The odds were against Anacortes ever seeing the America’s Cup again. After Core Builder’s built the massive trimaran in Anacortes that won the America’s Cup for Larry Ellison’s BMW Oracle Racing Team in Valencia, Spain in 2012, the builders moved on to San Francisco and New Zealand. Nor were the odds in favor of Oracle Team USA pulling off a successful defense in the 34th America’s Cup last September in San Francisco. How bad was it? On the morning of Friday September 20, the bookmakers in Las Vegas laid odds of over 700 to 1 against Oracle Team USA coming back to win the cup. No one told Oracle Team USA, however, as they came back from an 8 to 0 deficit, winning 9 races in a row to successfully hold onto the Cup in one of the greatest comebacks in sport’s history. This meant the Cup would stay in the USA, but not that it would find its way back to Anacortes. The Cup was in Anacortes once, in April, 2010, quite an honor as the Cup itself is a bit of a recluse. She sat in the basement of the New York Yacht Club for 131 years and has been in only a handful of yacht clubs (Only a yacht club can challenge for or hold the Cup one of the facts neatly laid out in Julian Guthrie’s book, The Billionaire and the Mechanic, the account of Larry Ellison and the Golden Gate Yacht Club’s epic battle to win the America’s Cup. ) So the chances for the Cup to come back to Anacortes were still very low except for the fact that in the winter of 2012 when Mark Turner, on one of his return journey’s back to Anacortes, declared that if Oracle won the Cup, he would bring it back here. Mark Turner is the co-manager of Core Builders and Shore Team Manager for Oracle Team USA. Turner had spent over five years in Anacortes building high tech carbon fiber racing sailboats for Larry Ellison. He had a number of individuals who worked for him here as well as sub-suppliers like Janike Industries that he wanted to acknowledge which motivated his promise to bring the Cup back to Anacortes and that is exactly what he has done. So against all odds, the America’s Cup will be back in Anacortes for an historic second time. And Julian Guthrie will come to town with her book, accompanied by the Mechanic, Norbert Bajurin the creative Commodore of the Golden Gate Yacht Club who formed the alliance with Ellison that brought the Cup back to America. On Friday, December 6, 2013, the Cup will be at the Anacortes Yacht Club from 4:00 to 6:00 pm. And at Watermark Books from 6:30 to 8:00 pm. Guthrie will be signing books at both locations.
Posted on: Tue, 03 Dec 2013 23:01:51 +0000
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