This is the second installment of our very interesting interview with Mark Turner, on the newly-announced deal with Land Rover and the overall state of affairs of the Extreme Sailing Series. The first part of the interview can be found here:

VSail.info: Russell Coutts and Stephen Barclay have recently talked about the prospect of the America’s Cup World Series becoming a fully-fledged annual circuit, even after this America’s Cup cycle. Do you see that as a direct competitor to the Extreme Sailing Series?
Mark Turner: You can’t imagine how many times I have been asked this question in the last three years. I genuinely think, and this is no PR thing, they are very complimentary. Without question, in the last three years they have been complimentary. The two things together have grown the sailing world, they have grown the number of people watching sailing, in different ways. The have grown the number of cities interested in hosting sailing events, they have grown the number of sponsors being aware of the sport and being aware of the most exciting form of the sport, from a non-sailor’s perspective. Has there been any real conflict? I cannot identify a single team, venue or sponsor issue which has been negative. I am not saying say it couldn’t happen but we have cities that talk to us because they looked at the Cup and couldn’t afford it or didn’t have the physical space or any other issue.

The America’s Cup definitely talked to places we talked to in the past and introduced to sailing and it was interesting for them to go forward or didn’t work very well for us any more or we have done our time there. There are teams we managed to keep alive for a bit longer because they couldn’t carry on in the Cup. There were teams such as Luna Rossa that ultimately are in the Cup after doing a year of Extreme Sailing Series. Of course you take a negative view and say they are taking the same audience but our audiences have to been 100 times bigger than our sailing world and the world is 1,000 bigger than the number of people that watch sailing. We still have so much to do to develop it. There is so much potential. We do an event in Singapore on a space of water where I think you can’t run an ACWS event, from a sporting perspective.

VSail.info: In what regards the Singapore event, I wasn’t myself present personally, but from the aerial photos published on your website the number of spectators seemed to be very small, even on a Saturday afternoon. Am I wrong?
Mark Turner: Singapore is a tough place without having a lot of money to spend. It is a tough place to get it going and it was the first time we did it in the city, right in the center of the city and we started late. We weren’t disappointed, we’d love to have more people and in the last day, we had people come and there was no wind. It wasn’t the most exciting kind of sailing to watch, there is no point pretending otherwise, but still, people came in and stayed, two or three races. they still stayed there and that was pretty encouraging. We didn’t do a lot of promotion either.

At the end of the day, how many public do you want in a place? It’s amazing if we could have crowds like Porto everywhere, 75-80 thousand people all around. That would be amazing. The fact is that every country is culturally different, there is competition for people’s time and we have to decide in each venue how much we are going to spend on the public side, the media side or the VIP side. There are lots of different aspects. Singapore is the most expensive venue for us by a long way, three times more expensive to run an event than Porto, and as a result, you can’t do everything. We had great hospitality, a great VIP event, very good media coverage with live TV in Singapore that was picked up in Oman. It was the very first time live TV in more than one country which for the small amount of budget we have is a good result. We don’t have the money to buy TV coverage in the US… It takes a bit longer to get there. So, we have to do things step by step.

The Land Rover Extreme 40 boat had her maiden sail in Qingdao. Photo copyright Lloyd Images

VSail.info: The America’s Cup is selling tickets in San Francisco. Is this something you look into for your circuit? Do you think that longer term ticket-paying could be become the rule rather than the exception in sailing?
Mark Turner: I think it’s interesting to see they are doing it. I think it’s good to see they have done it. It’s a good test and I have been surprised by how successful it has been. We looked at it for our events last year, something similar to the Premium Economy airline levels, which is what the Cup is doing ultimately. You give someone an extra opportunity and you can still go and not have a ticket. I think sailing will always have to be like that, I can’t see anything other than the Olympics and even there it’s impossible to close down and ticket everything. Ultimately, we are already selling tickets in the form of hospitality.

VSail.info: But that would be the airline Business Class.
Mark Turner: Exactly and for sure there is an opportunity for Premium Economy although we don’t have the room, cost-wise, to try and test it with big grandstands but I think that at some stage we will be able to afford it. We actually own grandstands, or bleaches as they call it in the US, but to ship it around the world is 100 thousand euros for the entire year. It’s not that much money and at the end of the day it could pay itself with tickets. However, there are many risks you have to take and you have to choose which ones you take and 100 thousand euro risk on grandstands isn’t the right thing to spend it. But we have it, we own it and we will probably put it in the UK event and maybe do that with a Premium Economy type, with a ticket, a cap, a magazine and a drink. It’s interesting what the Cup is doing and we work with Nespresso, looking into what they are going to do in San Francisco. They will do some nice things and there are good things for us as well to learn. It is good the Cup is able to take some of those risks we are not able to do. They can afford to make mistakes more easily than we do.

To come back to your question whether the America’s Cup World Series is a competitor of ours if ti comes back with a full-year program for sure it will add more options for people, teams, sponsors or cities but I’m absolutely sure that the overall size will be bigger. Undoubtedly, there are places where everybody wants to do an event but as long as there is differentiation in the product there will be no problem. I think that there always be differentiation because the ACWS cannot exist without the the America’s Cup, it doesn’t work. Once you have the America’s Cup brand, the expectation level, what you have to deliver is of a size, cost and quality that once you get there you basically have a budget that is two, five or ten times bigger than the Extreme Sailing Series. Even twice, when we talk about commercial sponsors is a lot so there are a whole lot other companies that can get in the Extreme Sailing Series at an event or team level and a whole lot other companies that will actually only do the America’s Cup. There are brands that will never do anything other than the biggest and the most expensive and in the middle there are companies that could do either.

