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ANACORTES
— You can smell the new America’s Cup yacht coming together
at BMW Oracle’s Anacortes shop. But despite the thick odor of carbon-fiber
resin, security guards are on strict orders not to say what is inside.
Secrecy
is part of the game, and construction manager Tim Smyth can play it. There
is much at stake. The BMW Oracle boat may be the most advanced and fastest
America’s Cup vessel ever built. The cost — widely reported
as $200 million for the last cup — is expected to soar.
Smyth,
a New Zealander with a quick smile and thick accent, will not say where
team BMW Oracle is in the construction process, how many boats it plans
to build or where it will launch them — though he is willing to give
sometimes misleading hints. “The first boat we built might be in
there,” Smyth said, pointing at the mammoth white tent outside the
100-foot by 200-foot, three-story construction shed. But a peek in the
tent proves it almost empty. Read
on.
