Law and Sailing: The America's Cup

Litigation about sailing! What fun!

The Golden Gate Yacht Club (BMW Oracle Racing/Larry Ellison) sued Society Nautique de Geneve (Alinghi/Ernesto Bertarelli) on Friday in the New York Supreme Court.

In summary, the complaint alleges "that SNG has accepted a challenge that is invalid under the Deed of Gift from Club Nautico Espanol de Vela ("CNEV"), a brand new yacht club that had never had an annual regatta before it was specifically created to collaborate with SNG. Indeed, after its supposed challenge for the America's Cup it sponsored a sham annual regatta for children in a sailing training session. SNG used CNEV, as a fabricated challenger, to engineer a match Protocol in which virtually all challenger rights are eliminated and total control of the event and its rules are granted to SNG, altering the very nature of the competition and giving unprecedented and unfair advantages to SNG."

Both parties (Ellison and Bertarelli) have money to burn, so this might go on for a while before the parties settle. If this thing does go to trial, I think I might have to go down to New York to watch. The partner who filed this case, James V. Kearney at Latham and Watkins in New York, has previously represented tobacco companies...and won, so Bertarelli has a fight on his hands if he wants it.

Is this a regatta?

Looks like a regatta to me, but then I am a dinghy sailor not a fancy big boat sailor.

Perhaps a better question is whether this is an "annual regatta" sufficient to allow CNEV (Club Nautico Español de Vela) to continue as the Challenger of Record for the 33rd America's Cup? I think it is important to ask whether the regatta can be "annual" if it has only been held once.

Ducky!

When I give my daughter her bath, she always wants her ducky. If she saw this thing she'd go nuts:


It's an art installation in France on the Loire River. It's 26 x 20 x 32 meters (which is BIG for you non-metric folks) and is made of rubber coated PVC.

Sailing Photo of the Day: Stars off Nahant, MA

Been there, done that.

Sailing Photo of the Day

"Wow, your sail cover is bigger than my Optimist! Can I come for a ride?"

Tillerman's Caribbean Adventure

Tillerman recently returned from the Laser Caribbean Midwinters with tales of huge waves and high winds. He told me the photos didn't do it justice. You can decide for yourself:




Photos by Roberto Alvarez courtesy of caribwind.com

A new book!

Gasoline Fumes Cause Litigation

John Lagana would like to ride his WaveRunner around the shores of East Hampton, but can't, thanks to the wealthy beach town's ban on water scooters.

Mr. Lagana prefers to travel by WaveRunner, heading out into Gardiners Bay and zipping from Sag Harbor to Greenport to Shelter Island to meet friends for lunch. Water scooters are allowed in the bay, but banned in Hog Creek, which Mr. Lagana must cut through to get there, and Three Mile Harbor, where he stops to get gas.

So, after breathing exhaust fumes for too long on his silly and pointless craft, Lagana is taking the matter to court. And he has an interesting historical argument:

The case is now pending in state appellate court, where a panel of judges must decide if an obscure 17th century charter known as the Dongan Patent does indeed protect a man’s right to buzz around the waterways on a machine its signers could hardly have imagined.

When King James II deeded the eastern tip of the South Fork — which now includes East Hampton, Amagansett and Montauk — to a group of settlers in 1686, the governor in chief of the province of New York, Thomas Dongan, drew up the patent, granting “freeholders and inhabitants” of the area the right to “enjoy without hindrance” recreational activities like “fishing, hawking, hunting and fowling.”

The legal power of such deeding documents, which exist throughout Long Island and in other early-settled places, has been upheld by courts including the United States Supreme Court.

Lagana continues his argument with constitutional contentions:

Among Mr. Lagana’s arguments is that a passage in the federal Constitution prohibiting the creation of “any law impairing the obligation of contracts,” and a provision in the original New York State Constitution protecting “grants of land made by the authority of the king,” gives Dongan power in perpetuity. “If you’re going to ignore the Dongan Patent, you might as well throw out the Constitution,” he said.

