. I had a teacher in college (secondary school in NZ) who was Australian and he knew of my interest in sailing. He said to me, “Do you think Dame Pattie can beat Intrepid in the America’s Cup?”
Say what?
She didn’t of course and here I am some 40 years later asking myself that same question, “Do I think ETNZ will beat Alinghi?” “HELL YES, I reply!” Ha, ha
The more things change the more they stay the same, it would seem. Cheers, David G.
David G,
That’s the cool thing about the AC the speculation previous to the actual match has . That’s why I’m not that keen on the new version (Acts and all) The AC has to be a clash of a Defender and a Challenger. All the extras… well… thanks but no thanks.
And a question to you: As you said I was not around in 1967, how did you and your teacher get the news about the Americas Cup in those days?
G’day Andy. On the radio. The National Station I think it was. Speaking of ‘extras’, it was an old ‘valve’ job he had in the classroom (a bit like the ones you still find going strong in cow sheds around the country today! ha, ha. Just results of course – no live coverage or even race updates.
I think transistor radios were around in those days, but only just – as big as a bread box mind and they needed a truck load of torch batteries to keep em going for a couple of hours! Very high-tech world it was back then. Ha, ha. We had a black & white TV at home but I don’t recall ever seeing anything on TV about it. You’ll probably be amazed to hear we used to catch a steam train to school in those days too!! Hehehe.
But Dame Pattie and Intrepid were state-of-the art 12 metre yachts I seem to recall. How cool! How excruciatingly exciting to a young P Class sailor of the day. Cheers, David G.
Cheers for the reply David G
I actually was born in small country town (population 5000) and my father had to travel quite a bit to go to school too… So I know what you mean.
I reckon that no matter what they do with the show The America’s Cup will always be exciting for yachties around the world and every time a Team New Zealand (or may be two in the future) is part of it, the whole country gets excited (minus a bunch of fools that can not see how good this is for NZ)
I must say, I’m a bit surprised at the fuss being made about nationality. After all, isn’t this entire event a contest between Kiwis at the expense of sundry hopefulls?
Was there any boat in the LV which didn’t have Kiwis in significant positions? Doesn’t that say that NZ IS the dominant sailing nation of the world?
Branding NZ just can’t get any better…although having a major Pommy supermarket chain refuse to sell top-quality NZ lamb, in favour of Pommy goat-meat, which they pass off as lamb, will also help.
You see, we’re all Team New Zealand; some just do ‘team’ a bit harder than others. But that’s okay. That’s the nature of all nations. It’s just that we seem to have way more than our fair-share of team players.
Hell’s teeth! Look at the roll-call of Kiwi world greatsi n medicine, sports, industry, science.
Do you not all see that ETNZ was and is up against the might, the money, and the dogmatism of nearly 2 billion people, against our 4 million.
The Mouse Which Roared.
ROAR LOUDLY ETNZ. Win lose or draw, you’re whanau!
And stop bitching, Ernie. What are you, man or mouse? ‘Pass the cheese, please.’))
Thanks for the document Andy.
I have printed it out, brought it home and am gonna set my pitifully feeble mind to reading it over the weekend.
Im with you regarding the preliminiary Acts Andy.
The only thing that concerns me is that if the Acts are now removed, there is less exposure for sponsors than previosuly and that may cause some of the new entries to shy away from the event.
I REALLY wish that whoever wins the AC will bring back the MUCH longer round robin series of previous cups. I know it means less sleep for us if its held overseas, but dammit 6 weeks of AC just aint enuff!!!
The Acts are pretty much guaranteed to stay considering there is pretty much nobody who doesn’t like them. In terms of sticking points it’s pretty much just the nationality rules and the length of the cup cycle that people can’t agree on.
“Branding NZ just can’t get any better”: That’s exactly what a sixth of the planet reads when they shot the jib of the kiwi boats with the cameras… a brand, NEW ZEALAND
NZ is a dominant sailing nation is the world no doubt about that. Think Withbread, AC, Jules Verne Trophy, (bloody elusive) Sydney to Hobart. any attemp to break a world record has a kiwi on board any major sailing event HAS to have kiwis.
ok guys, weekend upon us. see you all on Monday
I’ve been thinking about the AC and the various hosts since San Diego…a host which hardly bothered with fineries.
