Yachting: Dalton seeks cash for twin challenge

Grant Dalton. Photo / Janna Dixon

Emirates Team New Zealand boss Grant Dalton leaves New Zealand again this week - heading for Europe to look for financial support for the new world series and possibly the Volvo round the world yacht race.

Fresh from winning the Med Cup in Europe, Team NZ have moved from a potential yachting famine to a possible feast even as the America's Cup continues to choke on litigation.

They have now set their sights on the new Louis Vuitton World Series which will start in Nice in November before moving to Auckland in March and then Sicily in May, with other venues to be announced soon.

America's Cup holder Alinghi and challenger BMW Oracle continue to trade legal blows and press releases in a series of tedious actions in the US courts while both camps ready themselves for the "big boat" challenge in the United Arab Emirates in February.

While there is no suggestion yet that the date for the showdown between Alinghi's giant catamaran and Oracle's giant trimaran is in peril, yet more legal action is expected - possibly over the venue. It is also highly likely there will be more legal action after the event.

Which is why the Louis Vuitton is so important to the other challengers waiting for an end to the seemingly perpetual, now almost impenetrable, legal battle which has plagued the Cup ever since Alinghi defeated Emirates Team New Zealand in Valencia in 2007 - and then announced a protocol for the next regatta deemed so self-serving that Oracle began the court action which has stymied another multi-challenger event.

Rather than wait for the rot to set in further, Team NZ (and Oracle) partnered with Louis Vuitton - a long-time America's Cup sponsor also disaffected with Alinghi - to stage the inaugural Louis Vuitton Pacific Series in Auckland last February. That event was so successful that it prefaced the new world series, which has venues like Athens, Valencia, Newport (Rhode Island), Cape Town, Hong Kong and Abu Dhabi interested in staging legs.

The next venue or venues will be announced during the Nice event but the Louis Vuitton has already thrown a life preserver to Cup teams who were otherwise slowly starving to death through lack of action and lack of a vehicle for their sponsors' continued support.

The series provides that - and the prospect of a prestigious alternative should the America's Cup continue to slosh around in its own legal bilges.

A 10th and final team will be announced early next month and will join Emirates Team New Zealand, BMW Oracle, Artemis (Sweden), K-Challenge (France), French Spirit, Synergy (Russia), Mascalzone Latino (Italy), Joe Fly (Italy) and UK's Team Origin. All the syndicates will race, as in Auckland, in identical America's Cup yachts.

But another fascinating element in Team New Zealand's future is whether it might also enter a team in the Volvo.

While the possibility has been around for a while, it was originally mooted as an alternative to America's Cup racing if that event became waterlogged by legal action.

Now Dalton says he is investigating whether Team NZ might be able to enter a boat in the round-the-world race and to help arrange a leg that finishes in Auckland during the next race, in 2011.

"Money first, money second, and money third," said Dalton when asked what he needed to make a Team NZ entry in the Volvo happen.

"If it was to happen, we would have to have two groups. Emirates Team New Zealand would continue its focus as an America's Cup team but that doesn't preclude us from being involved in the Volvo."

There is a deal of sympathy and eagerness to have Auckland involved again in the Volvo.

Dalton has strong links with Volvo race boss Knut Frostad, who competed at the same time as the famous Sir Peter Blake-Dalton duels in what was then the Whitbread round the world race in the late '70s.

There is also some understanding that Auckland will not have the unfettered millions to bid for a race leg like many other cities.

However, time is short - it is understood a New Zealand entry and a boat have to be confirmed by December 18 - hence Dalton's shopping trip overseas looking for sponsors and backers.

However, even if the Volvo bid doesn't come off, the Louis Vuitton offers an exciting future, as does Emirates Team NZ's continued involvement in the Med Cup and the TP52 yachts.

"I don't think any of us quite realised how valuable the Med Cup would be," said Dalton. "It helped develop the team and combinations and raised our profile and that of our sponsors, particularly in Europe."

Now the ETNZ team that lost weight - Med Cup rules mean an overweight crew is docked points - is putting on some controlled beef for working in the bigger America's Cup boats.

Oracle has also split into two groups - one for the trimaran challenge and the other for the Louis Vuitton - and Dalton expects to see Oracle CEO Sir Russell Coutts involved in the world series. However, Alinghi won't be there.

"They are focusing on their Cup boat," said Dalton of the team that Team NZ beat in the Louis Vuitton Pacific series final last February.

"They haven't tried to be antagonistic. They sent representatives to the first few meetings we had [on the world series] but they won't be there and they aren't trying to get in our way - but I don't see them not racing as any kind of an issue."