San Diego Running Hard for Cup

Everything seems to be falling into place for Sail America.

At about the same time that the Hawaii state legislature was committing $60 million to develop America’s Cup facilities for 1990-91, the San Diego Unified Port District was promising “to do whatever it takes” to hold the defense in San Diego.

“We are prepared to spend whatever Hawaii spends and more,” said Dan Larsen, vice president for facilities.

Meanwhile, the San Diego Yacht Club was so suspicious of the motives of Sail America (Dennis Conner, Malin Burnham and company) that it stacked the defense committee with local loyalists to ensure that the event would be held at home, at the expense of all other considerations.

Commodore Fred Frye told reporters: “It’s ludicrous to think about having it anywhere else.”

Sandy Purdon, the former executive director of Sail America, said: “I think it’s gotten to be a little silly.”

Silly, perhaps. Emotional, for sure. Unhappy with a proposed compromise committee, Sail America has said it will take its case to an arbiter.

Purdon resigned his Sail America position out of implied conflict of interest. He is now on the city’s America’s Cup Task Force. He also will become the club’s commodore in 1991 at the time of the next defense.

“I think we ought to pick the venue, pick it as San Diego, and then we can bring in all these other guys to give (the committee) that global look that Sail America wants,” Purdon says. “The only thing the (yacht club) board is concerned about is that there’s some hidden agenda (by Sail America) about not having the venue in San Diego.

“It’s our responsibility to our membership and to the city to do our best to ensure that the venue is here. Then Sail America can go and do the job of managing the event, which we want them to do, with the club as sort of a watchdog. We don’t want to be involved in the management of the event.”

But did Purdon really have a conflict? Have Conner or Burnham ever come right out and said they wanted to take the races to Hawaii?

No, but neither did they say they wouldn’t, if they could. Purdon and others feel that Conner and Burnham have left them somewhat in the dark, and their stance has created an element of distrust.

“I’m at a loss to know what they’re seeking,” Purdon says. “We’re a little nervous about the signals that we’re getting.”

But perhaps instead of trying to maneuver the cup defense to Hawaii, Sail America has just been maneuvering San Diego into an all-out commitment.

Flash back to January, when Burnham said in Fremantle that if Stars & Stripes won the cup, the defense wouldn’t necessarily be in San Diego. At the time, the city was dragging its feet on supporting a possible defense, and Burnham’s comment put it on sharp notice to shape up--which, obviously, it has.

Last week, the task force took visiting media on a tour of proposed facilities by bus, boat and helicopter.

They flew low over the proposed race courses off Pt. Loma to show that the dreaded kelp was only a problem within a mile or so of shore.

They brought in veteran sailboat racer Dan Brown from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography to testify for a “10- to 11-knot sea breeze that we can bank on nearly every day (and) has made for excellent racing for 100 years around here.”

Those presentations were meant to dismiss concerns voiced in Fremantle by Burnham, who knew better because he has sailed around San Diego all his life.

What does the owner of a baseball or football franchise do when he wants a better stadium? He threatens to move his team.

Whether by accident or design, Sail America merely applied the proven ploy to another sport. Hawaii cooperated beautifully, and the desired results were achieved.

Sail America’s move toward arbitration may not seem to fit the scenario, or it could only suggest that it wants even greater control than the club is willing to grant, and at least wants other sites to be considered.

But the day it’s announced that the cup will be defended in San Diego, Conner and Burnham, the hometown heroes, will say they couldn’t be more pleased.

Sailing Notes

AHMANSON CUP SERIES--Twenty boats are entered in the Newport Harbor Yacht Club’s 30th Ahmanson Cup International Offshore Rule handicap event over the next two weekends, under the sponsorship of Home Savings. The courses will run from 18 to 32 miles, depending on wind, passing Pt. Fermin and Catalina Island. Winners of the last four events are back: Michael Wathen’s Defiance, Balboa YC, in ‘86; Greg Joy’s Tinderbox, Little Ships Fleet of Long Beach, skippered by Bob Burkhardt in ‘84-85, and Dick Ettinger’s Free Enterprise, Newport Harbor YC, ’83. Other leading entries include Bill Twist’s Blade Runner from St. Francis YC, Don Hughes’ Quintessence from Santa Barbara YC and John Arens’ Tomahawk, Balboa. Some other historic names decorate the cup. Dick Steele’s Odyssey was the first winner in ‘57, followed by Howard Ahmanson’s Sirius in ‘58, Don Haskell’s Chubasco in ‘71, Bill Ficker’s Yellow Brick Road in ’74 and Dennis Choate’s Bingo in ’77. The ’64 winner was Gene Trepte, who is now chairman of the San Diego YC’s controversial America’s Cup defense committee.

