CC MEMO -- Met Data Service, "The Daily Sail" Interview

Earlier this week The Daily Sail ran a wide-ranging interview with the CC Chairman. Here is an excerpt concerning ACM's Met Data Service, in follow up to our previous post:




While the effect of the Acts and format of the Challenger Series may have the biggest impact on the 32nd America's Cup, Challenger Commission Chairman Tom Ehman says that their biggest bone of contention with America's Cup Management at present is over the joint weather program.

New in the Protocol for the 2007 America's Cup, was for Challengers and Defender alike to use one centralised weather program, the cost of which would be shared between the defender and the challengers alike. This was a great idea and well received among the Challengers as it would not only level the playing field for large and small teams, but would reduce costs and would also cut down on the number of weather boats bobbing around on the waters off Valencia. However in ACM's implimentation of the weather program, the Challenger Commission feel they have been steamrollered.

"The Challengers are extremely disappointed in ACM's handling of this," says Ehman. "Long ago they chose Alinghi's weather program and said 'we are just going to fund that and we are going to hire some guys'. In fact these are guys who worked for Alinghi last time and they have installed a program speced by Alinghi."

Alinghi's proposal, accepted by ACM, has been to place 20 weather buoys over Valencia's two racing areas. Meteorologists from the Challengers preferred a much simpler, less costly set-up with one weather buoy in the middle of both courses each supplimented by weather boats. "It wouldn't cost us much money and it would be easy to ensure that the data was good," says Ehman of the Challenger Commission's proposal on this subject. "If you start putting all these buoys out, it is very difficult to keep these things calibrated and so on.

"We scratched our head and said 'why spend 3 million Euros, doing this enormously expensive program and put these buoys all over the place? They are a hazard to navigation - as we have written to the port [authorities in Valencia]. And then it finally occurred to us what this does for Alinghi: We are out racing in our Challenger selection series and they have weather buoys all over the course. In the past all they had was the Go Virtual GPS data from the TV and internet show, but they didn't have both pieces of the puzzle [the boat telemetry and the on course weather info]. They didn't have the wind conditions local to our boats and you need both to make a good performance profile.

"So now by putting buoys over the course while we are racing, they are going to have the Go Virtual data from us and they are going to have the local wind, right there because you can't help but sail by these buoys. And they will be able to develop performance profiles of each of the competitors. You say 'well, you can do the same thing on them." No. They might be training on those waters and we might be able to get the wind information, but we won't have GPS data from them because they won't be racing and there's no Go Virtual. So it is grossly unfair. The teams have been bitterly complaining about it for over a year and ACM have just proceeded on. So from a standpoint of fairness, expense, safety, we have been politely, firmly objecting to this and so far ACM have done nothing but turn a deaf ear and go ahead spending our money. It is not on and if we can't reach agreement - we have appointed a working party who are once again going to try to get ACM to see the light and if not, I'm afraid we'll be in front of the Jury."

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The chart from ACM of the proposed buoy locations: