SAILING News: Plans to mount an Irish Admiral's Cup campaign - the first in over 10 years - hang on a financial knife-edge as a sponsorship deadline to find €500,000 looms next month. But team manager David Nixon is vowing to press on regardless having secured all three team boats for Ireland's bid at next July's world championship of offshore racing.
Plans first revealed in this column in November, endorsed by the Irish Cruiser Racing Association (ICRA) at its annual conference, and in turn by the Irish Sailing Association (ISA) in the same month, will be seriously curtailed if the search for a team sponsor - the largest sought since NCB stockbrokers backed Ireland's entry into the 1989 Whitbread round the world race - fail to materialise by February.
The three AC-type boats secured in the past month are the Mumm 30 yacht, to be skippered by Athens Olympic dinghy helmsman Tom Fitzpatrick, a Swan 45, owned by England's Charles Swingland but to be skippered by Nixon himself, and the large IRC-rated Transpac 52, a version of which is currently under construction in Lymington for Galway sailor Eamonn Conneelly.
A number of companies, who had initially expressed interest in sponsoring the campaign have since turned down the 40-man pro-am squad put together by Howth's tenacious Nixon in an attempt to win the cup for Ireland for the first time.
Nixon (26), continues to talk up the prospect of a title sponsor for the team and maintains negotiations with potential sponsors are "ongoing" but admits a decision remains elusive.
The team website www.irishacchallenge.com gives full details of the sponsorship packages available and how Nixon is going about recruiting a crew panel that includes professional sailors.
"A sponsor could get a lot out of this by coming on board now and getting a greater long-term return," he said yesterday.
In the absence of funding Nixon says the deal he has done with boat owners Swingland and Conneelly means the team's cost base has been significantly reduced. In turn this means the three boats could continue campaigning on an event-by-event basis without the benefits sponsorship could bring.
Nixon's first competitive event is in February on the British-chartered Swan 45 Piper at the Gates of Dawn, at the Primo Cup in Monaco. Conneelly's Trans Pac 52 is on schedule to be launched on April 11th.
Abroad, Ireland's Finian Maynard, based in the British Virgin Islands, was crowned the fastest man in sailing when the windsurfer beat the 11-year-old record set by the Golden Pages craft with a speed of 46.82 knots last month.
The record, achieved on a canal in France, for the outright world speed sailing title, was verified by the world sailing speed record council this month.
