Cup Experience

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Video: Land Rover BAR Race Boat Launch and Base Opening

Aerial view of Bermuda base America's Cup challenger Land Rover BAR, led by Ben Ainslie.
Land Rover BAR in Bermuda

With champagne for the boat and rum for the base, Challenger Land Rover BAR celebrated the launch of their America’s Cup race boat last week. Georgie Ainslie did the honours with the champagne. Bermuda’s Minister of Economic Development, Grant Gibbons handled the traditional roof wetting with rum to open the team base.


Thanks to Ber Memes for the drone footage and coverage of the big day.

You can see a replay of the livestream of the event here.

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Rumors from Auckland

Emirates Team New Zealand had previously said they would launch their race boat in late January and sail in Auckland during February before shipping the boat to Bermuda. That way their 28 day “blackout period” would be spent disassembling, shipping and re-assembling the boat. We have no news of the boat being launched yet. But we have heard that they were sailing very well in December, in their AC45X test boat. The rumor is that they laid out an AC race course and could sail an entire race without dropping off their foils – tacking upwind as well as downwind. We may get some more news when they launch in Auckland (soon?) and, of course, when they first sail on the Great Sound in late March.

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AC Birthdays

Ben Ainslie turned 40 yesterday, 5 February. He shares the date with Groupama Team France’s Thomas Le Breton who turned 35. On New Year’s day, ETNZ’s Peter Burling celebrated his 26th birthday. Speaking of birthdays and sailors’ ages…
No Sport for Old Men
Foiling multihulls are no place for old men. Or so the thinking goes. At age 54, Argentine Santiago Lange won the gold medal in the new Nacra 17 mixed multihull event in Rio. Nine months earlier he had a lung removed after being diagnosed with cancer. The Nacra will be upgraded to foil for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. Last week at a conference in Sweden, Santi revealed that he will be campaigning for 2020. He’ll be 58 by then…

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Livestream of Land Rover BAR Base Opening in Bermuda Today

Update 7 February 2017   Full report on the opening ceremony in Bermuda here.

They put the boat in the water, but..  There were no daggerboards to count towards the limit.  Also no rudders for spies to see!

Watch a replay of the livestream:
Part 1

Part 2

Ben’s wife Georgie Ainslie does a Facebook livestream from Bermuda every Monday. This week we’ll see their base opening celebration – no doubt with the traditional Bermudian roof-wetting ceremony. They will “reveal” their AC Class race yacht, but will they put the boat in the water? Any daggerboards in the boat when it is afloat count towards the four board limit.

More video here of the celebrations, including the ceremonial champagne christening of the yacht and rum roof wetting of the base.

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Results of Practice Racing in Bermuda

Oracle published a report on the practice racing here. Jimmy Spithill said, “There was some great, close racing between ourselves and Artemis Racing and SoftBank Team Japan. All three teams won and lost their share of races and we all learned a lot I think. Unfortunately, the British seemed to be having issues and weren’t competitive which was a bit of surprise.”

BAR have just over 100 days to get things sorted out. Remember that Oracle was taken by surprise in the 2013 AC Match in San Francisco, but made a series of improvements over two weeks and staged their comeback.

Unofficial results, as reported by Oracle:

Artemis claimed on Twitter that Oracle used alternative facts: