Meets the editors of Eastern CT Sailing Stories
by Claudia Kondracky
The UBS Trophy was in Newport Rhode Island the week of June 19 - 26. Mark and I went on Friday. It was a foggy day but it gave us some fun opportunities. Never being too shy, I wanted to meet Ms. Riley. She looked in worse shape than me! She was in a serious car accident last week and suffered a broken foot and hand. She's on a walker. I've graduated to a cane. I told her that at least I did mine on a boat!
She was giving commentary during the long postponement. One story she told was that when she's in a regatta and winning, people will ask her what she plans do to differently. She always tells them that she is going to keep on doing what is working. She was talking with Fresh, who was on the committee boat. They discussed that when the driver tries to thrown in new moves or changes from his or her usually starts, the trimmers don't even have time to glare at him!
We were seated at Fort Adams with a couple of marks about 20 yards away. They would have been great seats except the committee boat moved the whole race north of the bridge due to the fog.
So what does 100 million dollar campaign buy you for the AC Cup? They sink boays at different points along the start line to measure the currents. This was a bare bones trip. The boats came with only one back-up mast. They get the boats to the line by shipping them in containers which get either flown or shipped via the sea. While we got to see the 16 or 17 men on the boats, there are a lot of people who work to get these boats tuned. Their work starts once the boats head into port and doesn't end until they are towed out again the next day.
The UBS Trophy is cast as a tune up for the AC Challenge. It was an opprotunity for Alinghi is race against the challengers. Previous to this the winner of the Cup never met the opponent until the actually matches. Therefore they were sailing in a vacuum, not being able to tune up against the challengers.
One hundred million buys a lot of boat. They were just awesome to see. And I'm sure they don't appoint the next person to bring sandwiches or have mini chocolate chip donuts either. So we'll sail again this week, munching on donuts and looking for crew.
Good luck to Dawn, thanks for talking with us and mend quickly.
Mark & Claudia