San Diego May Be the Front-Runner, but . . . : Newport Sets Sails to Capture Cup Race

Matthew Quinn vividly remembers the sunny days of his childhood, when he eagerly ran down the hill from St. Mary’s school to the wharves on Narragansett Bay, there to meet the crews on the sleek sailing yachts that raced for the America’s Cup.

The scene then was enchantingly simple: a few boats greeted by curious kids; a smattering of tourists; a handful of reporters and photographers, and the blue-blazer haughtiness of the New York Yacht Club, proud owners of the Auld Mug for 132 years.

Each “Cup Summer,” as those times came to be called, brought with it an expectation, an every-third-year tradition and a spirit of good things and good times that reverberated from the marble mansions of the rich on Bellevue Avenue, where the Vanderbilts and their social class built ostentatious “summer cottages,” to the taverns on Thames Street, the narrow waterfront thoroughfare that is a jamble of shipyard workers, tourists and locals.

For 53 years, from 1930 to 1983, Newport and Cup summers were synonymous, a happening of such regularity, like the change in seasons, that it was taken for granted, folks here say. All that changed abruptly, of course, when Dennis Conner lost the Cup to the Australians.

But with Conner’s sailing resurrection in Fremantle three weeks ago and the return of the Cup to the United States, there is a widespread feeling here that Newport, with its Cup history, heritage, sailing conditions and cozy harbor, is the only logical choice as the place to defend the Cup three years from now.

Forget San Diego and Honolulu. “Having the America’s Cup anywhere but in Newport is like having the Kentucky Derby in Toledo,” said Quinn, 28, a piano player at a local restaurant and a native of the small, 30,000-population town. “We’ve had 53 years of class that no one else can match.”

It’s that sentiment which is propelling nearly everyone from local bartenders to the governor to wage a campaign to bring the Cup back to Rhode Island.

“The America’s Cup added a lot to the luster to Newport . . . there’s no doubt it has helped Newport, brought in more tourists, made the town more well known,” said Gov. Edward DiPrete. “Newport seems to have a magic ring to it.”

Don’t get the impression, however, that without the Cup, Newport or Rhode Island have become destitute orphans. The state, with a population of 1 million--the same size as the city of San Diego--has a robust economy and an unemployment rate of about 4%.

Perhaps more telling is that in 1984, the year after Conner lost the prize, tourism in Newport hotels and restaurants increased, an upward spiral that continues unabated today.

The clearest evidence of that is the Newport waterfront, which is in the midst of a building boom that for several years went unchecked.

Since 1980, many of the wharves on the harbor rim have been transformed into a wall of hotels, time-share condominiums and tourist shops, cutting off town-side access and views of the water. There is a lament among some officials here that in the momentum of runaway growth, the city failed to provide a public walkway or promenade from one end of the historic waterfront to the other.

It becomes readily apparent that as Rhode Island attempts to snare the Cup defense, it is not so much after average tourists, the multitude of so-called day trippers who drift in from nearby Massachusetts, Connecticut and other northeastern states for a day of shopping or relaxing at the beach.

No, what Rhode Island officials are after is the upscale pedigree of the tourist species, the free-spending, long-staying, luxury-oriented visitor who has given yachting its big-bucks image and its shell of gentility.

“You can tell when the Cup is in town, people order a bottle of champagne with their lunch,” said one restaurant employee who has worked several Cup summers.

The state’s courting of Conner began in Australia, as Stars & Stripes and Kookaburra III entered the racing finals. DiPrete sent the skipper a telegram and the state bought newspaper ads in Australia touting itself as “Rhode Island--Where America’s Cup Belongs.”

Since then, Newport and state officials and businessmen have busied themselves putting together a package they hope will bring the Cup defense back “home”.

- The governor has created a 27-member commission, headed by well-known Bristol, R.I., yachtsman Halsey C. Herreshoff, who was Conner’s navigator on Liberty in 1983 and who has the distinction of having raced in four America’s Cup contests, a feat equaled only by Conner and one other.

The commission is charged with making Newport’s presentation to the San Diego Yacht Club site selection committee in about six weeks.

- Already, DiPrete has offered Conner the use of the stately, renovated 18-room Eisenhower House, a turn-of-the-century estate used as a summer retreat by President Eisenhower which is perched across Newport Harbor on a commanding piece of high ground at Fort Adams State Park.

