International Match Race Sailing Event Is Set : But, First, Do Yachts Really Want to Be Plastered With Logos Like Race Cars?

In the lull before action starts off Perth, Australia, in earnest on Oct. 5, another major international sailing event has surfaced.

Life after the America’s Cup could be provided by the first World Cup of Match Race Sailing. It is tentatively scheduled for Long Beach in the summer of 1988 to coincide with the city’s centennial.

A field of 10 will include winners of the world’s seven match racing regattas, including Long Beach’s own Congressional Cup. The event will then rotate annually among the other sites in England, France, Australia, New Zealand, New York and Bermuda.

Chairman Tom Shadden of the Long Beach Yacht Club said details still to be discussed at a meeting in Long Beach Nov. 20-21 include:

--A selection of identical boats, with the possibility of a special design for the event;

--Sponsorship, and whether the name would be sold to a sponsor, for example, the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach;

--Advertising and promotion, and whether that would be displayed on the boats.

The latter is a sticky point right now. Sailing, for the most part, is the last bastion against the creeping commercialism that has infiltrated--and enriched--other sports and made the ’84 Olympics such a financial success.

Rule 26 of the International Yacht Racing Rules prohibits blatant displays such as beer logos on spinnakers. But in recent years the rule has been ignored by events in Australia and France, acts which the establishment regards as a sellout to commercialism.

According to Shadden, the World Cup will involve “far more promotion and marketing” than the Congressional Cup, and Rule 26 is “an area under a lot of review right now.”

The pressure is economic. The heavy corporate involvement in the current America’s Cup campaigns is seen as another large crack in the dam, because in the future those sponsors--especially the ones that backed losers--will demand more substantial and direct advertising return for their investments.

France’s America’s Cup entry, French Kis, will carry the name of its film processing sponsor, after much hand-wringing by the governing body.

Gary Thomson, the Eagle fund-raiser, found a loophole in Rule 26 and has offered ad space on that boat for $1 million.

The rule states only that advertising may not be displayed on “the hull, sails, crew or equipment.” Thomson proposes to sell space on the keel, which is visible when the boat is out of the water.

The recent 11-day Pacific 1000 catamaran event probably wouldn’t have been possible if the boats had not been allowed individual sponsorship, prominently displayed. Winner Randy Smyth was asked if that was a step toward a day when sailboats will look like race cars, plastered with logos.

“Better to have boats that look like race cars than no boats at all,” Smyth said.

Dennis Durgan of Newport Beach, who resigned as alternate skipper for the Golden Gate campaign a few months ago, will sail a trial boat against America II in its final tuneup races in Australia in September.

Durgan was tactician for Dennis Conner’s successful cup defense aboard Freedom in ’80. He now is a partner in manufacturing CompuSail, a high-tech on-board computer that is being used by America II, Golden Gate and Eagle.

The America II people particularly wanted someone with strong match racing credentials to push skipper John Kolius to a peak before the racing starts. Durgan, who won the Congressional Cup in ’79 and ‘80, is regarded as very aggressive on the starting line.

The arrangement also will allow Kolius to carry all of his first-string crew on his own boat. For the most part, tactician John Bertrand and navigator Lex Gahagan have been sailing on opposite boats through two years of testing.

There could be as many as six boats from four syndicates in the Australian defender series to be run concurrently with the challenger trials starting in October.

The favorites will be Australia IV and Kookaburra III, while the longshot will definitely be the underfinanced Eastern States Defense group headed by Syd Fischer.

After some hard thought, the “people’s boat” has been christened, “Steak and Kidney, the Boat from Sydney.”

John Marshall, a veteran cup campaigner with Dennis Conner in ’80 and ‘83, disputes the notion that the Australians will have “home water” advantage from years of sailing out of Fremantle, the Perth port suburb.

“The Australians don’t have a lot of experience in Fremantle, either,” Marshall was quoted in America’s Cup Report. “Nobody lives in Fremantle, if he can help it.”

Marshall pointed out that until this campaign, the Aussies did most of their 12-meter development at Newport, R.I., alongside everyone else.