France, Spain host first cup regattas

By JULIE ASH

Marseille and Valencia will host the first of the America's Cup regattas in September and October this year.

America's Cup Management yesterday announced that the first regatta will be held in Marseille from September 5-11 and will involve fleet and match racing.

The second and third regattas will be held in Valencia, the host of the 2007 America's Cup.

The first regatta from October 5-12 will be match racing and the second from October 14-17 will be fleet racing.

There will also be a series of regattas next year and in 2006. The locations and dates have yet to be announced.

All of the regattas will be used to help seed the challengers for the 2007 challenger series but it is not yet known how much weighting this year's regattas will have.

Team New Zealand are more than likely to take part in this year's regattas but have said they will wait and see who enters and how it will affect their summer training programme, in terms of getting a boat back from Europe, before they fully commit.

Team New Zealand's 2003 race boat NZL82 is being strengthened and work on NZL81 will start in June.

Towards the end of the year one of the boats will be modified to comply with the new version of the America's Cup Class rule which will apply for the regattas in 2005 and beyond.

The hula will be removed and changes made to the draft and displacement. Team New Zealand also plan to build the first of their new-version rigs late this year.

Team New Zealand have also acquired GER68, the boat built by illbruck for the last America's Cup.

The yacht was never finished and never raced after the German syndicate failed to get enough money to compete.

Team New Zealand plan to bring the boat to New Zealand, start work on it in July and get it up and running for trials against the black boats in the summer.

It is not expected the illbruck boat will be used instead of one of the black boats in the regattas late this year should New Zealand chose to attend.


Meanwhile, Italian syndicate Clan Des Team, representing the Circolo Vela Gargnano (CVG) yacht club, have officially entered the challenger series. They join Oracle BMW Racing.

The syndicate didn't reveal many details about the challenge as they plan a public launch on April 23 in Milan. Chris Dickson's Oracle BMW Racing wound up their summer of sailing in Auckland yesterday.

The syndicate now head to Rhode Island for the UBS trophy, hosted by Alinghi, in June.

Oracle have yet to announce whether they will maintain their base in Auckland and continue to sail here in their build-up to the next cup.

Further reading: nzherald.co.nz/americascup