China is, obviously, a very important market for both land Rover and the Extreme Sailing Series. Photo copyright Lloyd Images

VSail.info: Let’s talk about the teams in your circuit. Will there be more in the near future?
Mark Turner: We don’t want more teams, eight teams is a really good number for us, eight plus the wild cards we have. I think that in Istanbul there will be nine or ten teams and in Cardiff ten teams because of the extra home-nation team. The problem is that when you aim at eight, like Knut Frostad at the Volvo Ocean Race, it’s not a big variation, just two boats, to get to just six. It’s quite challenging from that point of view. In the last three years we have had between four and six teams doing three-four years at least, and that’s a really good starting point. The best for us is that when a change happens, a team leaves and a new one enters, is that we increase the number of global premium brands, the SAP’s and Land Rovers of the world. That would be the only evolution we are looking for wile maintaining the sporting level. That’s a fundamental issue, we need very good sailors, wanting and fighting to win something that is worth winning.

I think we have that today and we haven’t lost it an any point. Sailors come and to, other events pull sailors to other places but there are lots of good sailors and lots of people that want to be in our event. There aren’t many places for professional sailors to make a name and their own project at an amount of money which sailors themselves go and find. there are very few options and I think we have quite a unique place in that aspect. There aren’t many project a sailor can use to do that.

If we increase the number of boats we can’t sail in a stadium and the most important thing in the whole concept is the stadium. When we sail in a place like Singapore we couldn’t do it with 12 boats if it’s windy. It would be impossible to do it with 12 boats and 15 knots of wind. We had the start line 300 meters from the shore and for us proximity is fundamental. It’s a big differentiation between ourselves and the Cup for a good reason. They both do what they need to do. Take for example Naples. Our event would have been pretty different. We do eight races a day, they last 15 minutes each and we would probably go no more than 300 meters from the beach. It’s different. The Cup comes with different politics, different restrictions, less flexibility. It’s all part of its nature. For the Cup, TV is now the priority while for the Extreme Sailing Series it isn’t. We don’t have the brand of the Cup, we don’t have their budget, so you can’t compare the events.

VSail.info: My final question concerns the boats you use in the circuit, the Extreme 40′s. Is there any thought of changing the boats? The IMOCA’s have announced changes, the Volvo Ocean Race is even more radical, are you considering making any changes?
Mark Turner: We look at it all the time, we need to look at it all the time. If there were a magical solution that would allow you to change boats without losing teams or investments you would probably do it. Actually, when we write the list of things we would like to change, it’s not very long and the boat is doing a really good job today. You can repair it easily, you can build it quickly, you can take it apart quickly, you can fit two in one container and reduce the shipping costs. The boat needs a relatively small support team, it works in 4 knots of wind, it works in 30 knots of wind, it works in sea waves, it works in flat water, it’s a pretty good boat.

It’s a ten-year old boat and like all things, you have thing ahead and change it at the right time. However, you have to make sure that when you change it you don’t kill what you already have. It’s a difficult balance between the two things and we aren’t desperate to change boats. When you look at many new boats you might think that some people would rather a 2014 design instead of a 2004 design but actually, the people that pay, the people that come to the events don’t know the difference. They don’t really know the difference. They barely know the difference between a monohull and a multihull.

If we were to add a capital expenditure of between 6 and 10 million euros required to change the boats that amount of cash needs to come from somewhere. In our scale of event, this is a huge amount of money and we are going to lose teams down the road. Some teams, most of the teams, are ran on a very tight budget and they would suddenly need an additional 600-800 thousand euros for a capital expenditure that isn’t going to bring more sponsorship deals. It’s not going to generate any extra revenue.

[Source: Extreme Sailing Series] Team Tilt, the Swiss team selected for the Red Bull Youth America’s Cup has announced their participation at the next two Acts of the Extreme Sailing Series to be staged in Istanbul, Turkey (20-23 June) and Porto, Portugal (25-28 July) as the global tour heads back to Europe for the summer months. Also new to the Series is SpeedDream, an ambitious project that aims to build the worlds fastest monohull, and will join the NeilPryde Windsurf Racing Series as warm-up acts.

Since Team Tilt’s qualification for the Youth America’s Cup, the team of young sailors have embarked on a demanding training programme which includes racing on different high-performance multihull classes including the Decision 35, M2 and the Extreme 40. Just last weekend, the team competed in the first Vulcain Trophy event of the season where they came up against the Extreme 40 crews and their Swiss countrymen onboard Alinghi and Realteam for the first time.

Lucien Cujean, the teams skipper, who started sailing multihulls in 2007 alongside offshore legend Alain Gautier, himself a former Extreme 40 helm, commented: “The forthcoming Extreme Sailing Series Acts in Istanbul and Porto are a great opportunity for us and perfect to prepare ourselves as best as possible for our ultimate objective, winning The Red Bull Youth America’s Cup. The Extreme sailing Series has some of the best multihull sailors in the world and for us it will be a great opportunity to compete alongside these very talented sailors. It’s also a new racing format that we will have to quickly adapt to. So, we have a huge learning curve ahead of us.”

Team Tilt will join The Extreme Sailing Series for Istanbul and Porto Acts in 2013. Photo copyright Loris von Siebenthal-myimage.ch

Cujean will be joined by Jocelyn Keller as tactician, Jeremy Bachelin mainsail trimmer, Thomas Mermod headsail trimmer, with the bowman’s position still to be decided between Mikis Psarosfaghis and Jonas Schagen. As well as giving Team Tilt the chance for some valuable multihull training, joining the Extreme Sailing Series will also give them the chance to size up the competition from the Kiwi Youth America’s Cup contingent onboard GAC Pindar, led by William Tiller.

As part of the Series’ continually developing entertainment programme, SpeedDream will add an exciting new element for the VIP’s and public in Istanbul. As part of the projects quest to build the world’s fastest monohull, SpeedDream have integrated some of their innovative design ideas, such as a flying keel, wave piercing bow and stepped hull, into a 27-foot prototype and Cam Lewis, one of the world’s most celebrated sailors as the first holder of the coveted Jules Verne Trophy and winner of the 1988 America’s Cup, will be in the driving seat demo-sailing the boat and bringing high speeds and excitement to the event in Istanbul.

