| Mid-January saw BMW Oracle launch its second and | | | | up with a boat as radical as that, you expect |
| final boat of this Cup cycle in Auckland. Although the | | | | fireworks. Instead, Emirates Team New Zealand's |
| team never likes to give too much away, there are | | | | more conservative new boat, NZL 84, looked a better |
| clear signs that Chris Dickson and his team intend to | | | | all-rounder and won the season while Alinghi's modified |
| use USA-98 as its battle boat for the coming season. | | | | 2002-generation SUI-75 still looked worryingly |
| "USA-98 is the result of more than three years of | | | | competitive. |
| R&D and the culmination of all we learned from | | | | As usual, with only a fraction of the facts available, it's |
| our first new boat, USA-87, in the 2006 sailing season," | | | | difficult to draw hard conclusions about where BMW |
| said Dickson after his first day out on the Hauraki Gulf | | | | Oracle have reached in the design war compared with |
| with the new boat. | | | | their rivals, but has USA-87 been a useful exercise or |
| "We've managed to incorporate all of the | | | | a red herring? Alinghi surely holds the aces - with |
| developments that we have realized in our technical | | | | SUI-75 still as fast as anything we've seen and SUI-91 |
| and on-the-water programme with USA-71, USA-76, | | | | and SUI-100 yet to be used in anger. |
| and USA-87. The next step is to let the sailing team | | | | The thing that weighs in BMW Oracle's favour, |
| work with USA-98 to get the most out of her on the | | | | however, is how well the team recovered from a slow |
| race course. The time for testing is over - it is the year | | | | start in the Louis Vuitton Cup four and half years ago |
| of the Cup and time for racing." | | | | in Auckland. USA-76 appeared well off the pace in the |
| This strongly implies that USA-87, the radical | | | | early round-robins while Peter Gilmour appeared to be |
| bowspritted boat of last season, has fulfilled her duties | | | | in charge of a rocketship with the OneWorld boat, |
| on the race course and has already been consigned | | | | USA-67. By the later stages of the Challenger Series, |
| to the role of test boat. USA-98 is said to be quite | | | | Oracle appeared to have turned the tables. It seemed |
| different from USA-87, which also implies that the | | | | OneWorld had put all their cards on the table in round |
| team haven't been overly impressed with last year's | | | | one, while Bruce Farr and his design team kept on |
| model. To be fair, USA-87's track record wasn't that | | | | reshaping and reconfiguring USA-76 through to the |
| bad in the Louis Vuitton Acts of 2006, but nor did she | | | | Challenger final against Alinghi. |
| blow the opposition out of the water. When you come | | | | |