- An influential group of the state’s business leaders, called the Commodores, have invited Conner to a fete in his honor.

- And Robert Derecktor, whose shipyard in Mamaroneck, N.Y., built Conner’s Stars & Stripes, has proposed turning part of his boat yard just outside Newport into a 12-meter yachting center that would house up to 17 America’s Cup racing syndicates.

What it will cost Rhode Island to provide for a Cup defense is not yet known, though DiPrete says the state would be willing to pay for some dock and slip facilities “within the bounds of good reason and good business.”

Aside from the pure dollars-and-cents aspect, there is also a feeling here that the state, working through people like Herreshoff and Derecktor, will have access to people such as Conner and Malin Burnham, president of Sail America--the Stars & Stripes fund-raising syndicate. Both Conner and Burnham have been noncommittal about their preference of a defense site, saying the decision rests with the selection committee and not any one individual. Other Sail America officials, however, say the choice of San Diego is a virtual certainty if agencies such as the city’s Port District provide the necessary dock and media facilities.

“They (Stars & Stripes officials) told me they were open-minded about it, that’s why we’re pursuing this,” says Herreshoff, who when he isn’t a yachtsman is employed as the Town Administrator of Bristol, that community’s highest elected official. “Everyone likes San Diego--we don’t think we’re in a boxing ring with them--but everyone has been worried all along that there isn’t much wind there.”

Herreshoff acknowledges that for all of Newport’s historical Cup connections, it is not any more ready to host the contest than any of the other cities vying for it.

“To be honest, everyone is starting from scratch,” he said.

That’s because since the Cup left Newport, it has been elevated to the new level of international mega-sport. The innocence that was a Newport Cup summer, that captivated youngsters like Quinn, is gone forever, replaced by a global media spectacle, multimillion dollar syndicates, tight security and unprecedented corporate involvement.

There were nine racing syndicates in Newport in 1983, and some of the wharves that were used then have since become condominiums. For the next defense, as many as 20, and perhaps more, syndicates are expected.

Herreshoff, however, takes heart in Burnham’s recent comment that he favors the hiring of a professional consultant to help advise the site selection committee. Herreshoff believes that an objective analysis, coming after San Diego’s hometown euphoria has subsided, will help Newport’s cause.

But even then, Herreshoff admits Newport is a dark horse. Asked to realistically assess Newport’s chances, he said, “It’s less than than 50% . . . but we’re going to try like hell. We realize they have all the marbles over there (in San Diego).”

There is one area, however, where Newport has no equal. It has the mansions--huge, turn-of-the century estates with names like the Breakers, the Marble House, Chateau-sur-Mer. They were built and opulently furnished in a gilded age as “summer cottages” by America’s wealthiest Eastern families representing a Who’s Who from the Industrial Revolution--the Vanderbilts, the Firestones, the Drexels. Newport was their summering place.

Numbering 100 or so, the mansions dot the landscape like so many scattered jewel boxes, from the park-like setting along Bellevue Avenue, a few blocks uphill from the harbor, to the rugged cliffs along Ocean Drive, which faces the waters of the Altantic.

Some of these American palaces are now preserved as museums. They draw 800,000 visitors a year, making them the state’s biggest tourist attraction. Some are still owned and lived in by descendants of the original families who built them.

But of relevance to the America’s Cup is that others are available for rent, which is exactly what previous racing syndicates have done, taking them over and turning them into combination hotel and crew-syndicate headquarters, complete with cooking facilities, exercise rooms, large dining halls, spacious lawns to dry sails, rooms for parties and receptions, and, just as important, providing an aura of prestige.

Prestige. Tradition. History. These are words heard often in this city where, despite the onslaught of tourism, the biggest employer in town is still the U.S. Navy, with its assortment of offices such as the Naval War College and officers’ candidate school.

“I think the Cup is something that means a tradition and a heritage to this city,” says Leonard Panaggio, a retired state official and native Newporter who was the Cup’s press officer from 1958 to 1983. “1930 to 1983 is a long time. It left us identified with the Cup; that’s something that’s not easily taken away.”

