Warm-up regattas this summer

Team New Zealand will receive a number of challengers at home this summer in a series of three warm-up regattas entitled "The Road to the America's Cup". The New York Yacht Club, challenger of record for the 1999-2000 event, and Team New Zealand, will race in all three events, with the French and Spanish challenges and the San Francisco Yacht Club invited to compete in the final event.
Team New Zealand will race a New York team in Wellington on March 7-9, and again in Auckland on March 28-30. The last event, a "mini-AmericaÕs Cup", will be sailed in Auckland on April 2-6. This will comprise a three-day round robin for the challenging teams, with the winner advancing to a two-day final against Team New Zealand.
The identical IACC boats NZL10 and NZL12, dating from the unsuccessful 1992 campaign, will be used for the contests. Both have new livery for the series, with NZL12 painted in Black Magic's colours, to emulate the winning NZL32 from 1995.
Victorious skipper Russell Coutts will return to the helm of the New Zealand entry for the series, with former Team New Zealand coach Ed Baird nominated to skipper the New York entry. The Team New Zealand versus New York matches will be sailed on short harbour courses in Auckland and Wellington to allow good spectator viewing, but some of the "mini-AmericaÕs Cup" racing will be on the official cup course off AucklandÕs East Coast Bays.
Team New Zealand syndicate head Peter Blake says further regattas will be held in the summers of 1997-98 and 1998-99. "In this first year we were keen to have New York Yacht Club race us in both Wellington and Auckland, before the bigger invitational regatta. New York is synonymous with the cup, and as the challenger of record for 2000, has a prominent role to play in the total scheme of things.
"Like the other three invitees, New York has not raced here before, and we felt it desirable, first time around, to introduce some of the new faces."
Team New Zealand's two newest boats, NZL32 and NZL38, will also be back in the water in January, for testing and tuning through to April.

Swiss sign on

The Swiss Challenge for the America's Cup has made an official entry for the 1999-2000 contest, bringing the number of paid-up challengers to 11. In early December, the Swiss FAST 2000 syndicate paid the late entry fee of US$200,000 and issued an official notice of challenge from the Club Nautique de Morges, on Lake Geneva.
The syndicate is to be run by Pierre Fehlmann, commodore of the challenge, and Frenchman Marc Pajot, who will be skipper. Other big sailing names involved in the challenge are the 1996 ISAF world sailor of the year, Jochen Schumann, and the Italian world Star class champion Enrico Chieffi. These two have been named as helmsman and tactician.
"Going from virtual to real is a major step for our challenge," says Fehlmann. "This is directly related to the very positive progress we are currently making in key areas of our preparation."
From January the team will be based at St Martin in the Caribbean, using two IACC yachts from the most recent generation of boats. Schumann and Chieffi will be officially based in Switzerland from early next year, in order to meet nationality requirements. The pair will continue to compete with their national teams at events such as the Admiral's Cup, but will also sail together in international match race events.
Crew selection will also begin in January, with Pajot organising a selection programme involving a number of Swiss yacht clubs.

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