Billionaires Battle...in Anacortes?
Posted Sep. 2 at 11:21 am by Brian Miller
One of the interesting stories, if you follow sailing, that crept into print before the holiday weekend was this New York Times account concerning Lawrence Ellison and his efforts to bring the America's Cup back to America. The billionaire founder of Oracle software, he's tried and failed before. Now he's leading the BMW Oracle Racing syndicate against Cup defender Alinghi, a Swiss-based consortium. Both sides, along with other competing nations, will spend hundreds of millions in total to build, test, and race boats that have essentially become high-tech spaceships with sails.
Ellison's new yacht is a $10 million trimaran that's 90 feet long, and it was just launched here on Puget Sound, up in Anacortes, as KOMO also reports. Apparently it's the third such boat built for the team (you add up the cost) at a facility using local experts in carbon fiber fabrication. It's not clear how many local builders and subcontractors were involved. The primary fabricator seems to be Janicki Industries, which here reprints a story that first ran in The Skagit Valley Herald. It's a fair guess that BMW Oracle is pumping a lot more than $10 million into the Skagit Valley economy.
If you live up north and own a small boat, it'll be worth going on out the water to watch the massive new tri-hull being tested. According to the team's Web site, the beast carries 5,000 feet of sail and has a mast 158 feet in height. (For reference, the Montlake Bridge has to open to allow sailboats with masts over 46 feet; BMW Oracle's is three times that height!) I only wonder if, as in past Cup competitions, spies from Alinghi will be among the local yacht gawkers.
Meanwhile, Ellison and Alinghi leader Ernesto Bertarelli (yet another billionaire, yawn) are suing each other over the intricacies of who gets to sail against whom in what order before the final competition begins. (If there's one thing sailors love more than wind, it's rulebooks.) No word on whether Ellison has hired any local legal talent. And we're assuming his yacht's hardware runs on Oracle, not Vista.
Topics: Sailing
