THE AMERICA’S CUP : Aussies Unleash Their ‘Terrorist’ Helmsman
How can one describe Peter Gilmour?
Lawrence Taylor in deck shoes?
Billy the Kid with a 12-meter gun?
The Yasser Arafat of yachting?
Those are the images of Gilmour, in truth an engaging young man of 27 who has come to be regarded as the terrorist helmsman of Fremantle.
During the America’s Cup defender trials, his aggressive tactics, especially during the 10-minute prestart maneuvering, earned him the nickname Crash , and kept his own rules experts, protest juries and boat crews up all night hearing cases and fixing holes in 12-meters.
Gilmour was the skipper of Kookaburra II, since discarded in favor of Kookaburra III, which will meet Stars & Stripes in the best-of-seven cup finals starting Saturday (9 p.m. PST Friday).
Gilmour has moved over to Iain Murray’s boat to steer for the starts, which places a whole new complexion on that phase of the race, and Dennis Conner’s lads are staying up until, oh, 9 or 10 o’clock at night worrying about it.
Conner, the leading bon vivant of Fremantle, may be staying up later than that, but it’s not because of concern about Gilmour.
“He’s very aggressive,” Conner said of his rival Tuesday. “Ten or 12 years ago, I was thought to be very aggressive, something of a cowboy. We’ll have to wait and see. I think we’ll be all right.”
Nor is Conner’s tactician, Tom Whidden, put off balance by Gilmour’s style. Stars & Stripes has a game plan to deal with him: Ignore him.
“Just like we did with (New Zealand’s) Chris Dickson, who is very aggressive, and with Tom Blackaller, who is very aggressive,” Whidden said. “We’ll handle it exactly the same way.
“We’ll be very conservative at the start and not foul out, do a timed start. I don’t think anybody can defense what we’ve been doing: Running off and then coming back and picking the side of ‘em we want, where we want to be up the course and go for it.”
The Kookaburras have made it clear that they are quick to take advantage of a rival who in a given situation does not enjoy the right of way, under the racing rules, and have been perfectly willing to ram him to drive their point home.
In basketball, it’s called drawing fouls.
“I think we’re professional enough not to fall into that trap,” Whidden said. “We know what we’re racing against. They’re a bit aggressive for the sport’s own good, and I think having a full-time attorney is pushing it a bit much.
“On the other hand, we think we’re good enough to beat anybody, so we’d better be able to beat ‘em in the protest room, too.”
Gilmour is coolly noncommittal about his plan of attack against Conner.
“I’ve watched TV and seen a couple of his starts, but I really haven’t been interested in studying them,” Gilmour says. “We’ll have to see what happens.”
Gilmour is at the wheel while Murray trims the mainsail until the boat is set on a course, then he and Murray switch positions for the race itself.
“I do the prestart myself, predominantly,” Gilmour says. “(Tactician) Derek Clark has a lot of input into it.”
Murray said: “I keep my trap shut.”
Added Gilmour: “We get a lot of information from the computer, which gives us a very close readout on distance to the line and time to the line.”
If Gilmour is up-tight about his responsibility, he doesn’t show it.
“Quite frankly, we think our hardest racing (will have been) the races we had earlier in the (Australian) summer against Australia IV, when the boats were very even,” he said. “I think the America’s Cup (finals) will be slightly relaxed on that basis and perhaps won’t be as hard a racing as we’ve seen.”
His arrogance is based on an at-home familiarity with the race course. Whereas the rest of the Kookaburra afterguard is from the east coast of Australia, Gilmour grew up in Perth, sailing on the Swan River and, later, moving out to the wilder conditions of the Indian Ocean.
“Sailing around the course, I have a fair amount of input into the wind direction and weather patterns,” he said. “I’ve done a lot of sailing out here, and it gives a lot of confidence to the tactician and crew when I say, ‘This is going to happen next.’ ”
Gilmour and Murray have sailed small boats together, alternating positions as skipper and crew, and Gilmour has no problem with Murray taking the helm after his specialty role is completed.
“Iain does an absolutely superb job in being the leader and the helmsman,” Gilmour says. “He leads like I’ve never seen 11 people lead in any field before. He has that ability to hold the whole program together. Every day, it’s business as usual . . . a long and hard and tedious, time-consuming process, and you go through highs and lows and he manages to keep operating very well. I take my hat off to him.”
Unlike Gilmour, however, Murray is uncomfortable in the spotlight, and the on-board TV cameras have indicated that he doesn’t even talk to his crew much.
“He sort of grunts and groans and lets you know what he’s feeling,” Gilmour says. “I do a fair amount of talking to the rest of the crew and so does Derek.”
Murray has indicated that he would prefer to move into management and design full time in the next America’s Cup campaign. Especially after Colin Beashel’s disappointing performance on Australia IV, Gilmour is being touted as Australia’s America’s Cup skipper of the future.
“We’ll see how we go this time before we think about that,” Gilmour said. “I enjoy sailing for the sport, and I don’t wish to make it my livelihood.”
Gilmour has fair, freckled skin, a curse among sailors, and suffers for it. After three months of almost daily exposure to the fierce Fremantle sun, Gilmour finally had to start wearing a painter’s mask to protect his badly blistered nose and lips.
“I’ve tried every kind of zinc and all sorts of little things people keep sending me . . . their own magic potions,” he said. “The best thing is just to completely keep (my face) out of the sun.”
But it’s his job, so he does it.
“One of our mottoes is ‘Business as usual,’ ” Gilmour said. “We’ve tried to portray a working-class man image. Do you know the song, “Working Class Man”? That’s one of our private songs we play around the dock.
“We don’t go out with battle flags flying and tunes thumping and all that sort of thing. We’re quiet and low-key. I think that’s the best way for us because when we get out on the race course we’re quite relaxed.”
And the day Kookaburra returned to the harbor after clinching the defender trials, it was almost ghostly quiet on the docks, as well.
“We haven’t gone out to create a huge fanfare,” Gilmour said. “We’ve gone out to win the America’s Cup. It’s not important for us to have people cheering.”
And although syndicate boss Kevin Parry makes enough noise for all of them, Gilmour wouldn’t mind sailing for him again.
“There hasn’t been any great corporate pressure,” he said. “(The Cup) doesn’t mean anything enormously personal to me. I view it purely from the sporting angle. I’m not interested in the corporate standpoint.”
America’s Cup Notes Stars & Stripes announced three weeks ago that it was $4 million shy of its $15-million budget. Tuesday, syndicate President Malin Burnham announced that the deficit was down to $2.7 million after Budweiser, one of the major sponsors, had kicked in an additional $250,000 and Chester Enegren, 3, had sent $5 from Norfolk, Mass., “from my savings account.” Burnham said: “This kind of contribution means as much as the big ones.” Chester’s hand-scrawled letter had a P.S.: “My dad helped with the big words.” . . . Also helping to bring the deficit down was the Kona Kai Beach and Tennis Resort’s purchase of Stars and Stripes ’86 for $200,000 Tuesday, earmarking the money toward the America’s Cup effort. . . . Prince Albert of Monaco drove into the Stars & Stripes compound in a white limousine Tuesday. Dennis Conner took him for a ride on the boat. . . . Two days earlier, a group from Calumet Farms pulled up in two black limos, toured the compound, met Conner and bought $2,000 worth of souvenirs. “I don’t even know their names,” Conner said later. . . . The Super Bowl was not totally ignored here. The game story got four paragraphs in the West Australian.