Look at the bucks spent on Perth, on Auckland, and now on Valencia. Essentially tax-payer bucks plastered on an empty promise.
Leonard Cohen’s song “The Stranger” comes to mind, with the line (MOL) ‘I folded my cards and left and didn’t even leave you laughter.’
Isn’t that the financial tyranny which besets each modern AC host nation?
The spenders of tax spend on these great accompts, but the tax-payer pays. During the event a great time is had by all…..all few thousand souls who front up to the physical location….while millions more watch the TV.
So how many million of Spanish tax-payers bucks have gone into Valencia?
What did the Spanish tax-payer get for this? A flash environemnt which, after June whatever, will become nothing more than a playground for the ultra-rich…who have a habit of paying less tax than the ultra-poor.
But the luminaries in local Valencia government, as the luminaries in local Auckland government, spend the millions because they can, and it all makes them feel good, while they sell the tax-payers the crap about the trickle-down theory.
At least, in San Deigo, when Bertrand took the AC off Connor, and the morons from the SDYC turned their backs on Australia 2 as she came home for the winning mile,. At least, they didn’t spoend gazillions of tax-payer’s dollars on an ultra-flash, never-to-be-used-again complex.
Since Perth, it’s always been the same. ‘We MUST present to the world our economic prowess!!!’ And so gazillions of dollars are spent by bureaucrats at the expense of every tax-payer…which includes the 70% who don’t give a big rats arse for the AC.
It’s we addicts, we 30% who profit at the expense of the 70% who don’t. Yet the bureaucrats…who want to build their little pyramid on the sands of poverty….who buy into this crap.
Did you know that Spain is ‘almost’ a third-world country? That their povertyy levels are inconceivable to the average Kiwi?
Will The AC, and the Gazillions spentr at Valencia help them out of the hole? Answer, ‘NO.’
Why do the hosts seems to thibnk they have to do bigger and better than the last hosts? Answer? Simple. Bureaucrats want to spend ‘our’ (read globally) our money to make themselves feel better.
In Auckland, we didn’t need the Gazillion-dollar Viaduct reclamation to host the AC,. There were buckets of places each team could have set up camp.
But, oh no. The bureaucrats smelled the chance to ‘make a difference’ with our money, and promptly set up a facility which, today, is woefully under-used because the crowds don’t actually want to use it.
What did we get? A few flash bars, flash walk-ways for Africa, and elegant marina which few use cos it costs too much for the average boatie.
People. This crap has got to stop.
I’m an AC addict, and I have been since Bertrand came on the scene.
I don’t care who hosts tghe next AC cup, butv I’d kind’ve like to see the competiitors pay the entire price.
And if that means having a dorm at the Devonport YC, of any other YC in Auckland, then so be it. But if you competitors want flash, then front with the bucks for the flash.
These days, on most nights, you could fire a shotgun down the Viaduct and hit nobody.
In three weeks time you’ll be able to do the same at the flash Valencia Marina.
Meanwhile, the hotshots will have gone away asserting they made no promises about coming back.
The more I think about it, the more I realise the Stranger song is so apposite to the AC.
Firstly, the Aussies took the cup from Newport, not San Diego. The NYYC didn’t give a toss about the upstart LVC until the event caused them to loose the Cup, so no provisions at all were paid to the challengers.
Valencia is semi-autonomous, so the Spanish taxpayer wouldn’t have paid a cent. The citizens of Valencia are certainly interested in where their local body taxes have gone, of course. I guess the idea is that they wanted to encourage Ernesto to keep the Cup there for another go ‘after he won’ . Valencia also managed to score a Formula 1 round, so the city probably has plans for which the AC is means to an end.
Spain has it’s problems, but it isn’t as poor as you seem to be making out, especially not the eastern coast. Hell, New Zealanders only earn a fraction more than people in South Korea, but the only time you hear about us being a poor country is with politicians trying to score political points.
