by: Chris Lakey
Monday, June 10, 2013
10:22 AM

Lowestoft sailor Nic Asher is relishing the challenge of a new boat and a new team-mate as he continues his long road to Rio at this week’s Sail for Gold Regatta in Weymouth and Portland.

The two-time world champion in the 470 class made the switch to the high performance 49er skiff at the end of last year in a quest for Rio gold, and is sailing with a new crew, Fynn Sterritt, after splitting from long-term sailing partner Elliot Willis, with whom he won his two world titles.

While Willis has remained in the 470 class, pairing up with double Olympic silver medallist Nick Rogers, the 28-year-old Asher has been enjoying the challenge of a taming a faster, more unstable and more agile boat.

“Our season is going well so far this year,” Asher explained. “We are a new partnership and started sailing together in December, and trained hard out in Murcia at the beginning of the year before doing the world circuit where we competed at our first event in Palma together in April.

“It’s going really well, we have been improving at every event, which is pleasing. At the event in Holland a few weeks ago we ended up 14th and now we are preparing for Sail for Gold where our aim is to continue to improve.”

The Sail for Gold Regatta sees more than 200 sailors from 22 nations competing for honours in eight Olympic and two Paralympic classes on the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic waters of Weymouth and Portland.

For Asher and Sterritt, the event marks a final opportunity for racing before their European Championships in Denmark at the beginning of July, with their World Championships at Marseilles also on the near horizon in September.

“We’re not too sure of our aims [for this week] to be honest,” said Asher.

“It’s a different fleet as there aren’t that many boats here, but we really just want to work on our starting and just getting to grips with the 49er racing really as it’s very different to what we have both experienced before. We are just still trying to figure out what works in each condition really.

“We would love to podium at the worlds, but at the moment I think that is a little unrealistic – a top 10 would be great. If we work hard over the next few months, really push ourselves then I think that is probably achievable – fingers crossed.”

The Sail for Gold Regatta, part of the five-stage EUROSAF Champions Sailing Cup series, takes place at the Weymouth and Portland National Sailing Academy with the final medal races for all classes on Thursday.

source: http://www.edp24.co.uk/sport/other-sport/norfolk-sailing/lowestoft_sailor_asher_preparing_for_rio_1_2228801

Published: 3:52PM Thursday June 06, 2013 Source: ONE Sport

Nearly a month after their horrific accident on San Francisco Bay, Artemis Racing have returned to the water in their first tentative steps towards re-entering the America’s Cup fray.

The Challenger of Record for sailing’s ultimate prize were rocked four weeks ago, when their AC72 boat capsized during training and British sailor Andrew “Bart” Simpson was killed.

Simpson’s funeral was held in England last weekend and yesterday, his shaken crewmates were back in action, albeit in their smaller AC45 version of the full-sized America’s Cup catamaran, with Australian Nathan Outteridge at the helm.

“A good day to get back out on San Francisco Bay, sailing the foiling AC45,” the Artemis team tweeted.

Their presence was welcomed by the Cup holders.

“Great to see Artemis Racing back out on San Francisco Bay this week,” responded Oracle Team USA.

Since the accident, America’s Cup organisers have moved to make racing safer in the fickle winds in the iconic harbour.

But the Swedish-sponsored team has remained largely silent over its future in the event – while their first boat was destroyed, they were in the process of developing a second model when the tragedy occurred.

The only real indication from Artemis of their intentions came two weeks ago, when boss Paul Cayard issued a statement, claiming they were back to work, but would not race if they believed the AC72s were unsafe.

“This confidence will be dependent on many criteria, one of the most important of which is the new safety criteria and rules changes that the America’s Cup organisers and competitors will adopt,” he said.

Among the changes proposed by the regatta safety panel were a reduction to the number of races for the three-team challenger series, a lowering of the allowable maximum wind limit for racing and the ability to postpone a race at the start if conditions are deemed unsafe.

The Louis Vuitton Cup challenger series is due to start on July 8 (NZT), but speculation is building that Artemis may not be ready to race by then, given the work needed to bring their second boat up to speed and repair their crew’s shattered confidence.

