Bay yacht race bid sunk by Aussies

A multi-million dollar chance for Tauranga to cement itself as a major force in global yacht racing has been dashed - again.
Hopes were high that Tauranga would cash in on the reputation it earned from hosting the Around Alone race two years ago but the city has failed to be chosen as a stopover for the 5-Oceans race, a rebranded version of Around Alone.
The announcement was made yesterday at the London Boat Show.
It means the Bay will miss out on economic spin-offs worth at least $8 million and the excitement of seeing and hosting the grand prix racers of the high seas.
Yesterday's announcement followed last year's disappointment when Tauranga missed out on the Global Challenge yacht race stopover - won by Wellington.
The latest failure has not surprised those involved in Tauranga's successful 2002 bid to host the epic single handed yacht race around the world.
The first indication was when 5-Oceans race owner Clipper Ventures announced it would shorten the duration of the race, reduce campaign costs for skippers, and put more resources into attracting sponsorship and media interest.
But the magnitude of the changes only became clear yesterday when it was revealed 5-Oceans will have only two stopovers between the start/finish city of city of Bilbao in Spain.
One is the Western Australia port of Fremantle and a yet to be named North American city. By comparison, Around Alone had four stopovers, including Tauranga.
However, the driving force behind Tauranga's bid, Mandy Scott-Mackie, holds a glimmer of hope that the race organisers might still be persuaded to break the extremely long and dangerous Southern Ocean/Atlantic leg from Fremantle to the United States.
The race does not start until September 2006.
She said commercial pressure for a New Zealand stopover could be applied by the sponsors of the three Kiwis who are considering entering the race.
Clipper might also meet resistance from race skippers about the length of the second leg.
Bypassing New Zealand meant sailors would not be in such good shape when they hit the roughest passage of water in the world - the treacherous Southern Ocean and around the infamous Cape Horn.
"It all happens on that leg - Around Alone showed that," Ms Scott-Mackie said.
She said it had all came down to money. Fremantle did a double deal by also securing host-port status for Clipper's other round-the-world yacht race, this year's Clipper Race.
Ross Stanway, the chief executive of Western Bay's economic development agency, Priority One, said it was always a trade-off between the economic benefits of a stopover and the dollars needed to pull a winning bid together.
It became quite clear there was a gap between the race organiser's expectations and what Tauranga and the other New Zealand port bidders were prepared or able to offer.
"None of the New Zealand ports in contention were able to pull together the fairly significant resources that the race organisers were expecting," he said.
Around Alone had clearly demonstrated that a much higher degree of public and private contribution was needed to sustain Tauranga as an international yacht race destination, Mr Stanway said.
Tauranga failed to recoup the $750,000 cost of staging the Around Alone stopover, and although the exactly amount of the loss was never disclosed, it was rumoured to be about $80,000.
Mr Stanway said there had been a significant will to make 5-Oceans happen in Tauranga, but in the end it wasn't to be.
"It is a fact of life that these events are bought," he said.
Around Alone skipper Graham Dalton, who sailed a Tauranga-built yacht under the pennant of the Tauranga Yacht and Power Club, said the decision was predictable.
"I'm disappointed they are not coming here but given the loser attitudes of many New Zealanders, I'm not surprised."
Whether it was Tauranga or Auckland, attitudes were still extremely provincial when it came to raising the money to invest in events like this, Mr Dalton said.