Caspis said FAST 2000 was confident its innovative boat Be Happy, which is believed to have a canard rudder, will be at the start line with 10 other challenge syndicates for the start of Louis Vuitton Cup racing on 18 October. FAST 2000 secured a small amount of additional sponsorship last week that has allowed it to enlarge its sail inventory. We don't have as many sails as we will need for the whole Cup, but we definitely have enough to complete round robin one. As more sponsorship money becomes available we will be able to buy more sails, which will let us complete round robin two and then round robin three. It is the same with every syndicate here.
Cash flow is always a problem.
Your total sponsorship does not become available at one time. It is not all paid in advance but it becomes available on different dates, some in time for each of the round robins. Our challenge has been developed over three years and we are here in Auckland with everything we need to begin - not like some other syndicates who never made it to Auckland. We have a small number of sails, certainly, but we have enough. We spent a lot of money to get our boat to Auckland in an aircraft and we went to that trouble because we intended to race.