Tiens Leloublan, ce que Schnack disait de tout ça sur
Bymnews il y a quelques temps
Isn’t it going to be very difficult to build this thing in Switzerland and get it to a Med venue in one piece?
Schnack: I’ve been looking at that and it’s true. When the boats built and assembled it’s too big to take on a truck or in a plane and I started looking at heavy lift helicopters. There are some that have a payload that’s right up there; 20,000 kilograms is quite a lot of payload, but this thing isn’t going to sit inside, it’s going to be hanging underneath, and the sling loads are a lot less, so I think that might make it not feasible.
You’ve got the windage as well.
Schnack: Yes, but if you pick good weather and the helicopter just shuffles along ….. I’m just trying to visualise it; it could be cool, you’d have to get permission from the French Government to fly it down the Rhone river valley and just pop it in the water. You wouldn’t want to fly it further than you had to; you’d tow it.
Anyway, I think in practical terms it will be assembled, but not bonded, in Switzerland and then taken apart and brought by road.
In that case, what’s to stop GGYC, saying you can’t do that ……….
Schnack: They can say what they like, they’d have to get the court to agree with it.
OK, but let’s suppose you get the thing to Valencia, in pieces, and Mr Ellison says “Heh, you can’t do that, the Deed of Gift says that should have been put together in Switzerland.” What happens then?
Schnack: We’re running the event, so we’re going to go ahead with the race. To stop that, they’d have to get the Jury to agree and the Jury would likely say it wasn’t up to them to interpret the Deed of Gift, go and see who wins on the water and then take it back to court. He might do that, but he couldn’t just say “You guys are out.” You know, in the old days of the late nineteenth century, the boats were put together in cruise configuration and sailed or towed across; even before that they were sailed across with a ketch rig and the big mast went on a ship and the sloop rig went in over there.
It’s right though that this is another area of uncertainty, a threat and it would be way, way better to have a meeting with them and say “This is how we see it …...”. That way we could have a race knowing that whoever wins the race is going to win the America’s Cup.
On en avait déjà parlé ici, mais je ne sais plus trop où ?!