KEY POINTS:
Russell Coutts is reputedly on €10 million (NZ$17m) over the next two years to head up BMW Oracle's America's Cup campaign.
Apart from the legal manoeuvres currently embroiling plans for the 33rd America's Cup, the appointment of Coutts and Alinghi's re-appointment of another New Zealander, Brad Butterworth, seem
likely to have lifted the Cup salary bar considerably.
Former Oracle chief executive and skipper Chris Dickson - yet another Kiwi - was said to have been on NZ$6m a year before he departed during the last campaign. Butterworth, meanwhile, was thought to be on $5m for the last Cup campaign but his bargaining position will have been hugely improved given Alinghi's win in Valencia earlier this month, and the hiring of his old comrade, Coutts, by Oracle.
This means the two chums will be in earnest competition - a compelling prospect if they get to face each other on the water. Clouding the issue though are Oracle's plans for court action to support what it says is an attempt to strike a blow on behalf of all challengers for the next regatta. Others say Oracle's strategy is to force a court case which would result in a race-off between Oracle and Alinghi with other syndicates sidstepped.
Coutts said last week in Valencia: "I believe the position BMW Oracle has is a strong one and the correct one."
Butterworth, in an email to the publisher of the website Scuttlebutt was more emphatic: "After the Alinghi team won the America's Cup in 2003, we gave ourselves almost a year to organise a venue, a schedule, pre-regattas as well as a complete re-writing of the class rules. Now we get it in the neck for not producing everything two days after we won the Cup, while most of us still had a headache.
"Larry [Ellison]and his fellow travellers are condemning us for not writing rules that we haven't even thought about let alone written. It is incredibly insulting if anyone would think that, after four years of hard work to produce such a good regatta, we would deliberately turn around and wreck it.
"BMW Oracle Racing was a bad partner as our Challenger of Record for the 32nd America's Cup. To protect their budget advantage, they stopped us from trying to reduce costs to compete in the event to encourage wider participation. This time it is obvious that it is Larry's goal to make it more expensive for everyone. The more expensive, the more he likes it.
"For a month I sat in meetings with Oracle and gave up trying to agree on anything with them. Frankly, they did nothing to help the event. Now, they are determined to destroy the next America's Cup for their own selfish ends unless it's with their rules.
"After six America's Cups, I have never seen anything like this circus, except Michael Fay's challenge in 1987/1988 when I was sailing around the world with Peter Blake. As with most yachtsmen, it was a joke then and it is a joke now.
"Oracle struggled to come fifth in the last Regatta and my advice to Larry is to get Garrard's phone number and order a replica of the Cup and be done with it. If Larry wins his lawsuit, there will be no challenger series in the 33rd America's Cup.
"He will never give up his first chance in seven years of trying at having a shot at the Cup. It will be them and us, and frankly, I can't get interested in that."