Yachting: Auld Mug returns for jubilee regatta

By SUZANNE McFADDEN

Team New Zealand will take the America's Cup back to its home in Cowes for the first time since the silverware was stolen away 150 years before.

The Auld Mug will make the sentimental return to the Isle of Wight in August next year, for the America's Cup jubilee celebrations.

Team NZ are guests of honour at the party, and plan to take another old star along for the ride. They want NZL32, the original cup-winning black boat from 1995, to re-sail the first cup race around the island.

Black Magic I has been leased to the Swiss Watch Out syndicate as a training boat for the 2003 cup, but Team NZ are in negotiations to borrow it for the regatta.

And since the future of the Swiss challenge - no relation to Russell Coutts' campaign - looks bleak after funding deals fell through, the boat could yet be free to make the trip.

It will be the first time the cup has been back to England - other than for repairs - since another black boat, America, won it in 1851 and made the New York Yacht Club the home of the cup for 131 years.

The original race was sailed on August 22.

But that date has been ruled out for the jubilee because of a spring tide, and it will instead be held on August 21.

NZL32 will race in the greatest fleet of America's Cup yachts ever seen. Around a dozen boats from its generation, the IACC class, are expected in Cowes.

There will be at least 25 of the 12m class boats, among them New Zealand's first cup boat, KZ7, and the three remaining J-class yachts from the 1930s.

Meanwhile, Bruno Trouble, who helps to organise the cup's Louis Vuitton challenger series, was in Auckland yesterday and predicting nine syndicates at the start-line in October 2002.

"Seven are pretty certain - three Americans and four Europeans - and they are basically funded."

Herald Online feature: America's Cup