America’s Cup Trials : Eight Obsolete Losers Sail Final Consolation Race Into Oblivion Today
Eight 12-meter yachts will sail into oblivion today, out of date in their prime, obsolete before their time.
The way America’s Cup technology is moving, the Louis Vuitton fleet race, for boats no longer in contention for the America’s Cup, matches the front-engine roadsters of sailing, a farewell consolation for those that proved too slow to keep up with front rudders and fiberglass.
Three of the syndicates still alive in the challenger and defense semifinals starting after Christmas will send their backup boats out to Gage Roads. Dennis Conner’s Sail America has entered Stars & Stripes ‘85, New Zealand will have KZ5, and Alan Bond will return with Australia III, which won the World 12-meter championship on these waters last February but was withdrawn from the current competition after two rounds.
Most will have pickup crews and alternate helmsmen. They will race twice around a triangular course, a total of 25.85 nautical miles.
Other entries include Buddy Melges’ Heart of America, the New York Yacht Club’s America II, Italy’s Azzurra, and Britain’s White Crusader and backup White Horse Challenge, a radical idea that failed.
Eagle, the Newport Harbor Yacht Club representative, decided not to compete after a depressing third round in which it won only 2 of 11 races and finished with a 10-24 record overall.
“Not that dog,” a crewman said of the gray boat with the proud bird painted on its sides. “We don’t need to embarrass ourselves any further.”
Wednesday, Eagle hung high in its sling in Success Harbour, like a Christmas goose, plucked.
Some of the crew went boardsailing at Cottesloe Beach, while others traded team clothing with other syndicates, inventoried sails and packed gear into shipping containers for the long trip home.
The scene was similar on Fishing Boat Harbour, where a rural road sign for the two-lane intersection of “Zenda Road and Avenue BB” marked the branch location of Melges’ operation. The 56-year-old legend from Zenda, Wis., doesn’t know if his first America’s Cup experience was his last.
“It depends on who wins,” he said. “I think I’d get out pretty quick if Dennis (Conner) wins, or (Tom) Blackaller. I don’t see any sense in going to defend the cup for the St. Francis (San Francisco) Yacht Club or the San Diego Yacht Club, any more than I saw any sense in defending it for the New York Yacht Club.”
The cup’s deed of gift gives the yacht club that holds it control of the defenses until it leaves the country, which is how New York hung onto it for 132 years.
Nevertheless, the Chicago Yacht Club has indicated that it will continue a program, Melges said, although “the value for the Heart of America Challenge was to be able to bring this festive event to their part of the world.”
As Melges said earlier, if his effort achieved nothing else, “it got a lot of people who drive plows and milk cows interested in 12-meter sailing for the first time.”
And if Melges no longer sails them, he’d like to build them for others. Out of fiberglass.
He is the Midwest’s major builder of lake scows and various small boats and the largest employer in Zenda, a tiny community near the Illinois border in southeastern Wisconsin.
“I would hope our company might be involved in the construction of some 12-meters in plastic composites,” he said. “We’ve got the building that can handle it. We could build four 12s at one time. If these guys want security, all we’ve got to do is drop curtains.”
So far, only New Zealand has figured out how to build a successful 12-meter of fiberglass. Others who wanted to couldn’t meet the specifications so meticulously monitored by Lloyd’s Register of Shipping.
“I don’t think (the New Zealanders) have gotten around the rule,” Melges said. “I think they’ve understood the rule better. We looked at it in our little shop, but we didn’t study the Lloyd’s specs.
“I’d hate to think that we aren’t smart enough in America, with all the plastic boats running around, that we couldn’t build a plastic boat to equal that of the Kiwis.”
One advantage would be using the same mold, instead of fabricating each boat individually.
“The first boat might cost you three-quarters of a million dollars, the second one would cost you about half that and the third one you’d get for peanuts,” Melges said.
Another advantage, Melges said with a sly look, is “to be able to play with your laminate . . . build your weight lower (and) closer to the center.”
Which, of course, is the crux of Conner’s complaints about New Zealand’s KZ7.
“Oh, yeah, but it meets Lloyd’s specs,” Melges said. “There are a lot of ways to put resin down.”
Melges, who had only two days of testing in Fremantle before the races started Oct. 5, didn’t get his boat going until the third round, when he added “tiplets” to the winged keel and won 6 of 11 races, including upsets of America II and semifinalist USA.
“My frustration was in not having the boat race-ready at the start,” Melges said. “That means sail development, hull shape, deck hardware, rig.
“If we’d have put the tiplets on between the October and November rounds, we could have made the final four. Early on, we were a doormat, like Challenge France, Azzurra and Courageous.
“The only glory is that right now, anytime you’re into the 15-to-25 (knots of wind) range, we’re as fast as any of the top four boats.”
He leans toward Conner becoming the challenger but picks Blackaller, in his radical USA, if the water is smooth.
“Blackaller would be untouchable at Newport, R.I,” Melges said. “At San Diego you could kiss him goodby.”
There were reasons to be skeptical of Melges’ chances. Despite his world championships in other classes, he had never sailed a 12-meter and had never done much match racing. He also was the oldest skipper here.
“I don’t think any of those things held us back,” he said. “The attachment that I have with the boat was probably a plus factor rather than a minus.
“What I enjoyed most was the challenge, making this thing go. We would have loved to have had something quicker out of the box. Give me a fast boat and I’ll be a smart 12-meter sailor. Give me a slow boat and Melges is over the hill.”
America’s Cup Notes As promised, the four challenge semifinalists will be re-measured and re-surveyed before the start of competition Dec. 28. R.J. Rymill, principal surveyor for Lloyd’s Register of Shipping, was en route from London Wednesday to conduct the tests. Of particular interest will be the thickness and composition of the fiberglass hull of New Zealand’s KZ7. Rymill will use an ultra-sound unit called a gamma photon back-scatter. If the unit indicates something is amiss, core samples may also be taken. The concern with the aluminum boats--Stars & Stripes ‘87, USA and French Kiss--is to determine if they have been stressed out of shape. . . . New Zealand syndicate chairman Michael Fay has put the $5,000 bet won from USA skipper Tom Blackaller into an investment fund for the crew in the New Zealand share market, “which is doing very well right now,” Fay said. . . . The once-beaten Kiwis continued their regular training program after a brief celebration for winning the trial rounds. KZ7 went into the shed for three days of modifications, and they planned to sail on Christmas Day to prepare for the semifinals starting Dec. 28. . . . The defenders continue to duel in a battle of handouts distributed almost daily at the media center. Steak ‘n Kidney chief Syd Fischer issued another statement ripping the Royal Perth Yacht Club for not throwing out points before the semifinals, as the challengers will do. Fischer called it “a bureaucratic decision that could cost Australia the America’s Cup,” and contrary to the spirit of “the street fighters who took on the stuffed shirts of the New York Yacht Club (in ‘83) and beat them at their own game.” Fischer is threatening to withdraw his boat. Malcolm Bailey, Taskforce 87 director, took offense at Fischer’s charge that the two Kookaburras would be “team racing” to knock out Australia IV if Steak ‘n Kidney weren’t around. Fischer, Bailey said, “has absolutely no right to insinuate that (we) will do anything outside the rules. Syd’s position is one of his own making.”