Recognizing that record setting is as much about finding the right people as it is about radical design ideas, the SpeedDream team feel that coming to the very heart of competitive inshore racing where the best sailors compete is a natural fit for them. “We fully appreciate that if we are in pursuit of some global records that we will need to recruit some top sailors especially those who are used to high speeds,” said Project Leader Vlad Murnikov. “Clearly those sailors who race the Extreme 40’s in such close high speed competition are amongst the best in the world, and we want to introduce them to the SpeedDream concept and see how we can all work together to set some records and broaden the overall interest in sailing.”

Team Tilt Crew List
Skipper / Helmsan: Lucien Cujean (SUI)
Tactician: Jocelyn Keller (SUI)
Mainsail Trimmer: Jeremy Bachelin (SUI)
Headsail Trimmer: Thomas Mermod (SUI)
Bowman: Mikis Psarosfaghis / Jonas Schagen (SUI)

[Source: The Great Cup] Hopes for the final day of racing at The Great Cup’s first ever event, the GC32 Austria Cup within Allianz Traunsee Week presented by BMW, were to complete an eight race round robin before a weather front rolled across Lake Traunsee. Sadly half way through the rain arrived, the wind disappeared and any further prospects of racing were quashed.

While Flavio Marazzi and his Marwin crew set a brisk tone of the day port tacking the fleet with a giant hull fly off the line in race one, it was again Kiwi former Match Racing World Champion Adam Minoprio who continued his relentless string of race wins to end the regatta first overall, eight points ahead of Marwin.

“I didn’t have high hopes of winning, but I didn’t have any other goal,” said Minoprio of his success in his first ever multihull regatta. “I am a little surprised I won. I am pretty happy with how quickly we managed to start sailing these boats fast around the track, but the guys I had sailing with me with put in a big effort.” Sailing with Minoprio were Andy Dinsdale (GER/USA), Thomas Tschepen (AUT) and Diego Stefani (ITA).

Adam Minoprio claims the inaugural GC32 event. Gmunden, 12 May 2013. Photo copyright Christophe Launay / www.sealaunay.com

From here Minoprio sets out this year to reclaim the Alpari World Match Racing Tour title, but hopes to return to The Great Cup. “It is definitely a whole lot of fun. The GC32 is a great boat: It is very nice to sail, it gets up and flies a hull in six knots of wind and you can zoom around a track. It is a great package.”

Flavio Marazzi has taken to his new GC32 catamaran with the same intensity with which he undertook his Star keelboat campaigns for the last three Olympic Games.“It was a really great experience with six teams,” he said. “The boats are very equal. It is hard to be always be on top.”

From Austria, the Great Cup heads to Marazzi’s native Switzerland for the Geneve-Rolle-Geneve on 8th June, followed by the Bol d’Or Mirabaud a week later. Before those Marazzi intends to compete in other ‘long distance’ lake races in Zurich and on Lake Constance. “The idea for this year is to do a lot of promotion and activity to be in the media and to get sponsors,” he says.

Adam Minoprio claims the inaugural GC32 event. Gmunden, 12 May 2013. Photo copyright Christophe Launay / www.sealaunay.com

The surprise result of the regatta was that of AEZ GC32 Youth Sailing Team, skippered by 22-year-old Max Trippolt. The Austrian youngsters didn’t end the regatta well, but won day one and claimed some major scalps along the way, including Minoprio’s, to end the regatta a worthy third among the six teams.

“We thought that it would be much harder for us, because they are all really professional crews,” said Trippolt. “It was really good, because we weren’t familiar with the boat, but the team did a really good job.”

French businessman, Laurent Lenne, creator of The Great Cup, has much to be pleased with from this first regatta of his brand new catamaran circuit. “I am pretty proud of what we have achieved in the last five days. Everyone worked very hard and every day we were doing things better from the live streaming to pushing out the information, etc. And the sailing got better. Looking back at it, I’m happy.”

Lenne has had the monumental task of not just conceiving the Martin Fischer-designed GC32 catamaran built by Premier Composites in Dubai, but also the circuit for it – the Great Cup circuit. He has been ably assisted by throughout by leading Australian catamaran expert, Andrew Macpherson.

Adam Minoprio claims the inaugural GC32 event. Gmunden, 12 May 2013. Photo copyright Christophe Launay / www.sealaunay.com

“We’ve come a long way since the beginning of this year,” said Lenne, whose day job is running SPAX Solution, a leading IT systems integration company in Amsterdam. “Some things only arrived in the office two days before we left to come here. It was very aggressive planning, but you need to show you are doing a lot for the class and to demonstrate what we are capable of. We want everyone who joins the class to understand that they will be getting a minimum quality of service.”

Lenne has also brought some ground breaking technology to the event with a WiFi network spanning most of Lake Traunsee, enabling live TV to be streamed to the internet from on board boats, cameras on the water, etc.

Around all this Lenne also found time to sail his new boat and after a slow start, started winning races in what is his first ever regatta in a multihull bigger than an F18.

“Today our speed was really good and we got a second and a first. Obviously you are racing Adam Minoprio and he is not easy, but we have got really good speed and our communication is getting better. It has been a privilege sailing against these guys.”­­­­

Adam Minoprio claims the inaugural GC32 event. Gmunden, 12 May 2013. Photo copyright Christophe Launay / www.sealaunay.com

[Strong: The Great Cup] Despite his lack of catamaran experience, former Match Racing World Champion Adam Minoprio proved his dominance on day two of the GC32 Austria Cup on Thursday, winning all his races to take the overall lead in this inaugural event of The Great Cup.

The competition also had a different complexion today, being held off the Allianz Traunsee Race Week centre of Gmunden at the northern end of Lake Traunsee. Away from Ebensee and ‘Little Garda’ where racing was held yesterday, there was a longer wait for the sea breeze to fill in. When it arrived, it did so slowly and with the light northeasterly breeze blowing straight off the land there were bullets of wind across the course, requiring tacticians to stay on their toes as once again they raced two lap windward-leewards.