HIGH SCHOOL--Corona del Mar High School, led by Eric Proul, Chris Krajala and John Duarte, won the national championship over 25 other high school teams at Annapolis, Md. Newport Harbor’s team was second in the event, which was sailed in 420 dinghies. Corona del Mar Coach Bill Wakeman’s teams have rated among the nation’s top 10% to qualify for the nationals the past 11 years, “but this is the first time the Mallory Trophy has come home with our team,” he said. The winning sailors also compete in the Balboa YC junior program.

CALIFORNIA CUP--Eight ultralights from 66 to 70 feet, all tuning up for the Transpac in July, will compete in the California Yacht Club’s 24th annual event in Santa Monica Bay next weekend. Five races are scheduled next Friday through Sunday. This is the third year of featuring the downwind sleds, which are somewhat out of their element darting around the windward-leeward buoys off Venice Pier, but it should sharpen up the crews. The entries include the first three monohulls to finish at Ensenada last month: John Landon’s ’85 winner Kathmandu, Pat Farrah’s ’86 winner Blondie and Roy Disney’s new Pyewacket. Also: Cheetah, Citius, Drumbeat, Hotel California and Pandemonium.

MATCH RACING--Australia’s Peter Gilmour defeated Wales’ Eddie Owen by 45 seconds in the championship final to win the Royal Lymington Cup series at Southampton in the south of England. Gilmour will succeed Iain Murray as the Kookaburra helmsman in the 1991 America’s Cup so Murray can concentrate on running the syndicate. In the semifinals, Gilmour defeated Britain’s Chris Law by 1:17 and Owen defeated New Zealand’s Chris Dickson by 1:03. Peter Isler, from Stars & Stripes, the only American entry, was 5-4 in the round-robin phase. Isler will speak and show slides on the Fremantle campaign at the Meridien Hotel in Irvine tonight at 7:30. The event is a fund-raiser for Team California, which will compete in the Tour de France a la Voile this summer.

AMERICA’S CUP--The mug itself (not the smaller replica Dennis Conner holds on the jacket of his book) will return from a week at the Seattle YC for a one-day showing Saturday at the Boy Scout Fair at Jack Murphy Stadium in San Diego. Later, it will be displayed at the San Diego County Fair at Del Mar June 22-July 2. A nationwide tour is tentatively scheduled to start in mid-August. . . . The San Diego YC is talking now about a January-through-April defense in 1991. “It will require a change in the deed of gift,” Commodore Fred Frye said. The deed stipulates that a defense in the northern hemisphere must be between May 1 and Oct. 30. . . . There are now two Japanese syndicates interested in challenging in ‘91--the one that bought Alan Bond’s operation, including Australia III and IV, and another headed by TV anchorman Taro Kimura, the Walter Cronkite of Japan.

CATAMARANS--Barring a breakdown, Roy Seaman of Malibu and crew Alfred Etheridge Jr. of Virginia Beach, Va., have an unbeatable 7 1/2-hour lead heading into the last day of the Worrell 1000 up the Atlantic Coast Saturday, but they won’t beat Randy Smyth’s record set in 1985. Britain’s John Downey is second, the northern California team of Michael Bender and Wayne Mooneyham third and Russians Yuri Konovalov and Sergey Kuzovov fourth. Because of breakdowns and fatigue, only 6 of the 16 starters were still sailing Thursday. Off Cape Lookout in North Carolina Wednesday, a patrol plane spotted about 150 sharks surrounding the fleet, and a dozen charged the Bender-Mooneyham boat several times. They probably didn’t like the pink hulls and sails. . . . In a similar event, brothers Jeff and Hobie Alter Jr. of Capistrano Beach will team with Pat Porter in the Hog’s Breath 1000 starting Monday. The race on Hobie 16s is from Miami to Ft. Walton Beach along the Gulf Coast of Florida. Hobie Jr. has collected more Hobie Cat titles than anybody, which is only right. His father invented the thing.