Boatyards Agree to Sweeten Lure for Cup Race

San Diego’s effort to bring the next America’s Cup race to the city moved another step forward Friday with the announcement that the area’s 14 private boatyards are willing to provide space for as many as 26 sailing syndicates.

While the selection of an America’s Cup defense site is still six months away, the commitment by boatyard owners to lease part of their property to the syndicates is the first detailed proposal to have emerged locally since Dennis Conner won the Cup in Australia and brought it to San Diego more than a month ago.

More important to officials of San Diego’s America’s Cup Task Force, the group of civic, business and political leaders lobbying to make San Diego the site of the Cup defense in 1991, the boatyard proposal keeps alive the momentum generated in the city as a result of the Cup victory.

“This puts us at a very strong starting position,” said Fred Frye, commodore of the San Diego Yacht Club and a member of the task force, in an interview.

How the boatyard owners’ proposal will fit into the task force’s site defense plan--which is still in the early stages of development--is not known.

Questions such as lease costs to the syndicates and the practicality of using some or all of the boatyards have yet to be answered, though the boatyard owners claim their proposal will save the syndicates an average of $2 million each.

The San Diego Unified Port District, the lead public agency involved in putting together San Diego’s proposal because it controls most of the San Diego Bay waterfront, is doing its own evaluation of dockside facilities.

Two high-ranking Port District staff members returned this week from a trip to Fremantle, where they were sent to find out what type of facilities the Australians constructed for the Cup races there.

“What this (boatyard owners’ proposal) shows is that we’re starting with more facilities” than were available in Fremantle when it was first selected to host the Cup regatta, said Supervisor Brian Bilbray, chairman of the task force, at a press conference held at the yacht club.

The significance of the boatyard owners’ plans, said Dan Larsen, chairman of the Board of Port Commissioners, is that the Port District may not have to spend as much money providing facilities for the 20 or so syndicates expected to compete in the next Cup races.

“I think this shows the private sector is 100% behind us . . . and will reduce substantially the amount of funds the port would have to provide,” Larsen said.

The proposal by the boatyard owners--the majority of them located north of the Coronado Bridge, though one is in Mission Bay and two are in Chula Vista--commits them to providing the following: a combined 10 acres of open land that could accommodate 26 syndicates; 9,260 linear feet of dock space; 162,305 square feet of building space; 42 office trailers; 20,651 square feet of sail loft space; 25 cranes; 24 large storage containers; 9 travel lifts; availability of boat repair workers at 12 shipyards, and other miscellaneous items such as storage for masts.

The boatyard owners’ involvement--organized primarily through the efforts of John Sawicki, who operates a boatyard in Coronado--was prompted in part by the worry that the port might build new facilities that would remain in business--and thus competitive--after the race.

Sawicki earlier told the Times that the use of existing boatyards that lease space from the port also would lessen any environmental impact on San Diego Bay and trim the number of state and federal environmental and land-use permits that must accompany new facilities.

One of the concerns about using boatyards located south of the Coronado Bridge--which could accommodate six syndicates--is the length of time it would take to tow an America’s Cup 12-meter boat out to the ocean. Larsen said some boatyard owners towed a vessel similar in size to a 12-meter from the South Bay to the tip of Point Loma and that the trip took an hour. That is less time, Larsen said, than it took in Fremantle to get to the race course from dockside.

Among those at the press conference was Noel Semmens, the Western Australia director of tourism from 1971 to 1983 and coordinator of the Western Australian government’s America’s Cup defense and special projects committee, which helped put together the Cup races in Fremantle. Semmens was hired by the San Diego Chamber of Commerce to evaluate San Diego’s Cup facilities.

He said that the city is far ahead of anything Fremantle had after Australia won the Cup in 1983. “When I hear that one reason San Diego is at a disadvantage . . . because of a lack of infrastructure, I’ve got to laugh,” he said.

In fact, Semmens noted, the city’s biggest obstacle is debunking the myth that because of light winds and kelp, San Diego doesn’t have adequate sailing conditions. If sailing in San Diego is so bad, he said, why is it that the city has been the site of several world sailing championships and has produced sailors such as Conner and J.J. Isler, recently named the Rolex male and female sailors of the year.

Wind conditions in San Diego, he explained, are very similar to those in Newport, R.I., where the Cup defense was held for 53 years. He noted that the last Cup races in Newport, when the Australians beat Conner in 1983, were “nail-biting stuff.” The finals went to a tie-breaking seventh race. And in the last leg of that last race, in which the lead changed three times, there were 47 tacks, as the boats waged a furious duel.

In comparison, he said, the races in the high winds of Australia, where there weren’t any lead changes, were a rout lacking in drama. Semmens believes it’s more likely that Cup races in San Diego would duplicate the excitement of Newport.

In other America’s Cup developments, it’s now expected that Sail America, the syndicate that sponsored Conner’s Stars & Stripes, will submit to the San Diego Yacht Club its list of candidates to the site-selection committee by April 4.

The committee, which will be composed of from seven to 11 members, a majority of whom must belong to the yacht club, will choose the next Cup defense location.

Frye, the yacht club commodore, says it will take the yacht club 24 hours to pick committee members from the list submitted by Sail America. “We got to get on this thing,” he said.

Once again, Frye tried to explain why Conner, who, as a trustee of Sail America, will have a hand in selecting the site-selection committee candidates, has not publicly spoken out in favor of San Diego as the place to hold the Cup.

Frye had earlier explained that Conner had told him he will defend the Cup wherever the races are held. On Friday he elaborated on that explanation.

Of paramount importance, Frye said, is that the yacht club put on a race that is perceived as fair to all syndicates. “If there’s any idea it’s not an open contest, no one will show up and it will be dead,” Frye said.

If it’s perceived that Conner is interjecting himself too much into the selection process, other syndicates will think “he has this tournament wired . . . and then no one is going to come and play in that tournament.”

“I can’t speak for Dennis, he speaks for himself,” Frye said. “I think we got our act together . . . he’s playing in another theater than we are right now.”