Today the fleet has one light with a vital replacement part for SPAX Solutions Sailing Team due to arrive in Gmunden tonight. With only two of the Martin Fischer-designed GC32 catamarans available, so a fresh series was set up especially. This involved all six teams competing, first sailing a round robin where each team got to sail twice. According to their result in this, the teams were then divided into gold, silver and bronze matches for their finals, winner of the gold match claiming first place, etc.

Adam Minoprio takes the lead on the second day of GC32 racing. Traunsee, 9 May 2013. Photo copyright Christophe Launay / www.sealaunay.com

Clearly comfortable with the boat on boat format (although it wasn’t being sailed under match racing rules) Minoprio first dispatched AEZ GC32 Youth Sailing Team and then SPAX Solution Sailing Team.

Similarly Marwin Team, skippered by Swiss Olympic Star sailor Flavio Marazzi, won their races against AEZ GC32 Racing, skippered by Austrian hope and former Tornado World Champion, Andreas Hagara and then Firefly, sailing their first race today with Dutch former Tornado Olympic sailor Pim Nieuwenhuis at the helm.

The gold final between Marwin Team and Minoprio was a classic example of racing today with Minoprio leading off the line and forcing his opponent off to the unfavoured right. Minoprio led comfortablty around the windward mark, but Marazzi found more breeze on the run and the two boats rounded the leeward gate overlapped. However on the next lap the Kiwi match racing ace got the better of his Swiss opponent to take the win.

In Minoprio’s crew is Austrian Thomas Tschepen, Italian Diego Stefani while on main sheet is half German, half American leading Hobie 16 sailor Andy Dinsdale. Recently Dinsdale has also sailed some Extreme 40s. “There is so much innovation in the GC32 – it is a beautiful multihull,” he says.

As to their success today Dinsdale praised Minoprio’s ability in the pre-starts. “He tries to keep his focus on the other boats and being ahead of them on the line – in starting sequences he is unbeatable which is really helpful on the short course.”

Also making a strong start today, after not being able to race yesterday was the Dutch Firefly team, which won the silver final race against AEZ GC32 Youth Sailing Team, to take third place overall today.

Adam Minoprio takes the lead on the second day of GC32 racing. Traunsee, 9 May 2013. Photo copyright Christophe Launay / www.sealaunay.com

“I was very much looking forward to it, because we spent a lot of time waiting,” said helmsman Pim Nieuwenhuis. “The GC32s are awesome – nice boats to sail. It is nice doing this kind of match racing and all of the guys are having a lot of fun. All of our matches were pretty close and I tried to keep them that way because I don’t like people just banging the corners and putting it all on black. It was real battle.”

While the Firefly team have sailed together a lot before and there is considerable multihull experience in the team, Nieuwenhuis said that in the brief time they have had on board the boat they haven’t managed to get grips with the GC32’s state of the art S-foils and L-profile rudders.

For Laurent Lenne, helmsman of SPAX Solutions Sailing Team, it was his first real taste of the event he created, which has been 16 months in gestation: “The wind was very hard and it was very hard to know where you had to go at the beginning of a race. Sometimes you could come back easily but blow it at the end of the race. But the good guys were really good and it was a great enjoy day.
“I am loving it. It is even better than I thought it would be. Today the wind was good, even if it was a little light at the beginning. Then we had the live streaming up for the first time and people can see how we are growing into this stuff.

“And when the teams were not sailing we were on the VIP boat where we got an amazing view over the landscape. Everyone coming back from the boats enjoyed themselves. All the guests who have been on board like it. We have a big screen on the square. It is a great racing spectacle. That is where we want to go.”

Tomorrow Lenne’s own Spax Solution Sailing Team GC32 will be back in action bringing the brand new GC32s back up to their full complement of three. At Allianz Traunsee Week next year Lenne hopes his state of the art catamarans will have taken off and there will be more than 15 boats on the start line. Judging from the reaction of the sailors this is no pipe dream.

Adam Minoprio takes the lead on the second day of GC32 racing. Traunsee, 9 May 2013. Photo copyright Christophe Launay / www.sealaunay.com

[Source: The Great Cup] The first ever day of racing for The Great Cup, and the GC32 catamarans competing in it, went without too many hitches.

With the race committee shifting the course down to Ebensee and the ‘Little Garda’ area of Lake Traunsee, the most significant blow came when SPAX Solutions suffered gear failure within seconds of the start of the first race. Sadly this was deemed serious enough for her to stand down for the rest of the day, along with the two Dutch teams due to compete on board her – Laurent Lenne’s Spax Solution Sailing Team and the Firefly Team for whom Ditch ex-Olympic Tornado sailor Pim Nieuwenhuis helms.

This left the Swiss teams of Flavio Marazzi and Adam Minoprio and the Austrian AEZ teams of Andreas Hagara and Max Trippolt’s youth squad to spend the rest of the day match racing.

First racing day ever for the GC32′s. Traunsee, 8 May 2013. Photo copyright Christophe Launay / www.sealaunay.com

Thankfully even with two boats, the brand new GC32s put on a breathtaking show with crews screaming past the VIP spectator ship on one hull, with the breezes occasionally gusting to 13 knots but more often around 10 knots.

While there were some races were one team gained a considerable advantage through a gust or their competitor being OCS, in others there was place changing between the one design catamarans. In a memorable one the young Austrian crew on AEZ GC32 Youth Sailing Team overhauled the Flavio Marazzi steered Team Marwin on the final run, only for the Swiss Olympic Star sailor to pick up a gust, the two boats crossing the line overlapped.

The surprise of the day is that the team to come out on top was AEZ GC32 Youth Sailing, with the same crew that narrowly missed out in February’s selection trials for the Red Bull Youth America’s Cup. The team skippered by 22-year-old Max Trippolt even ended the day with a score line of 2-1 against former Match Racing World Champion Adam Minoprio.