The reason for syndacate row in Auckland was Peter Blake dissatisfaction with the poor services for challengers in San Diego. Teams were spread over a huge area of rundown docklands, it took ages for participants to get around between the various places, and there wasn’t any sense of comradery or friendliness between teams. The stuff up on Halsey Street isn’t that fancy when you see it in the flesh, just a compact bunch of concrete and corrugated iron, but it worked wonderfully to bring all the teams together in one place and it was all surprisingly open to the public. The extra money Auckland businesses would have brought in would have paid for it all with a nice bonus leftover, which is more than can be said for many sporting events (you think the Rugby World Cup will generate a profit?)
Valencia’s America’s Cup village is certainly an extravagence and I’m not sure if it was wise considering that prior to Desafio getting in the semis most people barely regestered the event, but the place has certainly had a lot of visitors – over two million at last count – so who knows?
I agree with Carl, Spain is not so poor, and I think that to organize AC it has spent money to do the best…now it has got a modern part too!! Guys, please, don’t hate and offend me if I get wrong…I am here also to learn about the sailing world!
Hi David,
I wouldn’t say Spain is ‘almost’ a third-world country.
I think you have never been there recently if you talk like this.
They had a huge economic growth and progress in every field in the last decades. Spain is now among the best European countries to live in. Really.
Obviously (and sadly) as in most other (industrialized or not) countries, richness is not equally distributed.
And if you had seen Barcelona before the 1992 Olimpycs and see what it is now, maybe you could agree the not all the money spent around that event was wasted. People who live there could confirm.
I hope hosting the AC will be an investment for Valencia and Spain in general. (But I’ve not been there and I can’t tell how Valencia has gained)
This said, I agree with you that very often (and this is especially true here in Italy) bureaucrats spend (waste) our money, not in the interest of our country…
PS
It was in Newport, not in San Diego where Bertrand took the AC off Connor, in 1983. We reached the semis with “Azzurra” and even if I was a little boy I remember it was the first explosion of the AV fever in Italy )
You are right Carl.
And I’ve read that Azzurra beated once even Australia II during the RR.
I don’t know if it’s true, I just can’t find anything on the web.
It was then when I first understood I loved sailing boats and I started dreaming.
Twelve years later I bought an old, but fantastic to me, 470 dinghy.
Its name is “strider” (as in the Lord of the Rings) and (a bit renewed and with new sails) still sails with me on the Como Lake.
Don’t worry Vale, if you like to talk about sailing and you love New Zealand you are in the right place with the right people even if it seems to me you are the only girl in the blog!
I am only a young nipper compared to you fella’s, I was only 10 when KZ 7 was racing!!! 1992 was my first dose of cup “fever”.
One thing I think is quite cool is that the little P class I was sailing at the time represents a common link of kiwi yachtsmen of all ages.
Thank you Giulio, you’are very kind!!! Some years ago I took part on a regatta and I liked it very much. I attended some lessons about sailing… and I would like to learn more about that, starting from Auckland. I am ready to study a lot!
Vale
G’day Daniel. You’re right about the P Class. A super little yacht which has been a ‘trainer’ for pretty much all our top international yachtsmen and women. It’s a natural progression up from the Optimist these days. But it’s still a demanding little boat to sail well. Especially downwind in a blow I recall. Ha, ha. Cheers, David G
Gidday mates!!! Last news from Italy: yesterday I met a president of a roman sailing club and He told me that in September there will be a stop of the World Race in Fiumicino ( Rome). There will be James Spithill, Paolo Cian, and kiwis too!!!
Today I have watched on the BBc a report about LVC and AC…At the moment of ETNZ’s winning, Alinghi’s crew seemed to be happy…. Strange, eh???
David G., Good day!!! You are a real gentleman!
I know this document is a little bit of reading.
But I was amazed about how accurate the analysis was BEFORE everything happened.
It seems that these guys know a thing or two about the whole AC universe.
To me Russell Coutts article is the best one.
G’day, Andy. Russell is sharp, no question about it. Paul Cayard’s insights are interesting too. I see Paul was predicting a 5 to 3 win for Alinghi, before the semi-finals, so maybe his thinking was that there was no major design breakthrough.
Wonder how he’d predict the result now, given that ETNZ does not seem to be that far behind Alinghi, if at all and that the Kiwi’s have proved they can get up off the mat and come back with a knock-out punch!
I have to say the waiting to find out is driving me NUTS! Cheers, David G
G’day guys. I’ve a creative block right now, so I’m having a bit of a rest from work. Not that work has got in the way of my enjoying this 32nd AC at all – after all, one must maintain correct priorities in life, right?
