Driscoll Favors San Diego for Cup

Gerry Driscoll, who was appointed to the America’s Cup defense committee last week, has been quick to make clear where his interests lie.

“I’m pretty strong (for) San Diego,” he said.

Of the four committee members from the San Diego Yacht Club, Driscoll has by far the broadest America’s Cup background. But he is no less adamant about a San Diego defense than the others.

“I’ve been around the America’s Cup longer than anybody locally,” he said, and that includes Dennis Conner.

Driscoll sailed San Diego’s Intrepid effort in the defense trials in 1974. That year, Ted Hood went on to win with Courageous, and Driscoll headed the Newport Harbor Yacht Club’s Eagle campaign in 1986 until the syndicate was wrecked by bickering among its people at Fremantle.

Driscoll also has been aligned with Sail America strongmen Malin Burnham and John Marshall. Burnham was the crew when Driscoll won the Star class world championship on Lake Michigan in 1944, and Marshall trimmed the mainsheet for him on Intrepid in ’74.

So although Driscoll hadn’t been associated with Sail America’s recent Cup programs, he was their logical choice for the syndicate: a club member with a less parochial bent than others might have.

The first defense committee that was chosen, which was shot down by an arbitrator for being stacked in favor of San Diego, didn’t include Driscoll.

And if Driscoll has an open mind for considering another site, the aperture is microscopic.

“Around here, most people don’t consider I’d be a swing vote,” he said.

“There would have to be some real strong reason for not having it here. I can’t think what it would be. If wind is a question, then there certainly can be arguments for others, but I don’t know where else in the world would have better facilities.”

One of those proposed facilities is Driscoll’s own boatyard, Driscoll Custom Yachts on Shelter Island.

“All the boatyards would be providing some services to the syndicates,” Driscoll said. “We would probably be taking in one of them.”

If that’s a conflict of interest, certainly nobody at the San Diego Yacht Club is going to complain, and Sail America, which objected to the original lineup of the defense committee, can’t object because it nominated Driscoll.

The San Diego majority on the committee invites some serious lobbying by Hawaii’s high-powered, well-financed campaign to lure the Cup defense away. If the non-club members on the committee--Marshall, Gary Jobson and Harry Usher--were in favor of Hawaii, the islands would need only one swing vote from the club and it’s aloha, Cup.

But the Waikikians would probably be wasting their time on Driscoll.

“I’ll listen,” he said, “but I’m not for taking jaunts all over the place.”

The new committee’s chairman has not been selected. The first meeting hasn’t been scheduled, and the site probably won’t be announced until November, but it hardly seems to matter. San Diego still has the votes.

Before Conner’s victory at Fremantle, San Diego’s sailing pride centered on the six sailors who had won 10 of the 75 world championships in the world’s most prestigious class, the Star.

Lowell North heads the list with four. Conner has two and Driscoll, Burnham, Milton Wegeforth and Vince Brun have one each.

Appropriately, the Stars, along with the other Olympic keel boat class, Soling, will run their Olympic pre-trials off San Diego next Monday through Friday. The actual trials are scheduled for next July.

Brun will not compete in the San Diego event, nor will ’84 Olympic champion Bill Buchan of Bellevue, Wash. Brun and crew Hugo Schreiner will be at the Pan American Games sailing on Lake Michigan off Michigan City, Ind. That will be a good tuneup for the ’87 Star world races, which will take place a few miles along the lake at Chicago in late August.

But the San Diego event has other points of interest. Driscoll will use his 48-foot sloop as an official stake (observation) boat and rooting section for his son John, who won the ’82 North American Star title.

Another entrant is Kim Fletcher, the chief executive officer of Home Federal Savings & Loan and a member of the new America’s Cup Defense Committee. Fletcher placed 10th in the ’86 worlds that Brun won at the Isle of Capri.

World champion John Kostecki of San Francisco, plans to leave before the Soling event is over to get to Indiana, which means Dave Curtis will probably win that class. Curtis was world champion in 1970, ’72 and ’85.

The fields are expected to include 21 Stars and 19 Solings.

Sailing Notes

CATAMARANS--The Australian team of Brett Watson and crew Chris Russell continues to lead the second Pacific 1000 after 10 of 12 legs. The U.S. Marine Corps team of Lance Corp. Mike Christensen of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and James Fisher of San Diego was still in the chase as the 13 boats (mostly Nacra 5.8s) hit the beach at Oxnard Thursday, heading south. They’ll arrive at Long Beach today, then finish with a Long Beach-Huntington Beach-Long Beach leg Saturday. There have been no serious accidents, although the unsponsored Long Beach team of Jim Clinton and John Rubins had to trailer parts of two legs that they failed to finish because of no wind and a broken mainsail headboard.

Randy Smyth won the inaugural event last year but isn’t competing. Smith is also passing up the Tornado nationals in “Hurricane Gulch” off Cabrillo Beach in San Pedro next Tuesday through Friday, as he has commitments in Europe. But other top U.S. crews will be there in a fleet of 25 or 30 boats, including Gary Knapp-Chris Steinfeld, Pete Melvin-Pat Muglia and Skip Elliott-Eric Hauser. Regatta officer Jonathan Mitsumori expects winds of 18 to 20 knots, which he described as “pretty ideal” for the 20-foot Olympic-class boats. Headquarters will be the Cabrillo Beach Yacht Club’s new home in the new marina.

ADMIRAL’S CUP--The biennial international team ocean racing series started off Cowes, England, Thursday and will finish off Plymouth Aug. 8. The three U.S. entries are Sidewinder, skippered by John Bertrand; Insatiable, skippered by Bruce Nelson and Gary Wiseman, and Blue Yankee, with Steve Benjamin. They’re all relatively big boats, though smaller ones have fared better in the event. Rule 26 has been relaxed to permit sponsored boats, and Australia’s Alan Bond has jumped in with a triple entry of Swan Premium 1, 2 and 3. Rod Davis of Coronado, who was the Eagle skipper at Fremantle, is coaching the New Zealand team. Others represent Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Holland, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Sweden and Britain.

NOTEWORTHY--The Huntington Harbour Yacht Club will complete its four-race PHRF Bolsa Chica Series Saturday with a 9.6-mile race. The races start at noon and will take place between oil islands Chaffee and Freeman in Long Beach Harbor. . . . Long Beach YC’s 17.7-mile Queen’s Gate-Eva, Emmy race will begin at noon Sunday, three-fourths of a mile west off the Alamitos Bay jetty. A Southern California Ocean Racing Assn. class will be followed by three PHRF and Cal 25s. . . . Cabrillo Beach YC’s 16.6-mile Seaward Buoy race will begin at noon Saturday. Formerly called the “Sewer Buoy” race, it will start inside the middle breakwater with two PHRF spinnaker and one non-spinnaker class, plus Cal 20s. There is no entry fee, but cards must be filed by 10:30 a.m. . . . National events in progress include Hobie 18s at Garrison, N.M.; Catalina 30s at San Francisco; Lido 14s at Buckeye Lake, Ohio, and Snipes at Lawrence, Kan. . . . The Santa Barbara-King Harbor regatta starts Saturday.