Oracle Back on the Bay
Oct 11, 2011
Return
to the Bay, Oracle Racing's AC45's are training again in GGYC's home
waters. Photo:©2011 Guilain Grenier/Oracle Racing
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Crew signing autographs at
Oracle World. |
The team last trained on the Bay in June and put on a spectacular show. In strong winds team CEO Russell Coutts capsized his AC45 wingsail catamaran two days after team skipper Jimmy Spithill nearly did the same thing.
October’s session isn’t expected to be as windy, but still will provide valuable practice ahead of the next America’s Cup World Series event in San Diego, Nov. 12-20, with racing scheduled to begin Nov. 18.
“This session will be two-fold,” said Spithill, the 32-year-old skipper from Australia. “It’ll provide us an opportunity to practice for San Diego and include some more of our sailors who haven’t had an opportunity to race yet.”
Oracle Racing announced last month that Coutts would be turning over the helm of Oracle Racing Coutts to Darren Bundock of Australia. Bundock is a two-time Olympic silver medalist (2000, ’08) in the multihull class and a seven-time world champion. He’ll take the helm and Coutts will move into more to a tactical role combined with his land-based chief executive’s duties.
The team recently acquired two additional AC45 boats and is using them to finalize concepts for the wing and appendages. Construction of the team’s first AC72 is already underway, with tooling created by Core Builders Composites in New Zealand.
“The session also gives us time to meet with the design team guys and settle the key choices for our first AC72,” Spithill said. “The sailing team is closely involved with the design team in discussing systems, layouts and general characteristics. After the great success of the AC45, we’re very excited about the AC72. It’s going to be awesome.”
--From Oracle Racing Communications
Oracle
Racing's newest AC45's training in San Francisco. Photo:©2011 Guilain
Grenier/Oracle Racing
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