Eagle Syndicate Begins Construction in Rhode Island

The Eagle Syndicate, an America’s Cup challenger affiliated with the Newport Harbor Yacht Club, started construction on Monday of its 12-Meter racing yacht, Eagle.

To be provided with a reportedly unique and secret keel, Eagle is being built at Williams and Manchester Shipyards in Newport, R.I., under the direction of designer Johan Valentign. The vessel is expected to be completed by late February, 1986, at a cost of about $650,000. Evaluation and testing with Eagle and Magic, the syndicate’s laboratory 12-Meter, will take place in early March on waters off Long Beach Beac under Eagle skipper Rod Davis.

Plans are for the keel to be constructed separately at a secret location and retrofitted on Eagle when the challenger arrives in Long Beach.

Gary Thomson, syndicate president, has called the special keel a major breakthrough in design.

“We’ve spent the last two months refining our discovery,” Thomson said, “and we’re confident that the extra investment in time and money to prefect our theory will prove to be a huge success.”

The keel was devised during extensive computer tank testing by Valentijn and Dr. Francis Clauser, an aerodynamics engineer from Caltech.

Eagle is one of six U.S. syndicates expected to compete in the Cup trials to be held in late 1986 off the southwest coast of Australia. The America’s Cup racing series begins in January 31, 1987, in the same location--the Indian Ocean off Perth.

In addition to the Eagle Syndicate, two other Cup syndicates are located in California. They are the St. Francis Yacht Club’s St. Francis Challenge of San Francisco, and the Sail America Syndicate of the San Diego Yacht Club.

The 12-Meter St. Francis is being built at Stephens Marine, Stockton, and was designed by Gary Mull. Tom Blackaller is the skipper. It will be launched in the spring of next year. A second 12-Meter is planned to be built at the same shipyard.

Dennis Durgan, the St. Francis helmsman, said both boats will be sailed in San Francisco Bay and down the coast south to Santa Cruz where wave and wind conditions are similar to the Perth area. Eagle sailors find the sea off Long Beach--20-knot winds five out of seven days--to be a good testing area with conditions similar to Perth’s

San Diego’s Sail America Syndicate has chosen Hawaiian waters. Last week, skipper Dennis Conner and 45 crew and support people moved operations to Snug Harbor, near the University of Hawaii. Here they will perfect racing skills on the 12-Meter, Stars and Stripes ‘86, designed by John Marshall, and two others of their 12’s, during the next 10 months.

It seems that Sail America has the largest budget of any of the American and foreign challengers. San Diego’s budget is in the $12 to $15 million range, with about $7.6 million already raised. St. Francis has a total budget of about about $10 million, as does the Eagle group. Both report about half of the budgets raised.

The New York Yacht Club’s America II Syndicate has not announced a final budget. America II, designed by M. William Langan, is a product of Williams and Manchester Shipyard. This 12-Meter’s skipper is John W. Kolius. The New York syndicate is expected to build two more 12-Meters, so its final budget will likely exceed $10 million, a figure that is roughly the average of all challengers worldwide.

Foreign challengers are Consorzio Italio, Yacht Club Italiano, Italy; Consorzio Azzura, Yacht Club Costa Smeralda (challenger of record), Italy; Challenge Kis France, Societe Des Regates Rochelaises; Challenger Francais Pour L’America’s Cup, Societe Nautique De Marseille, France; 1987 British Challenge for the America’s Cup, Royal Thames Yacht Club, England; New Zealand Challenge, Royal New Zealand Yacht Club; Canada II Syndicate, Secret Cove Yacht Club, Victoria, B.C.; True North Syndicate, Royal Nova Scotia Yacht Club.

The Challenger Elimination Series for the Cup will be officially named Louis Vuitton Cup. The organizing authority for this event is the Yacht Club Costa Smeralda, the Challenger of Record for the America’s Cup 1987.

Other U.S. challengers are “Heart of America Challenge, Chicago Yacht Club and the Courageous Syndicate, Yale Corinthian Yacht Club. Obviously, California leads the field with three challengers.

The 17th Annual Southern California International Sailboat Show in the Long Beach Convention Center, which runs through Nov. 3, is truly international this year. There are exhibits and booths from Canada, England, New Zealand, Japan, Sweden and Australia, as well as marine products from throughout the world and the United States. More than 400 boats are on display, ranging from from 8-foot dinghies to a 55-foot offshore cruiser. A variety of inflatables and sailboards are there, too, along with more 300 equipment and service booths.