New Zealand Bound for Commentating

February 04, 2009

I'm in New Zealand and will be on the water, commentating and covering for Tom Ehman on shore by running ‘The Morning Show’ for the visiting sponsors and VIPs.   I have updated the friends and family blog with fun details and below are the professional details.

The Morning Show is an introduction to high level America’s Cup competition to some and an update on the status of the America’s Cup for others.  I have to take my hat off to Louis Vuitton’s Christine Belanger and Bruno Trouble for creating this event.  They are essentially “Brining Friendly Back’.  I think that is a song by someone.

Speaking of ‘friendly’ the reason that I am covering for Tom is that he is headed back Up North to deal with the court case.  If Oracle wins and Alinghi continues to refuse to agree to a fair event then we will most likely see the big multi hulls  racing to decide who gets to set up the next America’s Cup.

In the meantime – Louis Vuitton and ETNZ are giving us all something to get excited about.  The format is simple – ‘borrowed boats’ Team New Zealand and Oracle have each put up two boats.   It is just like the match racing circuit or the Women’s Olympic pre events.  You show up with your team, a watch a pair of sun glasses and you go sailing.  Boats are equal, there are sponsors for the regatta so the costs are reduced and it is not only excellent competition it is a lot of fun.

The shore crews including Katie Pettibone’s significant other David ‘Ratty’ Blanchfield and David “Brookie” Brooke from Oracle have worked like crazy to equalize the pairs.  On the technical side, the regatta management has implemented a few other rules like each team gets one spinnaker and only one.   They have to be very careful. There was also an experiment of going back to the ‘old fashioned way’ of taking down the spinnakers without the string line systems thinking that this would force the teams to be more conservative.   The sting line allows for the winches and grinders to assist in gathering the sail.  The ‘old fashioned way’ is just drop the halyard and pull like heck.  This retro maneuver evidently resulted in some ‘old fashioned’ sail dragging in the water, also known as ‘shrimping’.  String lines are back in.

There are also alarms rigged up to stop the runners being overloaded and creating too much headstay tension and the skippers are required not to run their borrowed boat up on the rocks.  All good ideas as broken boats are not fast.

Everyone in the America’s Cup world is looking forward to getting gout on the water and  getting the racing underway, including me.  Although, I have to admit that no matter how busy I am with speaking and writing and commentating and coaching, all things that I enjoy very much, there is always a little part of myself that yearns to be on the water … sweating and pushing myself to the limit next to some other sweaty salty person.  I plan to use this feeling and  past experiences to bring the event alive for the VIPs and through the commentary.  The commentary should be available on: http://www.bsport.co.nz/  once they get over the fact that there is so much interest it seems to have crashed.

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