City Blitzes Media With List of Cup Credentials

San Diego’s quest to hold the next America’s Cup races crossed a new frontier Friday as the city’s America’s Cup Task Force began lobbying for the hearts and minds of the nation’s sailing press.

It is all part of a $40,000 effort to remove any doubts the media have about San Diego’s ability to put on the regatta. Doubts put there, in part, by competitors such as Hawaii, where officials have questioned just about everything about San Diego--from its light winds and kelp to its organization and citizen support.

In that context, it is not surprising that beginning Sunday, the state of Hawaii will also bring in a contingent of out-of-town reporters and editors for three days of tropical public relations.

It seems that, as much as the America’s Cup in Australia was a test of sailing skill and fund-raising ability, which, fundamentally, it still is, it also has become a contest of wooing the media.

What the six out-of-town writers and editors--representing publications such as Sailing and America’s Cup Challenge--heard were gung-ho statements like this one from Dan Larsen, chairman of the San Diego Board of Port Commissioners:

“We have the funds to do whatever is necessary to make this a first-class event. . . . We will equal or surpass what Fremantle did. We don’t know exactly how much it will cost, but we’re prepared to put in $5 million, $10 million, $15 million, whatever it costs. We can spend whatever Hawaii does and more.”

Later Fred Frye, commodore of the San Diego Yacht Club, emphatically told the group after a yacht club lunch: “I challenge people to deny us the fact that a race can’t be held off this coast. I think it’s ludicrous to be talking about having a race anywhere but San Diego. That’s the way I feel and I’m not going to take any crap about it.”

Most of the editors and reporters were flown in Friday and met in the afternoon with Mayor Maureen O’Connor. They later had dinner with task force and yacht club members at the bayfront Chart House restaurant. On Friday, they were given a fruit-and-rolls breakfast and an upbeat message at the Hotel Inter-Continental, where a range of task force officials, from Larsen and chairman Brian Bilbray to Councilman Bill Cleator and ConVis director Dal Watkins, attempted, in Bilbray’s words, to “remove clouds about the venue.”

After the speeches, the group was taken on a tour of San Diego Bay on a large catamaran while officials from the Port District pointed out various locations along the waterfront being studied as possible bases for the racing syndicates. During lunch, the members of the press were introduced to such well-known San Diego sailors as Jerry Driscoll, who skippered the Intrepid to an America’s Cup victory a decade ago, and Dan Brown, a former Scripps Institution of Oceanography weatherman who forcefully debunked the notion that San Diego’s relatively light winds would mean dull and noncompetitive races.

Later, the group was taken on a helicopter tour of both San Diego and Mission bays, a visit to Cabrillo National Monument and cocktails at Frye’s home.

In most cases, the lobbying seemed to work.

“I think it’s obvious they are serious about having it here and it’s obvious it’s going to be here. I’m surprised they are so well-organized in so short a time,” said Paul Larsen, editor of America’s Cup Challenge, a magazine published in New York. “It also seems they are almost defensive about the fact that they have to sell San Diego.”

Some of the other writers said they were uncertain about San Diego, if only because they had heard little about what the city had been doing since skipper Dennis Conner returned from Australia with the Cup. If anything, several of them said, they wondered about San Diego’s status because of statements made by Conner and Sail America President Malin Burnham, who have been noncommittal about where the next regatta should be held.

“I’m happy they (San Diego) are putting up a fight for this,” said Micca Hutchins, editor of Sailing, a magazine published in Wisconsin. “But I’m worried they are not seeing” the big picture.

S.D. Seen as Capable

Then there was Duncan McIntosh Jr., editor-publisher of the Costa Mesa-based magazine Sea, who said it was clear to him that San Diego was capable of handling the event, noting that because the yacht club’s site-selection committee is composed predominantly of San Diegans, the hometown pressure is great to keep the defense here.

Frye, in talking about the need to court the nation’s yachting press, said such an effort is of importance because “we have to show everyone we can do it. We have to show we haven’t been sitting on our hands. People have been wondering what we’ve been doing. . . . I’d call it lining up your ducks.”

Next month, the public relations blitz will go to New York, where members of the task force will take San Diego’s message to the Eastern media.