But the town has several counterarguments. Their main point is that "the patent is too vague and out of date to govern a modern municipality." But they also have historical contentions of their own:

[Gary] Weintraub, the town's lawyer, pointed out that if East Hampton were to live by the centuries-old patent, it would have other obligations, including the annual tax to the king of “the Sum of one Lamb Yearly and fourty shillings, curant money.”

Assuming East Hampton was not in arrears at the time of the American Revolution, that would amount to 230 lambs and 9,200 shillings the town owes, payable to Queen Elizabeth.

Sailing Photo of the Day: New Island in the Pacific

The crew of the yacht Maiken discovered a new volcanic island in the Pacific. Pretty amazing stuff:
"We left Neiafu and Vava'u yesterday after some tedious checking out procedures and set sail for Fiji, passing the north side of Late island as first way point. After five miles we noticed brown, somewhat grainy streaks in the water. First we thought that it might be an old oil dumping. Some ship cleaning its tanks. But the streak became larger and more frequent after a while, and there were rocklike brownish things the size of a fist floating in the sea. And the water were strangely green and "lagoon like" too. Eventually it became more and more clear to us that it had to be pumice from a volcanic eruption. And then we sailed into a vast, many miles wide, belt of densely packed pumice. We were going by motor due to lack of wind and within seconds Maiken slowed down from seven to one knot. We were so fascinated and busy taking pictures that we plowed a couple of hundred meter into this surreal floating stone field before we realized that we had to turn back...
A couple of hours ago we identified the active volcano as the one close to Home reef, and we are on our way there now to take a closer look.
We are two miles from it and we can see the volcano clearly. One mile in diameter and with four peaks and a central crater smoking with steam and once in a while an outburst high in the sky with lava and ashes."

Sailing Photo of the Day - Schell 2006

Tillerman found some photos of the Schell Trophy regatta, held October 28-29th at my alma mater. Some of my best memories from my college years involve sailing on the Chuck. I once windsurfed in the remains of a hurricane on the river, I have fallen into it while shoveling snow off the dock to go sailing, and I have won regattas there. Even so, a Tech dinghy planing with a storm sail is not something you see everyday.


In the words of MIT Sailing Master's Franny Charles: "This event will be remembered for a lifetime by all who saw it."

Too Windy

I spent most of the last two weeks looking forward to it.

Tillerman helped me install a new hiking strap to be ready for it.

When I saw the weather forecasts I got even more excited about it.

I bought a new spray top to be ready for it.

I packed up the car and took the tarp off the boat the night before to get ready for it.

I emailed the organizers begging them not to cancel it.

I got up early, switched baby seats between cars and hooked up the trailer so I could get there early for it.

But in the end they cancelled it because it was too windy.

I could have been doing this:


and this:
Hopefully some of this:
Or this:
And probably a lot of this:

And this:

But instead I unhooked the trailer from the car, put the tarp back on the boat until next weekend and went for a run instead.

Sailing Video of the Day - Extreme 505

Courtesy of LiveSailDie.com

Sailing Video of the Day - Sailing Bloopers

Sailing Video of the Day - Antigua Classic Yacht Regatta 2006

Sailing Video of the Day - KA Bladerider Demo Sailing

A video of a production foiling Moth, the KA Bladerider.

Sailing Video of the Day - Cherubs

Some excellent video of Cherubs racing on a very windy day.

Sailing Video of the Day - 18 Foot Skiffs

A great video from Ronstan of some of their best footage of 18 foot skiffs.
Includes a skiff being run over by a ferry, and some amazing wipeouts.

Sailing Video of the Day - Foiling Moths

Great footage of foiling moths.

Sailing Video of the Day - 1977 Laser Worlds

1977 Laser World Championships
CABO FRIO, BRAZIL

Entries: 104 Countries: 23
1st John Bertrand USA
2nd Peter Commette USA
3rd Mark Neeleman NED
4th Tim Alexander AUS
5th Gary Knapp USA

Sailing Video of the Day - Laser Sailing

"Reaching Higher"

Is this the best Laser sailing video on the web?