America’s Cup Trials : Defender Final Winner to Face Kookaburra II Later in Speed Trials

The America’s Cup defender trials took another turn today in their walk with Alice through the Wonderland Down Under.

An unlikely love-in between rival syndicate tycoons Alan Bond and Kevin Parry had just broken up, and reporters were filing out after absorbing about all they could stand of an hour of sweetness and enlightenment when moderator Peter Newman stopped them in their tracks.

“We have a jury decision,” Newman announced.

The jury for the America’s Cup defender trials had just decided not to reopen Kookaburra II’s protest against the way Australia IV had attached its “gennaker” sail.

That left Australia IV securely in second place behind Kookaburra III in the defender trials a day after they had felt compelled to plea-bargain a bizarre deal with the Kookaburras and the Royal Perth Yacht Club to ensure their survival.

The solution was that Bond’s Australia IV will face Parry’s Kookaburra III in the defender final series, but the winning crew must then run speed trials against Kookaburra II and would have the option of sailing either boat in the cup defense.

“You could say we’re giving the Bond camp a second chance,” Parry said, magnanimously.

But with today’s jury decision, Australia IV wouldn’t have had to make any deal at all, while the Kookaburras have kept both of their boats alive.

Laugh, Kookaburra, laugh.

Warren Jones, the Bond team’s executive director, was asked whether he regretted having made such an agreement, considering the jury’s decision.

“The decision was made under pressure,” Jones said, “and thank goodness it was made because it really hasn’t changed anything. All it’s done is brought us together.

“We have this marvelous arrangement whereby whoever wins this final can spend a bit of time finding out which boat is faster and maybe switch boats.”

Jones was trying hard to swallow the irony.

“Maybe fate was kind to us,” he said. “Thank goodness we met yesterday. If we had had the (jury’s) decision, maybe we would never have met and all that acrimony would have dragged on.”

Instead, Bond and Parry, heretofore bitter business rivals whose enmity spilled over into sailing, smiled and joked from opposite ends of the dais, while Royal Perth Yacht Club commodores past and present, Dr. Stan Reid and Alan Crewe, patted themselves on the back for bringing the feuding factions together.

“The meeting was held in a total spirit of cooperation,” Crewe said.

Bond: “We’re looking forward to working with Kevin and putting the best defense forward. Australia is truly united.”

Parry: “We want the best possible defense for Australia.”

In truth, the Royal Perth was compelled to step in to avert a disintegration of the defender trials under a barrage of protests, mostly by the Kookaburras.

Even now, there is no guarantee the pattern won’t continue in the finals starting Wednesday, a day after Dennis Conner and New Zealand open their best-of-seven challenger finals.

Jones said: “Nothing will change with regard to the fierce fighting that has been going on at sea. I expect that there will be protests, and that’s what yachting is all about. Let’s hope there’s none, but that’s almost an impossibility.”

Iain Murray, skipper of the rival Kookaburra III, responded: “As Warren said, I’m sure there will be many protests--probably as many as there were in Series D. The racing will not be any less close than it has been, and when yachts are racing in that close proximity to each other, there’s going to be collisions and more protests.

“With the advent of the winged keel boat that accelerates very quickly and turns very quickly, and with them matched together very competitively, we enter into a bloodbath out there on the race course.”

Said Bond, smiling: “A bloodbath to an Australian means jolly good competition.”

Said Parry, smiling: “It’s when you get down to the real bloodbath . . . “

Under the agreement reached Saturday, the boats will be allowed to use the balloon jib “gennakers” such as Australia IV introduced in the last series, but specific guidelines heretofore lacking have been issued about how the sail must be attached.

The Royal Perth also indicated the defender finals would be reduced from a best-of-nine series to best of seven to allow time afterward for the speed trials with Kookaburra II.

Reid denied that those points and the option to switch boats for the defense were manipulating the rules, as the New York Yacht Club had done for years.

“There have been orchestrated attempts to compare us to the New York Yacht Club,” Reid said. “We are not chopping and changing things at all.”

Walter Cronkite, who is covering the event for CBS, then commented to the principals: “Maybe I don’t understand the rules.”

Despite the newly proclaimed spirit of cooperation, Bond had been backed into a corner by the Kookas and was virtually forced to capitulate to the comromise proposed by the Royal Perth.

Asked about that, Bond said: “I don’t concede anything.”

But there also was pressure on Parry to ease up on his dogmatic determination to ramrod both of his boats into the finals. Man-in-the-street polls around Perth were running so heavily against the Kookaburras that the ebullient Bond, at times equally despised, was becoming a sympathetic figure.