OneWorld stay with same boat for semifinal repechage

11.30am

Seattle's OneWorld team are to stick with USA-67 for the next round of the America's Cup challenger series, starting on the Hauraki Gulf tomorrow.

But Oracle, their opponents in the first-to-four-points Louis Vuitton Cup semifinal repechage, are to wait until later today to announce whether they will continue using their boat USA-76, or switch to the alternative USA-71.

Senior Oracle crew member Ian Burns today said the team had made a few subtle changes to their boats, but had not finalised their decision.

He would not say whether the large kite Oracle has been seen flying in practice was a serious attempt at coming up with new technology to use during races.

"Our design team has certainly encompassed a lot of innovations throughout this whole project and that is one of the things we have been looking at, and so far it's been a pretty interesting project," Burns said.

Asked whether it was just for fun, he said it was an ongoing research project.

OneWorld chief executive Gary Wright said his team had made many changes to their boats in past weeks and were feeling confident, despite losing 0-4 to Oracle in the quarterfinals.

"A fair amount" of modifications had been made to their alternative boat USA-65.

"But given our race schedules we've really had very little time for testing, and looking at the conditions over the next couple of days we're happy to go with USA-67," he said.

As they did in the previous semifinal round against Prada, OneWorld take a one point penalty into the repechage contest, effectivelty starting with a score of minus one.

Burns would not say whether Peter Holmberg, who had considerable success as Oracle's starting helmsman during much of the regatta but missed a race during the last round, would be at the helm during the repechage races.

"We have a pretty large number of afterguard members on our team and virtually every morning we consider which crew will be best suited for our day's racing.

"Sometimes the goal maybe for development of the boat's speed, sometimes the goal maybe for a close tactical battle. It all depends on what we think we're going to come up against," Burns said.

"We will be changing crew, I think, if we think it's necessary."

Meanwhile, on the issue of whether the Louis Vuitton Cup finalists would be able to use a different boat in the final than they had in the semifinals, challenger series regatta director Dyer Jones said he was waiting to hear from Team New Zealand after a communication he had sent them earlier today.

The defenders on Monday raised an issue with Jones about an apparent conflict in rules governing the challenger series, which they said indicated the two finalists would not be able to use different boats from those used in the semifinals.

Jones thinks Team New Zealand have got it wrong, and said he was prepared to sit down with Team New Zealand at any time to discuss the issue.

He wants to see the competition rules better written in future.

The America's Cup had been plagued for years by the fact the rules documents were often hastily put together, and sometimes the words on paper did not always convey what the negotiation parties thought they meeant, Jones said.

"The documents subsequently get picked apart by all the teams' rules advisers and people like that. Clearly, time to carefully draft the document is important."

He said arguments at this stage of the regatta about whether teams could change boats was not good for the event.

The history of the event showed there was always some sort of controversy, and if a cause was not readily available someone always seemed to find one.

"I would prefer, obviously, the kind of event where we could build momentum by watching and participating in racing on the water, rather than arguing over the words that are on a piece of paper."


- NZPA

nzherald.co.nz/americascup

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