“It was really great, amazing,” said Trippolt of their race against Flavio Marazzi’s team that went to the wire. “It shows that it is only finished when it is finished and not before.” Trippolt says he has been getting more and more into match racing over the last two years on his native Lake Constance, in westernmost Austria, and has never previously sailed on Lake Traunsee.

“The boats are really fast and easy to handle,” Trippolt adds of the brand new GC32s. “These boats have a great future.”

Despite having never raced a catamaran in anger before, New Zealand skipper Adam Minoprio seemed to be making light work of it today. After winning today’s final double points scoring long distance race back to Gmunden, Minoprio’s team ended the day third overall, three points adrift of AEZ GC32 Youth Sailing Team, their only losses coming to the young Austrians.

Minoprio would have been ahead of AEZ GC32 Youth Sailing Team had they not been slowed up by an issue with their gennaker in their second match of the day against the Trippolt’s team. “Not being able to unfurl the Code Zero cost us the race,” admitted Minoprio. “We didn’t have the tack tension tight, but we are all learning…”

First racing day ever for the GC32′s. Traunsee, 8 May 2013. Photo copyright Christophe Launay / www.sealaunay.com

Otherwise Minoprio didn’t seem to be having any difficulties acclimatising to racing on two hulls, even though his crew are all adept catamaran sailors, including American Hobie ace Andy Dinsdale.

Minoprio said that of course he enjoyed today’s match racing element, and the pre-starts where the GC32s were chasing each other around at 15 knots. He is also impressed by Lake Traunsee, the host town of Gmunden and Allianz Traunsee Week organisers, PROFS Sailing. “The race village is fantastic with a stage and lots of stalls and all of the locals come out. The town is getting behind it, so it is sweet.”

Minoprio is not the only world class match racer taking part at the GC32 Austria Cup. His Australian contemporary Keith Swinton is trimming jib and genniker for Flavio Marazzi aboard Marwin Team.

Marazzi’s team has boat #3, the newest here and ended the day second, just one point behind AEZ GC32 Youth Sailing Team. The Swiss team has some experience in the GC32 having spent three weeks in Dubai training in February

“It is pretty physical and a lot of fun and the boats performance really well with a lot of speed – it is nice to do some fast sailing,” says Swinton, who reckons the top speed they have seen so far in their GC32 is 25 knots.

“We struggled a little bit in a couple of races,” admitted Swinton. “We lost the lead in one in the final downwind, due to a little bit of a tactical error, that was disappointing. The other was quite clear off the start line. OIherwise the racing is really good, the boats are really similar.”

Tomorrow all six teams will be racing and a program of windward-leewards similar to today is expected.

First racing day ever for the GC32′s. Traunsee, 8 May 2013. Photo copyright Christophe Launay / www.sealaunay.com

[Source: The Great Cup] For the six teams taking part, it has been a practice day with media guests on board, prior to tomorrow’s start of the GC32 Austria Cup, part of Allianz Traunsee Week presented by BMW.

While there appeared to be no wind on Lake Traunsee today, the experienced race committee, led by former Star Olympic sailor Stefan Puxkandl, moved the three GC32 catamarans down to the southern end of the lake at Ebensee and the area known as ‘Little Garda’, where there always seems to be the most breeze on this picture postcard Austrian lake.

All the teams got a chance to race with different winners in each of these informal races: Marwin Team of Swiss Star sailor Flavio Marazzi taking the first, Laurent Lenne’s Spax Solution Sailing Team claiming the second and their Dutch team mates, Firefly, first home in the third.

The Great Cup’s Chief Operating Officer Andrew Macpherson says that the one design aspect of the Martin Fischer-designed 32ft catamarans and the equality of their performance is working: “Over the last few days of test racing, we’ve all been lining up and no one seems faster.”

The GC32′s carry out their practice race on the eve of their first ever regatta. Traunsee, 7 May 2013. Photo copyright Christophe Launay

For the first time today all the crews and their skippers assembled. Austria’s great hope is AEZ GC32 Racing skipper Andreas Hagara, who over his lengthy career in the Olympic Tornado catamaran has been World Champion and has won 15 medals at World and European championship level. Hagara has also competed in the Extreme Sailing Series and was skipper of the China Team AC45.

Hagara is enthusiastic about The Great Cup and the GC32 catamaran: “I think the concept is really good, the size is good, it is state of the art, the latest you can get, apart from the wing rig [which the GC32 doesn’t have, but is fitted to the AC45 and AC72 America’s Cup catamarans], but that is not in line with the idea of the boat – a wing wouldn’t work for private owners.”

The Austrian catamaran sailing legend describes the GC32 as a light boat that is “aggressive to sail – it has a lot of square metres on the rig.” However he adds that with the ability to rake the boat’s foils aft so that they lift the bows, make the GC32 one of the safest catamarans he has ever sailed.

The foils Hagara refers to are S-shaped, as seen on the AC72s catamarans. As well as preventing leeway, these provide vertical lift, but in the lighter conditions expected on the lake it is unlikely there will be enough wind to get the lightweight catamarans fully airborne. Hagara acknowledges it is early days. When competition gets underway tomorrow it will be the first time the brand new GC32s will have ever raced in anger. “We don’t know how to use them yet! We have had no time to find out.”

One of the surprise figures in the GC32 fleet is Mikael Lundh, best known for having competed in two Volvo Ocean Races aboard Swedish Match and on djuice dragons. Lundh is racing on Spax Solution Sailing Team with The Great Cup’s creator, Laurent Lenne. “I think the boats are fantastic. They are really powerful and I think they will be easy to handle for owners.”

