ESP 88 On the Move

Update to our previous story, courtesy of news from the ever-excellent Valencia Sailing blogsite edited by Pierre Orphanidis:

Saturday, April 29, will be a milestone in the history of the America's Cup and Valencia. ESP-88, the brand new boat of the Spanish America's Cup challenger Desafio Espanol 2007, will leave the King Marine boatyard in Alginet and head to the team's base in Port America's Cup.Unlike most of the other America's Cup teams that chose to bring their new boats under absolute secrecy and with hardly any previous notice, the first ever America's Cup yacht built in Valencia will parade in part of the city's important thoroughfares before entering the boat shed in Port America's Cup. More....

So tomorrow yet another new V5 ACC yacht will have seen the light of day. And what a nice promotion in Valencia for the Cup, and the Spanish team. Well done!

Desafio, to our knowledge, has not yet announced a christening date for ESP 88. Regardless, this would indicate that ESP 88 is moving out of the construction phase, and fitting out will be completed in the weeks ahead at their team base in the Port America's Cup.

We note, too, that the entry list for Acts 10 and 11 shows Desafio has entered ESP 65. However, under the rules a team has until roughly 24 hours before the first race to substitute its previously entered yacht with another eligible yacht -- meaning an ACC yacht that has a current measurement certificate and otherwise complies with the AC 32 Protocol and other rules.

Recent posts on the AC expert-fan site, 2007AC.com Forums, have asked why such a swap is permitted after the entry "deadline." The answer is that for planning purposes ACM needs to know well in advance how many teams will enter any yacht at all, and there are a number of other requirements that must be met by the entry "deadline" along with providing the sail number of an entered yacht. And the Measurement Committee needs to know which yacht it is to measure for that team.

Thereafter, provided the Measurement Committee has time to measure another yacht for that team, or the team already has another yacht with a valid measurement certificate, it is reasonable to permit the team to subsitute to such a yacht until just before the racing begins.

A team might elect to do this if the originally-entered yacht is damaged or otherwise found to be less competitive or unraceable, or was unable to be measured in, or if the the team simply decides for competitive (including psychological) reasons that they would rather race a different yacht than that originally entered.