Cookson boat yard out of work

I was chatting with a yacht broker in London the other day who was telling me about boatyards in Germany and Sweden going in to moth balls due to a worldwide recession in the yacht market.

Now Auckland-based Cookson Boats - one of the world's leading racing boat builders - is doing the same once its current projects are finished. Faced with a blank order book it will have to lay off its 62-strong workforce.

Cookson was responsible for Team New Zealand's America's Cup boats, Steve Fossett's Playstation (renamed Cheyenne) and Larry Ellison's Sayonara, winner of four world maxi championships.

Sales for big yachts have dried up as potential buyers hang back due to the economic downturn in their respective businesses. The project-based nature of yacht-building, however, means that yards will be able to gear themselves up again when economies recover. The danger for existing yards is that some skilled builders will have moved on to other things, possibly starting their own small businesses. But that's the , nature of evolution or what the economist Joseph Schumpeter called "creative destruction."

iShares Cup, Amsterdam

All that wind in the past few weeks and when you need a good breeze it disappears. It's like mid-summer today in the Amsterdam canal basin where 10 Extreme-40 catamarans are competing in the final round of the iShares Cup.

The only teams with a chance of winning the series are Alinghi and Team Origin and up to half way through the programme, Alinghi look to be breezing it, which, given the light airs, is hardly the right choice of adjective.

I spent some time this morning floating around on Team Origin with a star-studded cast of sailors including three Olympic Gold medalists, Ben Ainslie, Iain Percy and Andrew "Bart" Simpson, joined on the boat by Sir Keith Mills, the team principal.

Mills has been working behind the scenes helping to broker a deal on the America's Cup between Ernesto Bertorelli and Larry Ellison.

He seems optimistic that the two businessmen who have been at the centre of protracted legal action over the future of the race, will come to an accommodation before the next court hearing in the New Year.

So will the next event be multi-hulled or single-hulled? It's too early to say but most people I have spoken with think it's inconceivable that the future of the event will not consist of a single-hulled challenge competition preceding a two-boat sail off for the cup itself. Mills still believes the challengers will be racing against each other next year, culminating in a cup race in 2011.

And what of the two big multi-hulls that have been built for BMW Oracle and Alinghi? Mills thinks they will make fine museum pieces. What a ridiculous waste of time and money.