http://www.boatinternational.com | July 2018ON BOARD
PHOTOGRAPHY: HARRY KH/INEOS TEAM UKT
hings have changed around here. Back in late March, the British
industrialist Jim Ratclife and I had a beer together and discussed
the future of the British America’s Cup challenge. Two months
later in another pub – the Prospect of Whitby in Wapping, London’s
oldest riverside pub – Jim and I announced that his company Ineos will
invest up to £110 million in our challenge for the 36th America’s Cup.
It means big things: we will launch what is efectively a new team,
Ineos Team UK. The decision to go down this new route was not taken
lightly. It is a massive shift from the previous model we had, with
a mixture of investors and commercial partners.
It became very clear, however, after the new class rule was announced
by Emirates Team New Zealand, that we would need to build two 75ft
foiling monohulls to truly compete. The rule is brand new and it was
simply too risky to assume that we could nail the hull design first time,
with no budget left to build a second boat to respond to the lessons we
learn from the first hull.
The need to run a two-boat campaign took the budget up significantly.
We tried incredibly hard to make it work with the group of existing
investors and
commercial partners –
to achieve the budget
under that structure
- but it became obvious
that we were not going
to reach the target.
It was not long after
the boat rule was
oicially announced
on 29 March that I was
introduced to Jim, the
chairman, founder and
major shareholder of
Ineos, Britain’s biggest
private company. We
hit it of and Jim
A new investor and a new name mean a
fresh approach for Britain’s America’s
Cup challenge, as Sir Ben Ainslie explains
Time to
change tack
immediately understood the project and what was required. Amazingly,
Jim agreed to underwrite the entire campaign.
On his side of the deal, Jim felt – quite reasonably – that if he was going
to make this huge investment in the project, he needed it to be a blank
slate. I won’t lie, I had some tough conversations with the existing
investors and partners. Understandably they were disappointed.
Ultimately, though, this was a decision that I had to make in the best
interests of the team, and they could see that this was Britain’s best
chance. I cannot thank them enough for the way they reacted, in
particular Sir Keith Mills, Chris Bake and Sir Charles Dunstone, along
with all of our previous investors, whose investment and expertise got
Ben Ainslie Racing of the ground in the first place.
Basically, the new structure sees the race team entering into an
agreement to provide Ineos Team UK with the boats, the team and the
wherewithal to compete for the 36th America’s Cup under the Royal
Yacht Squadron Racing’s flag.
The race team will remain pretty much the same, with Grant Simmer
as CEO and Nick Holroyd as chief designer. The core department heads- Jo Grindley running the commercial team, Jono Macbeth leading the
sailing team and James Stagg in operations – will also keep pushing as
hard as they ever have.
Clearly, the Kiwis and Italians have had the class rule for longer. The
Kiwis are in a particularly good place with their simulation abilities. They
have been modelling the new boat since they came up with the concept
last year, while we got the rule only at the end of March.
This time around I think that simulation is a strength of ours as well - compared with where we were at this stage in the last cycle, we are light
years apart. The new investment means we are in the process of signing
up more sailors, and we’ll be launching our first test boat in the summer.
These are incredibly exciting times for the team in Portsmouth.B
Ineos founder and chairman Jim Ratcliffe is backing
the British campaign in the next America’s Cup48