The GC32′s carry out their practice race on the eve of their first ever regatta. Traunsee, 7 May 2013. Photo copyright Christophe Launay

While historically catamarans have had issues tacking, this is far from the case with the GC32, Lundh confirms: “Tacking isn’t an issue, even in light airs, although if you completely screw it up, it’ll be a problem. People are very surprised coming on board that it just takes off again. We had a few tacks yesterday in 8 knots of breeze when we went from lifting a hull and then coming out of a tack straight to lifting a hull again.”

Swiss skipper Flavio Marazzi is better known for sailing the stately Olympic Star keelboat. A lightweight catamaran capable of 30+ knots downwind and sailing at two to three times wind speed is a very different proposition. He has acquired his GC32 because it is versatile. “This is a boat designed to be sailed in all conditions including waves and 25 knots. I am looking forward to sailing in big breeze, but I’m looking forward to the Lake Geneva races as well,” Marazzi adds, referring to the Geneve-Rolle-Geneve and Bol d’Or Mirabaud, the events next up for the GC32s after this.

A man who is particularly looking forward to tomorrow’s debut of The Great Cup, is the series’ creator Amsterdam-based Frenchman Laurent Lenne. One year and four months on from starting this project, tomorrow his dream becomes reality.

“The Great Cup should be about great locations, great fun, great sailing and to create a good culture so that everyone has fun, from the venue point of view, sailors and sponsors,” Lenne said.

While a race from Gmunden at the northern of the lake down to Ebensee at its southern end and back was scheduled for tomorrow, instead this is likely to be postponed until Thursday, or whenever conditions look best. Instead tomorrow will see the start of the first of the GC32 Austria Cup’s windward-leeward races.

Racing is set to be streamed live with footage coming back live from two of the three GC32s and other cameras ashore and on the race course. This will be broadcast locally on a big screen in Gmunden and is likely to be streamed on line later in the week.

The GC32′s carry out their practice race on the eve of their first ever regatta. Traunsee, 7 May 2013. Photo copyright Christophe Launay

Any major sponsorship announcement is excellent news for the sport of sailing, especially if it involves a major automotive brand. According to our sources this three-year agreement with Land Rover is valued at approximately 2 million euros, although no official confirmation has been given. We caught up with Mark Turner and talked about this newly-announced deal and the overall state of affairs of the Extreme Sailing Series. This very interesting and long interview will come in two parts. Here’s the first installment:

VSail.info: Securing such a partner is undoubtedly excellent news for the Extreme Sailing Series. Can you first of all give us any detail on the financial part of this three-year deal?
Mark Turner: No, I can’t give you that information but I can tell you it’s significant enough for us to have an important impact and significant enough for Land Rover to care about making it work.

VSail.info: What does Land rover get exactly in this deal? From what I see, you didn’t sell the naming rights to your circuit.
Mark Turner: Land Rover is the first one of the two Series Main Partners, top level sponsors that share the main partnership with the circuit. Both those partners have Trophy rights to half of the events which means half of the events could be for the Land Rover Trophy. However, the overall circuit is still called the Extreme Sailing Series and neither of those partners has naming rights to the circuit.

VSail.info: Do they also name the events? Will we see, for example, the Land Rover Qingdao event?
Mark Turner: No. That could have happened if we had the discussion about much more rights and they had put more money but we were very keen not to cross that level and it fitted their budget. In addition, going forward we can get more from two partners activating in different ways and at the end of one contract you don’t necessarily lose everything either.

VSail.info: Does that mean you are not interested in having, let’s say, AUDI, to name another major automotive brand, coming and buying the rights to the AUDI Extreme Sailing Series, in a similar fashion they did with the Medcup?
Mark Turner: If we had someone coming with the right amount of money, I am sure we wouldn’t have said no. The fact is that with the budget Land Rover had in mind going into, corresponded to a level below and we were actually very keen to look for two partners at the same time, in different sectors, rather than just one sponsor. It suited them as well and we are still looking to find a second partner. At one point we thought we might end up with both deals at the same time but actually we need to work more on that first partner and set the base for 2014. The announcement of Land Rover will help us towards concluding the discussions with the second one. From a credibility point of view this is a big thing.

VSail.info: A number of major European automotive brands such AUDI, BMW and now Land Rover are or have been sponsors of major sailing events or teams. Why do you think sailing attracts such companies?
Mark Turner: I think you must ask them instead.

VSail.info: How did it work then in your case with Land Rover? Did they approach you or did you go knocking on their door?
Mark Turner: We had some connections within a network of people around them but also Jaguar, which belongs to the same group, was into sailing. Actually, the way it happened is that they commissioned an agency to do a research on what sports they should be in and sailing came up as one of those sports. Then, inside sailing they looked for a global, annual property and as you very well know there aren’t many of them. They wanted something that was more urban focused rather than ocean sailing. They want to entertain clients in cities and countries that are of interest to them. We were very well placed for that thanks to the investment we made to take the event global and, on purpose, focus on markets that for most companies are key, global markets. It takes time to change that and evolve but it fitted very well with what they were after.

However, I can’t really answer why premium car brands are attracted to sailing but obviously, their research does point that the image of sailing, its demographics and the relative wealth of people in and around sailing fit very well with their brands.

The Land Rover Extreme 40 boat had her maiden sail in Qingdao. Photo copyright Lloyd Images

VSail.info: Doesn’t that, unfortunately, confirm the stereotype that sailing is for wealthy people? Isn’t it also in contradiction with what you are trying to achieve, bring the sport of sailing closer to the masses?
Mark Turner: I think sailing needs both of these things and countries where there is a rapidly growing wealthy middle class for sure are a target for such companies. There are car brands much more expensive than Land Rover and I wouldn’t say we are talking about elitist, we are talking about ambitions and aspirations. They want people that are developing their wealth to think about them first.

I agree with the point that, generally, sailing is a bit of a complicated place. It does attract very wealthy people as well as a segment of the society that is very different to a mass market. That is not necessarily a bad thing. There are lots of sports in a similar place. Golf is probably not dissimilar and when a study is done properly, golf comes up with sailing as a very similar thing, even if they are very different sports.

