Did you know?

3 September

We are allowed to have 650 kg of sails each day on board the boat. It is up to each team to make a selection between main sail, genoas, asymmetric and symmetric spinakers. In total, it means that, depending on the combination, we have between 11 and 13 sails on the boat each day.

“On this day” in 1903...

Sir Thomas Lipton’s Shamrock III got lost in a New York fog bank in the final race of the Cup and is yet to be recorded as having finished the race after the defender Columbia won the match in three straight wins. It was the third attempt in four years by Lipton to win the Cup. Due to intransigence on the part of the New York Yacht Club to agree a class rule to govern the yachts competing for the Cup, and later the outbreak of the First World War, it would be 17 years before the Cup would be competed for again, the second longest break in competition only exceeded by the break caused by the Second World War and its aftermath. Oh, and the Challenger of the 13th match is still to finish her final race, 102 years later!
Hamish Ross, Alinghi General Counsel and America’s Cup Historian