America’s Cup Draft Protocol Released

We know we’d promised to give you a run-down of this weekend’s more local events today, but we’re pre-empting that for a look at the draft protocol for the 34th America’s Cup. The document was released 45 minutes before our deadline for today’s ‘Lectronic by the Golden Gate YC and Club Nautico di Roma, so we didn’t have enough time to peruse it. But after a cursory look at its 56 pages, we’ve identified what we think are some key points.

The concept of establishing a level playing field looks like it made its way into this document. The most obvious manifestation being that the Defender will not be sailing in the challenger series. There will be neutral management in the form of the Event Authority, which will handle the commerical side of the Match and will be a Golden Gate YC body. An America’s Cup Race Management will manage the actual on-the-water racing and consist of one representative from the defender and one from the Challenger of Record plus a WSTA-appointed director that will answer to an ISAF-appointed jury. Neither body will be accountable to the other.

First of all, the idea that you can do it for the $6 million dollars Larry Ellison had thrown around a few months ago is out the window; with a $3 million performance bond required, it’s going to be expensive. It appears that it will be at least on par with AC 32. Although the sailing blackout dates should help reduce payroll, teams will still be able to build two boats, and modify them by up to 50% of their hull surface. Scale models will be limited to 1/5th scale, representing a significant savings in expensive tank-testing time which is of less value at that scale. Teams will be limited to 25 sails for the actual Cup match, with limits for the Challenger series and a possible Defender series to be determined. Teams will be limited to only four mast tubes, four keel fins and three bulbs; although no explicit mention was made that the class would be a monohull, this would seem to indicate that — unless this is a red herring, which we doubt, in part given the timetable given for the next key point.

The event will feature six to eight pre-regattas per year in 2011 and 2012 in the spirit of the World Sailing Teams Association’s Louis Vuitton Series. There will be at least two in 2013 prior to the event with the final being a fleet racing series. The expense to compete will be moderated somewhat by the event authority covering shipping. The incentive to be competitive in this series is that the winners of each year get more sail cards allocated to them for the challenger series.

There will be two types of boats used in what’s looking like a four-year Cup cycle. The "2011 Class Yachts" will be used in the pre-regattas until December 31, 2011. We interepret this to mean that V5 IACC boats will be used until that time in order to get the series up and running. By that date, teams will be required to have measured in and launched a new ‘America’s Cup Class Yacht’ — the rule will be published by September 30 of this year — to be used in 2012. The teams’ second boats may not be launched until nine months before the event.

Entry into the Challenger Selection Series and 2013 pre-regattas will be dependent on the number of challengers. If there are eight or fewer challengers, all challengers will proceed to the Challenger Selection Series; if there are up to 10 challengers, the lowest scoring eight challengers in the pre-regattas
will go to the series; or if there are 11 or more challengers, the lowest scoring 10 challengers in the pre-regattas will go.

There’s a section in the draft about nationality rules being open-ended as there’s a provision for both having it completely open, or requiring 20% of the sailors be citizens of the challenging club’s country. So we’ll have to wait and see how that pans out.

Perhaps most interestingly, there’s siginificant attention paid to broadcasting and media rights, and requirements for having the equipment onboard to do that. Also, there’s a section regarding electronic and board games — America’s Cup sailing on the Wii anyone?

Like we said before, we knocked this out in a very short period of time, and it’s quite possible we misread some of the prescriptions in the draft protocol. We know for sure that we left some things out that you might care about, so check out the document for yourself at www.americascup.com.