“I kind of expect them to turn up to race maybe by the end of July, or certainly by the repechage against either us or [Luna Rossa] in early August,” Team New Zealand boss Grant Dalton told Sail Racing Magazine last week.

source: http://tvnz.co.nz/sailing-news/artemis-water-after-america-s-cup-tragedy-5457483

By NORIMITSU ONISHI

SAN FRANCISCO — Victory in the America’s Cup of 2010 gave Larry Ellison, the tech titan who had spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to capture sailing’s ultimate prize, the right to set the rules for this year’s regatta.

Mr. Ellison, whose Silicon Valley software company, Oracle, has made him the world’s fifth-richest man, decided to bring the race home to the postcard-perfect, television-friendly San Francisco Bay, promising a sporting event that would showcase the city and transform its waterfront. But another decision — calling for the design of extremely expensive, sophisticated and fast 72-foot catamarans that would, for the first time in the history of the 162-year-old competition, fly above the water in high winds in a maneuver known as “foiling” — immediately raised worries about cost and safety.

Now, with just weeks left before the start of competition, those worries could imperil the race’s success. Only four teams have signed up because of the costs, the smallest contingent in the race’s modern history and far fewer than the 15 organizers had predicted in selling the event to city officials hungry for its economic benefits.

As a result, civic leaders are concerned that fewer contestants will mean less interest and, with fund-raising lagging, the city might even be stuck for a significant part of the tab.

Jane Sullivan, a spokeswoman for the city’s America’s Cup project, said San Francisco would ultimately benefit from the event. But she said fund-raising had been made difficult by sailing’s lack of popularity in the United States and the sailing community’s split over the new boats.

Under longstanding rules, the winner of an America’s Cup competition, which is not held on any set schedule, is allowed to decide the next competition’s location and boat design.

Aaron Peskin, a former member of the city’s Board of Supervisors who has started an online campaign to pressure Mr. Ellison to personally cover the city’s operating costs, offered a different explanation.

“Other well-to-do, philanthropic individuals and organizations aren’t really interested in donating to the hobby of the third-richest person in the United States who’s down to his last $40 billion,” Mr. Peskin said. (Forbes Magazine estimates Mr. Ellison’s wealth at $43 billion, ranking him behind only Bill Gates and Warren E. Buffett in the United States.)

The more immediate concern is the dearth of contestants. Races to determine which nation will go up against Mr. Ellison’s defending team are set to begin on the Fourth of July, with the final competition starting Sept. 7.

Artemis, the Swedish team, has not decided whether to drop out after its boat capsized during training last month in San Francisco Bay, killing a crew member; Mr. Ellison’s team’s boat was also wrecked when it capsized last fall, though without serious injuries. The teams are considering last-minute changes, including not racing if winds are too high and sturdier helmets and body armor, to improve safety.

And so even before the first race, organizers have begun acknowledging that the design choice for this year’s yacht, known as the AC72, had been a poor one.

“There is no doubt that the AC72 was more expensive to manufacture and prepare for than we anticipated. When you couple that with the economic downturn that we experienced in 2010 and 2011, that’s the reason we have fewer teams participating this summer than we would have liked,” said Stephen Barclay, chief executive of the America’s Cup Event Authority, the company established by Mr. Ellison to run the event, adding, however, that the boats are safe.

In San Francisco, an increasingly unaffordable city where critics say the booming tech industry has been coddled at the expense of the less affluent, criticism has been rising. Much of it has been leveled at Mr. Ellison, who recently appeared at a red-carpet premiere of “The Wind Gods,” a laudatory documentary about his 2010 victory that was produced by his son, David.

“Larry Ellison made the event so big that it made it really difficult for people to put teams out,” said John Avalos, a member of the Board of Supervisors. “Maybe it’s going to result in Larry Ellison winning by default.”

Mr. Avalos, who voted for the event but now says its promoters’ claims “weren’t true or exaggerated,” recently led a hearing on the race’s economic impact. Because the number of teams had fallen to four from the organizers’ prediction of 15 in 2010, the Bay Area Council Economic Institute estimated that the event would generate $900 million in economic activity, compared with an earlier projection of $1.4 billion; attract 2 million spectators, instead of 2.7 million; and bring 6,500 jobs instead of 8,800.