I think sailing has different areas. It has a private owner side that could be as wealthy or not as you like. From a dinghy club in the middle of a lake in the UK to very wealthy individuals in Costa Smeralda that pay professional sailors to sail their boat. That’s fine and it’s an important part of the sport of sailing. The bit we are in is purely commercial and inside that commercial space in sailing you can have the Vendée Globe or the Route du Rhum and it works very well for lower-end brands that look for a mass market. You have companies that sell frozen food or fireplaces. Inside sailing there is a whole range of products and countries where the image is very different. I think there is one rule for the sport and it is to put the right product with the right brand in the right countries.

As a minority sport, which sailing is, ultimately you are still better off being in a place where it is viewed more premium rather than mass market because you have more differentiation, more chances to exist. We can’t fight football, we don’t even need to line up against football and we have to stop pretending we can deliver media coverage that is equal to football. We do need a strong media platform though because it supports all the other elements but it’s not the other way round. People that boast about stupid media numbers or try to sell something on media coverage are wrong. However, you need good media coverage but it’s in order to support the B-2-B and internal comms operations. It’s part of the delivery but it’s not the sell.

VSail.info: Will the entry of Land Rover change the global geographical focus of the Extreme Sailing Series?
Mark Turner: There are two parts to answer your question. I don’t think we would have managed to do a deal with them if we weren’t already quite synchronized with what their desires are in terms of geographical markets. It’s not different to SAP either. In the same way, SAP is an important technical partner to us and they have a team. Any global, premium level brand has a pretty similar list of key markets in the world. They might not be identical but they are pretty similar and it’s not hard to pick out the countries. China is obviously there, Brazil is quite often in there, some of the wealthier European countries or the US.

There is a list of probably 12-15 countries where all of these brands have a big overlap. However, one of the parts of the deal with a Series Main Partner is for them to have a strong influence on where we may go and they have the ability to push us in a way that the teams can’t in their requests to go to a specific country. They could tell us they would like, for example, to be in the US or Russia within the next two-three years and we will have to go there. We will have to find a way to go to those countries. They absolutely have that influence and it’s part of the agreement with them. Still, that will not change anything radically in any year since we are already in a good number of their key markets, and of course, we, as an event, want to be in those countries.

VSail.info: What will you use the cash from the deal for? Pay the bills or grow and expand in the future?
Mark Turner: A bit of both. It’s not a deal that changes the world in that sense. Inside the deal there is a co-marketing budget and a boat-activation budget. They will have a Land Rover Extreme 40 boat that will be at most of the events and I think that, probably, these are more important than the actual cash part. It is sailing in Qingdao but it’s not taking part in the races and that is helping us get more people sailing. One of the first things I told them during negotiations was that we needed to include the boat in the package. It’s fully branded, it gives them visibility and the ability to create videos and things around it. Primarily, the goal is to get every guest that comes to an event sailing, to get people out on the boat to experience what we have and what other sports don’t have. That’s part of the deal. That boat will be in most of the venues and may go to other venues as well, outside of the Extreme Sailing Series. At some point, maybe in 2014, the might decide to have a full racing campaign. That’s quite possible but isn’t part of the initial deal.

VSail.info: How do the other teams view the fact that you have teams sponsored by partners of the circuit? Do they feel you are more biased towards them?
Mark Turner: You have to ask them but I don’t think so. I think three or four years ago when iShares got a boat we were overly careful about that just to show people that wasn’t to be the case. I don’t think it’s an issue today.

China is, obviously, a very important market for both land Rover and the Extreme Sailing Series. Photo copyright Lloyd Images

VSail.info: Do you plan to add more venues to the circuit, to increase the number of races per year?
Mark Turner: I think that eight is pretty good. Eight to ten venues is probably the scope that you could do. We currently have eight venues, we had nine at some point in the past and we think this is a good number. The problem when we add a venue is that we don’t a venue deal that will cover the extra cost of an additional event. The team budgets will go up as well. So, everybody’s budgets and costs go up and the value of the extra venue is something you only realize only two-three years down the line if you sell your sponsorship packages, whether the event or the teams, for more. It’s a big investment and it’s difficult to get a venue deal that covers the extra costs.

There are plenty of other things to invest in first, such as developing the events we already have. It doesn’t mean we couldn’t go to two venues close together and limit the extra cost of that but then again you need to have a strong venue deal to do that. If you have too many events that are just two weeks apart from each other, that might be OK for F1 but not for us. You need to breathe. When we were forced to have events two weeks apart in the past, everybody was exhausted. Just from the logistics point view you can’t fit much more. When you do the shipping you can’t fit too many events in a season that starts at the beginning of March and finishes at the end of November. In Europe we could add one or two but it would be very tough to fit much more, shipping costs would go through the roof.

The really important thing for us is to keep team budgets at a low and steady level, in order to be competitive. What we have is a tight product, not a product where you go into and then each year you have to find 50% more money. There is still a big range in team budgets and you have people spending less or more money but the people spending most money are not necessarily in the front. There is a big mix and there is no rule that goes with the amount of money you spend. A team with a yearly budget of 500,00 euros plus the boat can win an event.

VSail.info: I was told by a team that the ideal team budget is closer to a million euros per season.
Mark Turner: You don’t need a million to be at the front. The big difference is in salaries and what kind of hotel you stay in, that’s about it. These are the main variables. You could add some extra people and complicate your project. One of the variables is how much inside the budget is included in communication and whether you have a PR person. Of course, I could go to a sponsor and justify more than a million euros but a 600-700 thousand as well I would be very happy to do a project, knowing that you would be very competitive.

VSail.info: How difficult was closing the Land Rover deal? How long did it take you?
Mark Turner: There isn’t any sailor in Land Rover, there was nobody that was emotionally pushing the deal. It was a purely business decision and that takes a long time. The process is actually longer. However, once you close the deal you have already covered a lot of ground, a lot of subjects. You have looked at every aspect of the deal and you have a good understanding of the things that can be improved. That process takes quite some time.

