Random Sailing Team Generator

So you drew a sailing team

You wanted a sailing team and the tool up top gives you one, or several if you raise the number, from a list I keep by hand of the syndicates and crews that have contested the sport's biggest events.

The tool is the simple part. Competitive sailing at this level is not one pursuit, and the entries in this list belong to disciplines that share the wind and almost nothing else.

Three sailing sports in one list

Some of these names are America's Cup syndicates: Emirates Team New Zealand, Luna Rossa, American Magic, Alinghi. That is match racing, two boats, one against one, on a short course, for the oldest trophy there is.

Others belong to The Ocean Race, formerly the Whitbread and then the Volvo: fully crewed yachts racing around the world in legs, for months, through the Southern Ocean, where a crew is thousands of miles from any possible rescue and the boat is wet and cold and violent and never stops.

And a third group, mostly French, are the offshore giants: Gitana, Sodebo, Banque Populaire, Spindrift. These sail Ultim trimarans, hundred-foot machines, sometimes single-handed, around the world. Three sports. A match racer and a solo round-the-world sailor are as different as a sprinter and a mountaineer.

The oldest trophy in international sport

In 1851 a schooner called America sailed from New York to England and beat a fleet of the Royal Yacht Squadron's finest around the Isle of Wight. Queen Victoria, watching, is said to have asked who was second, and to have been told there was no second.

The trophy she awarded went back to New York, and the New York Yacht Club then held it for a hundred and thirty-two years, defeating every challenger from 1851 until 1983, when Australia II arrived with a secret winged keel and finally took it. That is the longest winning streak in the history of sport, in any sport, and it is not close. The Cup has since moved between New Zealand, Switzerland, the United States and back again, and it remains the thing every sailor on this list would trade a career for. Emirates Team New Zealand, a syndicate from a country of five million, has become its dominant modern force.

The holder writes the rules

Here is the constitutional oddity that makes the America's Cup unlike anything else, and it explains a great deal of the sport's litigiousness.

The Cup is governed by a nineteenth-century document called the Deed of Gift. Under it, the club that holds the trophy, the Defender, negotiates the terms of the next contest with the first club to challenge, known as the Challenger of Record. Between them they decide the type of boat, the venue, the year, and much of the rulebook. The other challengers must accept what they are given.

So the holder can, entirely legally, choose a boat that suits its own designers, hold the regatta in its home waters at a season it likes, and set the terms of engagement. Challengers have gone to court over it repeatedly. It is the only major sporting competition where winning grants you the right to redesign the sport before you defend it, and the tactical manoeuvring off the water is followed almost as closely as the racing on it.

Boats that do not touch the water

If your mental image of yacht racing is a heeled-over hull ploughing through waves, it is thirty years out of date. Modern America's Cup boats rise onto hydrofoils, thin blades beneath the hull, and lift clear of the surface entirely.

Once flying, the drag collapses and the boats accelerate to speeds well over eighty kilometres an hour, several times the speed of the wind pushing them. They are sailed by crews who spend the race grinding pedestals or, more recently, pedalling, to generate hydraulic pressure, because the boat's control surfaces need more power than arms can supply. A modern Cup boat can lift, fly, cross the course and crash down in a matter of seconds, and a mistake at that speed destroys the boat. The sport has quietly become one of the most technologically extreme things human beings do for a prize, and the teams are engineering companies that happen to go sailing.

Why these names come and go

A caution about the list. Sailing teams at this level are syndicates: temporary organisations, assembled around a sponsor and a challenge, that exist for one campaign and then dissolve or reappear under a new name.

Oracle Team USA won the Cup twice and no longer exists. Artemis Racing has gone. Team SCA, the all-female crew that raced around the world, was a one-campaign project. British challenges have run under several names in a decade. So this list holds both: the syndicates entered for the next America's Cup in Naples in 2027, and the ones that have contested these events and dissolved. Each is labelled, so you can tell which you have drawn. That is the nature of a sport funded by patrons and corporations rather than by leagues, and it is worth knowing before you go looking for a team that has quietly ceased to be.

What a random sailing team is good for

• Regatta sweepstakes. Draw syndicates for a group during an America's Cup or an Ocean Race leg.
• Quiz and trivia prep. Ask what the oldest trophy in international sport is. Nobody says a yacht race.
• Discovering the sport. Draw a team and go and watch a foiling boat. It does not look like sailing at all.
• Teaching and school projects. Draw a team and research the Deed of Gift, which is a lesson in how rules get written by winners.
• Settling a debate. Pull two teams and argue the greater campaign, then discover they were in different sports.

Sailing questions

What is the oldest trophy in international sport?

The America's Cup, first won in 1851. The New York Yacht Club then defended it successfully for a hundred and thirty-two years until Australia II won in 1983, the longest winning streak in the history of sport.

Why does the America's Cup keep changing boats?

Because under the Deed of Gift the holder and the first challenger together set the rules, the venue and the class of boat for the next contest. Winning gives you the right to reshape the competition before defending it.

Do America's Cup boats really fly?

Yes. They rise onto hydrofoils and lift clear of the water, reaching speeds well over eighty kilometres an hour, several times faster than the wind driving them.

Can I pull several teams, or narrow the pick?

Both. Raise the number for a few at once, with none repeating in a single pull, and use the text boxes to narrow things, such as a keyword the entry has to contain, which is handy for separating the events.

References

1. America's Cup. americascup.com
2. World Sailing. sailing.org