In a town and a region where genealogy and roots are important, where people who’ve lived here a decade are called “10-year newcomers,” the Cup was looked upon as if it were a familiar old-line family. In contrast to some people in San Diego, who in the last month have become converted Cuppies, many of the residents here, sailors and non-sailors alike, can recite the names and antics of bygone America’s Cup skippers and their boats like fans reminiscing about an old baseball team.

No one seems the least surprised, for example, that Ric Rivera, a bartender at the Candy Store, a tavern on Bannister’s Wharf often frequented by Cup crews, made a special, last-minute trip to New York City to be part of the crowd at the Fifth Avenue ticker-tape parade held for Conner and his crew. He was prepared to travel to San Diego to see the Cup’s return, but the uncertainty surrounding the scheduled arrival in San Diego prevented it.

Enthusiasm for the Cup is not simply the domain of the rich and elite, says Newport Mayor Patrick Kirby, a home-grown product. “This is not a wealthy community . . . it’s a very, very average community that happens to have a section of summer cottages,” he says, explaining that Newport residents rank 34th in average income, out of 39 communities in the state.

Down at the Aquidneck Lobster Co. on Bowen’s Wharf, the largest commercial lobster fishing operation in the region, most of the fishermen fondly recall previous Cup races, especially those with Ted Turner. A media tycoon, victorious America’s Cup skipper in 1977 and “regular guy” who partied with the locals, Turner is remember for making the Cup a “people’s Cup,” and in the process deflating the air of the prim-and-proper New York Yacht Club.

Workers remember the hundreds of people who climbed onto the roof of their lobster warehouse to celebrate Turner’s victory and, years later, the triumphant Australians of 1983, who passed out champagne bottles, one for each hand, to lobstermen like Jack O’Donnell.

“I want it back,” said O’Donnell, standing in a small office inside the lobster warehouse. “Newport is a small town . . . and it’s the crews that people get to know that make it right. They are here for something like five months.”

Says O’Donnell’s boss, Ron Fatulli, who has operated the lobster business for 27 years, “Everybody complains about it, the traffic it brings and all that, but the traffic comes here in the summer anyway. I think you’ll find most people think it’s a good thing.”

Some residents, such as Tom Rich, general manager of Williams & Manchester Shipyard and crew member on Conner’s losing boat in 1983, say things were so good for so long, the Cup was taken for granted.

“It’s easy to take something for granted that’s been around for a long time. Now everybody wants to see it back,” said Rich. “Realistically, the chances of it coming back . . . are 1 in 10.” He has doubts, for example, that Newport can compete financially with a community as large as San Diego.

“One thing Newport had going for it was that the Cup was a social event. Typically, you’d go to the bar with the guys you’d race against. Now it’s much more professional than it used to be . . . I don’t know how that will work as a social event in San Diego because it’s a much, much bigger place,” he said.

Rich, who sailed in the waters off San Diego for two years, believes--as many others in Newport do--that wind conditions in San Diego are too consistently light for good sailing. “I think it will be boring because it takes so darn long for something to happen.

“In Newport, the winds are more shifty, they are light sometimes and then heavy . . . providing many more passing lanes, and that makes for exciting racing.”

There is also some concern here over criticism purportedly made by Conner after the 1983 races, that people in Newport didn’t seem to be supportive or enthusiastic enough and that some hotels engaged in price gouging. Gov. DiPrete said some hotels did raise their rates during the last cup contest, and he now promises to work with the local hotels to guard against a reoccurrence.

As for the lack of support, Colleen Murphy, 28, a Newport native, said that as a rule, people in town don’t fawn over the many celebrities who visit. “We respected their privacy, just like we do for Jackie (Onassis, who married John Kennedy in Newport) and Christie Brinkley and people like that. I guess it looked like we didn’t do enough and Mrs. Conner complained.”

Murphy takes such slights personally because she grew up with the Cup.

“It’s (the Cup) in my heart, it’s not like anything else,” she says unabashedly. Murphy can remember going to Castle Hill, an area of town that juts into the bay, providing grand views of the boats as they come and go into the harbor. “I was 4 years old and I can still remember it,” she says.

On the day Conner won back the Cup in Fremantle, using the warm summer winds of Australia, Murphy watched the victory on television, as many other Newporters did. By the time the race ended, it was nearly 4 a.m. in Newport and temperatures were in the 20s. How did she celebrate?

“I went out to Castle Hill and had some champagne.”