Anyway, possibly some of you weren’t even around when I first took up my interest in this wonderfully ‘friendly’ competition between nations, back in 1967. I had a teacher in college (secondary school in NZ) who was Australian and he knew of my interest in sailing. He said to me, “Do you think Dame Pattie can beat Intrepid in the America’s Cup?”
Say what?
She didn’t of course and here I am some 40 years later asking myself that same question, “Do I think ETNZ will beat Alinghi?” “HELL YES, I reply!” Ha, ha
The more things change the more they stay the same, it would seem. Cheers, David G.
David G,
That’s the cool thing about the AC the speculation previous to the actual match has . That’s why I’m not that keen on the new version (Acts and all) The AC has to be a clash of a Defender and a Challenger. All the extras… well… thanks but no thanks.
And a question to you: As you said I was not around in 1967, how did you and your teacher get the news about the Americas Cup in those days?
G’day Andy. On the radio. The National Station I think it was. Speaking of ‘extras’, it was an old ‘valve’ job
he had in the classroom (a bit like the ones you still find going strong in cow sheds around the country today! ha, ha. Just results of course – no live coverage or even race updates.
I think transistor radios were around in those days, but only just – as big as a bread box mind and they needed a truck load of torch batteries to keep em going for a couple of hours! Very high-tech world it was back then. Ha, ha. We had a black & white TV at home but I don’t recall ever seeing anything on TV about it. You’ll probably be amazed to hear we used to catch a steam train to school in those days too!! Hehehe.
But Dame Pattie and Intrepid were state-of-the art 12 metre yachts I seem to recall. How cool! How excruciatingly exciting to a young P Class sailor of the day. Cheers, David G.
Cheers for the reply David G
I actually was born in small country town (population 5000) and my father had to travel quite a bit to go to school too… So I know what you mean.
I reckon that no matter what they do with the show The America’s Cup will always be exciting for yachties around the world and every time a Team New Zealand (or may be two in the future) is part of it, the whole country gets excited (minus a bunch of fools that can not see how good this is for NZ)
I must say, I’m a bit surprised at the fuss being made about nationality. After all, isn’t this entire event a contest between Kiwis at the expense of sundry hopefulls?
Was there any boat in the LV which didn’t have Kiwis in significant positions? Doesn’t that say that NZ IS the dominant sailing nation of the world?
Branding NZ just can’t get any better…although having a major Pommy supermarket chain refuse to sell top-quality NZ lamb, in favour of Pommy goat-meat, which they pass off as lamb, will also help.
You see, we’re all Team New Zealand; some just do ‘team’ a bit harder than others. But that’s okay. That’s the nature of all nations. It’s just that we seem to have way more than our fair-share of team players.
Hell’s teeth! Look at the roll-call of Kiwi world greatsi n medicine, sports, industry, science.
Do you not all see that ETNZ was and is up against the might, the money, and the dogmatism of nearly 2 billion people, against our 4 million.
The Mouse Which Roared.
ROAR LOUDLY ETNZ. Win lose or draw, you’re whanau!
And stop bitching, Ernie. What are you, man or mouse? ‘Pass the cheese, please.’))
David
Thanks for the document Andy.
I have printed it out, brought it home and am gonna set my pitifully feeble mind to reading it over the weekend.
Im with you regarding the preliminiary Acts Andy.
The only thing that concerns me is that if the Acts are now removed, there is less exposure for sponsors than previosuly and that may cause some of the new entries to shy away from the event.
I REALLY wish that whoever wins the AC will bring back the MUCH longer round robin series of previous cups. I know it means less sleep for us if its held overseas, but dammit 6 weeks of AC just aint enuff!!!
The Acts are pretty much guaranteed to stay considering there is pretty much nobody who doesn’t like them. In terms of sticking points it’s pretty much just the nationality rules and the length of the cup cycle that people can’t agree on.
