AC Youth Sailing

I'm not following your logic. Don't we need a whole team?

Guys, I think the Request for Applications warrants a closer read, especially items 1.5 and 1.6. If I understand it correctly, there are 2 possible (likely) opportunities/pathways for U.S. sailors between 19 and 23 to get in on this. One is to be part of a team fielded by Oracle (1.6). The other is to be part of something like a

Team San Francisco

(1.5), and I'm sure the San Francisco sailing establishment has a lot of ideas on how to put it together and pay for it.

How teams will select their own competitors is still unclear, but if I'm reading this right, bake sales, bikini car washes, and $5/$10/$100 donations from moms and dads are probably not going to play much of a role in the youth series. Unless Oracle chooses not to field a team.

Too bad.

Not if you're one of the kids who gets recruited to a team. If I were 20 and suddenly found myself training with Oracle, I don't think I'd be telling myself,

aw, shucks.

Oracle doesn't have a stable of 19-23 year olds it's waiting to unleash upon the Red Bull Youth America's Cup... The Oracle brass can't just call up it's nieces and nephews in Australia and Kiwiland to pack onto their boats. It's got to recruit local talent, and they must be U.S. sailors (citizens or long-term residents, item 5.4 in the RFA). And since the U.S. will be unique in having not one but 2 teams (counting

Team San Francisco

), that's twice as many opportunities open to U.S.A. sailors.

I don't think that's too bad at all.

If you are Oracle... what do you want from this program...???

Max PR value in every sailing region of the country. AND you want the selection process to drag out for as long as you can make it.. (You don't give a fig if your team wins...)

The San Fran boat was part of the deal to support youth sailing IN SAN FRANCISCO... we sent in lots of ideas for clinics and partnerships... Oracle went this way... San Fran seems to have bought in as well.

Hopefully the ideas (see above) sent up through the MHC and US Sailing wind up on the proper desks.

I agree. But it isn't something that will vitalize sailing at the grassroots.

My thought is this:

With one spot for the US, I don't think that the blue blazer crowd would be that stoked to let a team of rogue cat sailors take it. But, a grass roots effort to get one or two on a team would probably fly. I anticipate fierce competition.

I'm generalizing, surely there are many capable youth cat sailors, that have the cred, and also have affiliations with YCs or College sailing programs.

I think some central organization (US Sailing???) should quickly come up with some sort of broad vetting process that doesn't exclude the rogue element.

Or...one of you needs to write a check for a couple a hundred grand. <img src="<>/grin.gif" alt="grin" title="grin" height="15" width="15" />

It'll be interesting to see how this all shakes out. Surely once a viable plan is in place, sponsorship money will roll in.

Wish I had enough time in the smaller multis to be considered for this.

There is a standing invitation for the Stanford sailors to walk down the block and hop on an F18 in Redwood City...

Wouldn't the Alter Cup have a new-found purpose with this development?

OK, let's get realistic.

Leaving the politics and money factors out of the equation for the sake of this discussion...

For the skipper and tactician positions: It is widely known that all of the teams strongly believe that it is wiser/easier/faster to take a good match racer and turn him into a cat sailor than the other way around. While there are very few good match racers (on any type of boat) in this age range, kids that have come up through the Opti/college route will try to make a strong case that they understand rules and tactics better that a typical cat sailor.

For the crew positions: These are (very) physical boats. For these positions, they need physical sailors first, smart/cat-experienced second. You could argue that they don't even need to be sailors in the first place.

There will be an application process, so I doubt they would put non-sailors on these teams. There will also need to be some practice, and we've had some discussion about what that might look like.

I would say that if we're lucky, we'd see a maximum of one experienced cat sailor per team.

Mike

EDIT: BTW, the Alter Cup has absoulely no relevance to this event or the Olympics, and likely never will.

For the record:

3.1. The regatta format will be fleet racing.

Match racing skill may have even less bearing on the selection process than cat sailing experience.

The host city boat will be San Francisco's baby, a strictly homegrown affair. I have no idea who's coordinating it at this point, but the boat will be crewed by members or recent alumni of the Bay area's many youth sailing programs (some club-affiliated, others club-independent). I heard over the weekend--but can't say for sure that it's true--that even the stars of collegiate programs at Stanford, Berkeley, Cal Maritime, etc., will be passed over unless they themselves came up through the ranks of San Francisco's junior programs.

For everyone else in the country the ticket will be to get noticed by Oracle. Given the direction Oracle has taken the Cup, not to mention the long-standing involvement of many its team own members in small cat sailing, I think it's unfair to assume they're going to poo-poo cat sailors when it comes to picking their youth team. In fact, I don't think the whole blue-blazer-vs.-catsailor narrative even makes any sense to them. (If it did, our eyes would still be glazing over watching Version 5 boats drift around in prestarts.) They just want talent, and they'll be looking for winners. Whether they won on big boats or small boats, one hull or two hulls, singlehanded or as part of a big monoslug crew--who knows? But winners they will be.

That's encouraging, maybe

the boyz

will get a look.

Good point about the match racing, but I'm referring to the overall mentality. We will certainly push to see cat sailing in the application process, but Oracle is primarily driving the bus.

Mike

as we saw in Venice, tactics in a fleet race are certainly slow and clean air/boatspeed are king.

But I agree that the establishment will probably want to boast about their team sailors having an extensive resume on a number of different boats. Since most catsailors are anit-establishment in the first place, it may be hard to

fit

back in there to be noticed.

But here's the silver lining.... Most likely some of this technology will eventually trickle down to the

restofus

group wherein we could enjoy a somewhat scaled down version of this exciting platform

And, given that there seems to be a growing interest in multihull platforms for a number of different races, there could be a future opening up for those folk willing to put in the mileage...

Looks like SoCal is bringing it!

Youth Team!

BREAKING! American Youth Sailing Force in the house. The second American America's Cup youth team has announced their campaign!

American Youth Sailing Force!

Surf

Is there any more information on how San Fran and Oracle plan to select their teams? or even a time frame for selection.
These two groups are making some big assumptions that a team approach is worthwhile.

I don't know. It's a big mystery.

Here come the Aussies....