An aristocrat of the mountain nation's Société Nautique de Genève (SNG), Commodore Pierre-Yves Firmenich (SUI), and his executive, Secretary-General Alec Tournier (SUI), have engaged San Francisco's Golden Gate Yacht Club (GGYC) in a letter-writing contest.
"You failed to provide timely certification of your horrendously huge trimaran, in accordance with the provisions of the blah, blah, blah," they wrote. "Now we have no alternative but to blah, blah, blah; and then blah, blah,blah" they concluded.
Shots across the bow.
GGYC's courteous and restrained Commodore Marcus Young replied in similar terms, without ad hominem tactics or threats. And he promised a civil disengagement from whatever obliged GGYC to whatever, at some point in the proceedings, somewhere in there, somewhere along the line, somehow.
Which is fine.
Superficially, it looks like a dance among commodores.
From the alpine people, however, don't misunderstand the intention.
It's a dance to delay, confuse and diffuse the fact they don't have a trimaran of 90-feet, they aren't building a trimaran of 90-feet, and they have no intentions of building a trimaran of 90-feet. Period.
For our friends at GGYC, it's a step to disengage from their obligations as Challenger of Record, in whatever contest they were challening, wherever it was staged, or why, in order to compete and achieve something, somehow.
Can you keep track of this?
Regardless, we can be sure that the next brickbat in this engagement will be a vituperative onslaught from the noisemaker at SNG, His Earnestness, Vice Commodore Fred Meyer (SUI).
The Vice Commodore will harass GGYC's sailing team, BMW Oracle, for failing to win on the water, preferring instead to sail in the Courts of New York.
He will fire a phosphorus flare at Russell Coutts (NZL), skipper of BMW Oracle, just so he can pay a tidy Swiss insult to the Kiwi sailor.
Then, as per usual, he will disappear until the next onslaught.
The fact is, there's no Alinghi trimaran. And there never will be.
The House of Cards factor is that the Cold Water Yacht Club (SNG) is ever-so-slowly collapsing, thanks to a paucity of defensive strategies.
Pretty soon, we project, we will see the rubbing of SNG's hull on the hard shallow stones of the foreshore of reality.
SNG are pooped. AC is pooped, likewise. And GGYC is trying to do everything they can to salvage something out of this, as they watch Louis Vuitton's Bruno Troublé (FRA) defect to Auckland, New Zealand, to stage some wonderful AC32-style pyrotechnics in the one city down under that still loves America's Cup.
Given the heated penmanship, GGYC remains the intelligent participant, we aver. And SNG is fighting a defensive, losing battle.
Our greatest fear, sadly, is that public opinion will diss America's Cup as a wretched excess, a collossal failure, and a calamity of pride, and then depart the stage, muttering silently.
Our prayer is a simple one.
Ernesto stop. Larry stop. All nations, stop. Courts stop. Vice Commodore Myer stop.
Let's have a fabulous AC33 in re-engineered old boats in Valencia. Let's have a great time in the sun in Spain, as soon as humanly possible. Next year, if possible.
Then, together, let us build the biggest, scariest AC34 ever. The biggest, rangiest boats ever. No holds barred!
(Even if we have to take Bruno Troublé to lunch to explain that he can, personally, for his fabulous company LVMH, usher into existence -- not the re-entry of an artifact from sailing history -- but a new standard that changes the competitive sailing world as we know it, and moves naval architecture and innovative yacht design to an absolutely higher plane.)
Which is good.
But first, please, AC33.
Please.
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