In Land Rover’s case the financial year starts in April, not in January, and that is quite challenging because, ultimately, we are never going to get decisions in September. Their equivalent of the September-December period is January-March and that always meant that if were going to get it across the line we wouldn’t be able to get it at the beginning of the season. However, when you have a CEO that decides the deal should be done, you sign a deal and then you might spend a year trying to get the team onboard, the marketing director that didn’t really want to do it and doesn’t feel very comfortable with it.

VSail.info: Do you know whether you were competing against other sailing properties for the Land Rover deal?
Mark Turner: I don’t know, I truly don’t know. They are pretty diligent so I don’t think they would have gone to us without looking at other properties.

To be continued…

[Source: GC32] Grand prix catamaran racing comes to Lake Traunsee, Austria next week (8-12 May) with the much anticipated debut of The Great Cup, star turn at Allianz Traunsee Week.

The Great Cup is being sailed in brand new, state of the art GC32 catamarans, designed by Martin Fischer and built in Dubai by Premier Composites. Competing at this inaugural event of The Great Cup will be the first three GC32s built (a fourth is already en route to Europe from the UAE).

For the Lake Traunsee event, the three carbon fibre catamarans will sail under the flags of the Netherlands, Switzerland and Austria and to maximise the number of teams competing, each boat is being allocated two crews, who will alternate.

Thus, Spax Solution Sailing Team from the Netherlands, skippered by creator of The Great Cup, Amsterdam-based Frenchman Laurent Lenne, and whose four man crew includes Aussie catamaran ace Andrew Macpherson and Swedish Volvo Ocean Race and America’s Cup veteran Micke Lundh, will be swapping with another exclusively Dutch crew led by ex-Tornado Olympian Pim Nieuwenhuis. The latter team includes Thijs Visser, who won the new Nacra 17 catamaran class at the Trofeo Princesa Sofia in Palma in March.

From Switzerland, is Olympic Star sailor Flavio Marazzi, whose team will feature Olympic 470 turned Nacra 17 sailor Matías Bühler and young Australian match racer Keith Swinton. The other nominally Swiss team racing on Marazzi’s GC32 will be led by former Match Racing World Champion Adam Minoprio, who has among his crew American Hobie Cat ace Andrew Dinsdale.

New Zealander Minoprio admits he will be undergoing a two hulled baptism of fire. “It will be the first cat sailing I’ve ever done. I am going to be massively under prepared compared to the other guys, but they’ve got me a top crew who’ve done a lot of multihull sailing, so they are going to help me out a lot.”

The GC32 will make its racing debut on Wednesday

Minoprio, who competed in the last Volvo Ocean Race as part of the Emirates Team New Zealand crew aboard Camper, says he is looking forward to The Great Cup: “It is going to be good – it’s the first GC32 event, so everything will be pretty relaxed and fun and social. There won’t be a huge amount of pressure or expectations. The whole concept of the class looks pretty cool. I am pretty excited to be involved.”

Local visitors to Allianz Traunsee Week will be supporting the two AEZ-backed Austrian teams. No catamaran race in Austria is complete without a Hagara and Andreas, elder brother of two time Olympic Tornado gold medallist Roman and himself twice a runner up at the Tornado World Championship, is skippering a boat with an all-Austrian crew, including the experienced Christian Binder. They will be alternating with AEZ Team Austria, the same team of 20-year-olds that in February narrowly missed out on selection for the Red Bull Youth America’s Cup.

With three boats, six teams, but with national teams never racing each other, all the crews will have raced each other after six races. The intention is to sail 12 races, or two rounds, per day, provided conditions allow. Races will be simple two lap windward-leewards with a single weather mark and leeward gate. The aim is for races to last no more than 15-20 minutes.

However The Great Cup, when it gets underway next Wednesday, 8 May, will begin with an ‘around the lake’ race. This will involve the three catamarans sailing from Gmunden, where Allianz Traunsee Week is based, 12km away to Ebensee at the southern end of the lake, and back again, providing competitors with the opportunity to experience the magnificent setting of the snow capped mountain-encircled lake.

But this will be a race with a difference, as The Great Cup’s Chief Operating Officer Andrew Macpherson explains: “It will be a relay race, where one team starts and they race to the other end of the lake and then, exactly like a running relay, we’ll have an area where they’ll do the changeover. It is going to be awesome, particularly as its going to be a Le Mans start off the dock.”

While the intention is to have short windward-leeward racing for the remainder of the regatta, from Thursday until Sunday, Macpherson says the format will remain flexible depending on the weather. If the relay race proves to be a hit, they might run it again. Equally if conditions get lively they might attempt some speed runs. “We’ll only do that if it is going to work – it is an optional thing.”

Through the event a dual scoring system will be running with results for each individual team as well as combined national teams.

CREW LISTS

Austria
AEZ GC32 Racing: Andreas Hagara (AUT), Gerd Habermüller (AUT), Christian Binder (AUT), Peter Steinkogler (AUT)
AEZ GC32 Youth Racing: Alexander Deuring (AUT), Benedikt Höss (AUT), Hanno Sohm (AUT), Max Trippolt (AUT)

Netherlands
Spax Solution Sailing Team: Laurent Lenne (FRA), Andrew Macpherson (AUS), Mikael Lundh (SWE), Olivier Witteveen (NED)
Firefly Team: Pim Nieuwenhuis (NED), Ed van Lierde (NED), Thijs Visser (NED), Mark Van Gelderen (NED)

Switzerland
Marwin Team: Flavio Marazzi (SUI), Mathias Buhler (SUI), Keith Swinton (AUS), Diego Turell (URU)
Team Minoprio: Adam Minoprio (NZL), Andy Dinsdale (USA), Thomas Tschepen (AUT), Diego Stefani (ITA)