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Teams ready for America's Cup test

US 55, the old 2000 vintage Stars & Stripes

AUCKLAND, New Zealand -- The America's Cup challengers practice regatta that starts on Saturday in Auckland has highlighted the competitiveness between the syndicates with two of the newest challengers likely to be left out of the racing.

The racing has been organised by the Challenger Of Record Committee (CORM) as a practice for its own race management for the Louis Vuitton Cup, an elimination series which starts on October 1 that will decide who will challenge New Zealand in February 2002 for the Cup.

Over 200 volunteers from the Bucklands Beach Yacht Club will be working with Dwyer Jones, the head of CORM, in running the Louis Vuitton Cup racing.

The four days of practice races starting this Saturday will be run over the full length upwind/downwind America's Cup course, but with the number of legs reduced from six to four.

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The challengers currently in Auckland have been invited to organise their own pairings to add some authenticity for the race committee in a sequence of three starts.

This means that there will only be room for six challengers at a time. In addition CORM have arranged for two international judges to act as on course umpires.

In a meeting on Wednesday the challengers decided on a round robin format, with all the teams racing each other at least once. They agreed there would be no official points scoring and no knockout final as in the America's Cup.

The teams that will race are the Swiss Alinghi, Britain's GBR Challenge, the U.S. OneWorld Challenge, the U.S. Oracle Racing Team and Italy's Prada Challenge.

All the teams will be racing boats from the last America's Cup 2000 series and Prada have entered two boats making a total of six teams.

This arrangement has left two of the new America's Cup syndicates, Sweden's Victory Team and the latest arrival in Auckland, the Italian Mascalzone Latino Challenge, without starts.

Reports suggest the Swedes wanted to race with their 1995 vintage yacht NZL 38 brought from the New Zealanders rather than their brand new Mani Frers design, which made such a good showing a week ago in the International Regatta against the current holder of the Cup, NZL 60.

The other challengers thought NZL 38 would not be competitive enough to make the racing worthwhile.

The Mascalzone Latino Challenge surprised everybody this week when they arrived in Auckland and announced they had bought US 55, the old Stars & Stripes, from OneWorld.

The second challenge from Italy financed by Vincenzo Onerato, the owner of the Moby Lines ferry company, was not expected until later in the year with their new Ceccarelli design.

The team have never sailed in an America's Cup Class yacht and so are considered as one of the outside chances.

Wedged in between the towering edifices of the Oracle and OneWorld bases, the Mascalzone team only have a single rented portocabin on a vast expanse of concrete.

"Our base was due to start construction next week," said shore manager Tom Weaver. "When the opportunity came to purchase US 55 we felt that it would be a great chance to get our sailing team down here to learn how to sail an IAAC class yacht. We will be training here until mid April and will welcome racing against any of the other teams as we do not have a second trial horse."

Weaver said that they will be out sailing every day during the unofficial regatta and if there is vacant place in any of the pairings they would be keen to join in.