“Branding NZ just can’t get any better”: That’s exactly what a sixth of the planet reads when they shot the jib of the kiwi boats with the cameras… a brand, NEW ZEALAND
NZ is a dominant sailing nation is the world no doubt about that. Think Withbread, AC, Jules Verne Trophy, (bloody elusive) Sydney to Hobart. any attemp to break a world record has a kiwi on board any major sailing event HAS to have kiwis.
ok guys, weekend upon us. see you all on Monday
Hehehe, you too Andy!
I’ve been thinking about the AC and the various hosts since San Diego…a host which hardly bothered with fineries.
Look at the bucks spent on Perth, on Auckland, and now on Valencia. Essentially tax-payer bucks plastered on an empty promise.
Leonard Cohen’s song “The Stranger” comes to mind, with the line (MOL) ‘I folded my cards and left and didn’t even leave you laughter.’
Isn’t that the financial tyranny which besets each modern AC host nation?
The spenders of tax spend on these great accompts, but the tax-payer pays. During the event a great time is had by all…..all few thousand souls who front up to the physical location….while millions more watch the TV.
So how many million of Spanish tax-payers bucks have gone into Valencia?
What did the Spanish tax-payer get for this? A flash environemnt which, after June whatever, will become nothing more than a playground for the ultra-rich…who have a habit of paying less tax than the ultra-poor.
But the luminaries in local Valencia government, as the luminaries in local Auckland government, spend the millions because they can, and it all makes them feel good, while they sell the tax-payers the crap about the trickle-down theory.
At least, in San Deigo, when Bertrand took the AC off Connor, and the morons from the SDYC turned their backs on Australia 2 as she came home for the winning mile,. At least, they didn’t spoend gazillions of tax-payer’s dollars on an ultra-flash, never-to-be-used-again complex.
Since Perth, it’s always been the same. ‘We MUST present to the world our economic prowess!!!’ And so gazillions of dollars are spent by bureaucrats at the expense of every tax-payer…which includes the 70% who don’t give a big rats arse for the AC.
It’s we addicts, we 30% who profit at the expense of the 70% who don’t. Yet the bureaucrats…who want to build their little pyramid on the sands of poverty….who buy into this crap.
Did you know that Spain is ‘almost’ a third-world country? That their povertyy levels are inconceivable to the average Kiwi?
Will The AC, and the Gazillions spentr at Valencia help them out of the hole? Answer, ‘NO.’
Why do the hosts seems to thibnk they have to do bigger and better than the last hosts? Answer? Simple. Bureaucrats want to spend ‘our’ (read globally) our money to make themselves feel better.
In Auckland, we didn’t need the Gazillion-dollar Viaduct reclamation to host the AC,. There were buckets of places each team could have set up camp.
But, oh no. The bureaucrats smelled the chance to ‘make a difference’ with our money, and promptly set up a facility which, today, is woefully under-used because the crowds don’t actually want to use it.
What did we get? A few flash bars, flash walk-ways for Africa, and elegant marina which few use cos it costs too much for the average boatie.
People. This crap has got to stop.
I’m an AC addict, and I have been since Bertrand came on the scene.
I don’t care who hosts tghe next AC cup, butv I’d kind’ve like to see the competiitors pay the entire price.
And if that means having a dorm at the Devonport YC, of any other YC in Auckland, then so be it. But if you competitors want flash, then front with the bucks for the flash.
These days, on most nights, you could fire a shotgun down the Viaduct and hit nobody.
In three weeks time you’ll be able to do the same at the flash Valencia Marina.
Meanwhile, the hotshots will have gone away asserting they made no promises about coming back.
The more I think about it, the more I realise the Stranger song is so apposite to the AC.
Cheers
David.
A few things;
Firstly, the Aussies took the cup from Newport, not San Diego. The NYYC didn’t give a toss about the upstart LVC until the event caused them to loose the Cup, so no provisions at all were paid to the challengers.
Valencia is semi-autonomous, so the Spanish taxpayer wouldn’t have paid a cent. The citizens of Valencia are certainly interested in where their local body taxes have gone, of course. I guess the idea is that they wanted to encourage Ernesto to keep the Cup there for another go ‘after he won’ . Valencia also managed to score a Formula 1 round, so the city probably has plans for which the AC is means to an end.
Spain has it’s problems, but it isn’t as poor as you seem to be making out, especially not the eastern coast. Hell, New Zealanders only earn a fraction more than people in South Korea, but the only time you hear about us being a poor country is with politicians trying to score political points.
The reason for syndacate row in Auckland was Peter Blake dissatisfaction with the poor services for challengers in San Diego. Teams were spread over a huge area of rundown docklands, it took ages for participants to get around between the various places, and there wasn’t any sense of comradery or friendliness between teams. The stuff up on Halsey Street isn’t that fancy when you see it in the flesh, just a compact bunch of concrete and corrugated iron, but it worked wonderfully to bring all the teams together in one place and it was all surprisingly open to the public. The extra money Auckland businesses would have brought in would have paid for it all with a nice bonus leftover, which is more than can be said for many sporting events (you think the Rugby World Cup will generate a profit?)
Valencia’s America’s Cup village is certainly an extravagence and I’m not sure if it was wise considering that prior to Desafio getting in the semis most people barely regestered the event, but the place has certainly had a lot of visitors – over two million at last count – so who knows?
I agree with Carl, Spain is not so poor, and I think that to organize AC it has spent money to do the best…now it has got a modern part too!! Guys, please, don’t hate and offend me if I get wrong…I am here also to learn about the sailing world!
Ciao
Vale
Hi David,
I wouldn’t say Spain is ‘almost’ a third-world country.
I think you have never been there recently if you talk like this.
They had a huge economic growth and progress in every field in the last decades. Spain is now among the best European countries to live in. Really.
Obviously (and sadly) as in most other (industrialized or not) countries, richness is not equally distributed.
And if you had seen Barcelona before the 1992 Olimpycs and see what it is now, maybe you could agree the not all the money spent around that event was wasted. People who live there could confirm.
I hope hosting the AC will be an investment for Valencia and Spain in general. (But I’ve not been there and I can’t tell how Valencia has gained)
This said, I agree with you that very often (and this is especially true here in Italy) bureaucrats spend (waste) our money, not in the interest of our country…
PS
)
It was in Newport, not in San Diego where Bertrand took the AC off Connor, in 1983. We reached the semis with “Azzurra” and even if I was a little boy I remember it was the first explosion of the AV fever in Italy
Cheers Giulio
Not just the semis, Azzurra came third on it’s first try. An impressive achievement by today’s standards.
You are right Carl.
And I’ve read that Azzurra beated once even Australia II during the RR.
I don’t know if it’s true, I just can’t find anything on the web.
It was then when I first understood I loved sailing boats and I started dreaming.
Twelve years later I bought an old, but fantastic to me, 470 dinghy.
Its name is “strider” (as in the Lord of the Rings) and (a bit renewed and with new sails) still sails with me on the Como Lake.
Don’t worry Vale, if you like to talk about sailing and you love New Zealand you are in the right place with the right people
even if it seems to me you are the only girl in the blog!
I am only a young nipper compared to you fella’s, I was only 10 when KZ 7 was racing!!! 1992 was my first dose of cup “fever”.
One thing I think is quite cool is that the little P class I was sailing at the time represents a common link of kiwi yachtsmen of all ages.
Thank you Giulio, you’are very kind!!! Some years ago I took part on a regatta and I liked it very much. I attended some lessons about sailing… and I would like to learn more about that, starting from Auckland. I am ready to study a lot!
Vale
G’day Daniel. You’re right about the P Class. A super little yacht which has been a ‘trainer’ for pretty much all our top international yachtsmen and women. It’s a natural progression up from the Optimist these days. But it’s still a demanding little boat to sail well. Especially downwind in a blow I recall. Ha, ha. Cheers, David G
G’day Guys and Vale
. Interesting discussion on Nationality Rules at this link:
Whoops! This link: http://www.sail-world.com/news_special_new.cfm?Nid=34609&SEid=362&SRCID=8&RequestTimeOut=180
Cayard’s moustache seems to get wider each time I see it.
Gidday mates!!! Last news from Italy: yesterday I met a president of a roman sailing club and He told me that in September there will be a stop of the World Race in Fiumicino ( Rome). There will be James Spithill, Paolo Cian, and kiwis too!!!
Today I have watched on the BBc a report about LVC and AC…At the moment of ETNZ’s winning, Alinghi’s crew seemed to be happy…. Strange, eh???
David G., Good day!!! You are a real gentleman!
Vale