And the Other News Is . . .

Photo By Guilain Grenier/Oracle Team USA

The first foiling exercise for USA-17 should have been the news of the day, even though the breeze was mild, the “flight” was brief, and it took the bigsail to get’er up.

But, it seems there has been a change of plans regarding San Francisco piers and team bases for 2013, and the America’s Cup Event Authority has let their Kiwi frenemies have the lead in spinning the story. And Dean Barker has gladly done so.

I figure this will be a developing story. As I recall leaving the storyline a while back, the City of San Francisco was stepping in with its own financing to partially rehab Piers 30-32, and those would be the publicly-accessible team bases for AC34. As I write, the sun is still coming up, city offices are opening for business, and no one is telling me what’s really going on. But the usually-not-so newsy Dean Barker blog has been burning up the internet for hours to the tune of:

Bombshell in San Fran

Today the Event organisers [sic] dropped a bombshell on the Americas Cup competitors when they announced they will no longer be requiring the Teams to be based on Piers 30 and 32, and more importantly would not be paying for any redevelopment of the Piers as has been promised for the last 18 months.

I am sitting here completely stunned.

Dean’s blog can be found HERE.

ACWS On-Water Viewing

There is reason to hope for more information today, in a more user-friendly form, but if you’re keen to see the restricted zones — which differ from day to day — you can hunt them out in Instructions for Flagged Vessels.