A Fine Mess

Wouldn’t you know that as soon as the America’s Cup sailboat races came out of the yacht club closet and went beer-bar populist, on television and all, things would turn into a pretty mess? Everything was fine until those Kiwis went and read the fine print in the cup’s original “deed of gift.”

When San Diego’s Dennis Conner won the cup back from the Aussies early this year, the San Diego Yacht Club automatically became the host of the 1991 races. As always in the past 30 years, the host club invites challengers to come and compete among themselves for the right to meet the defender, the winner of similar competition among American 12-meter yachts. In recent years there have been 21 challenge boats representing 10 nations.

But New Zealand’s Michael Fay filed as the first challenger, and guess what: He proposed his own race head-to-head with an American defender, not in 1991 but as early as next year. And not in 65-foot-long 12-meters but in giant 120-foot-long J-class boats. Fay, in behalf of Auckland’s Mercury Bay Boating Club, noted that the original cup “deed” stipulates that the first challenger gets to decide when the race will be and the type of boats. The J boats were used in the America’s Cup races in the 1930s.

The Kiwis won their case in a New York court, which rejected an argument that America’s Cup rules were changed in 1958 to provide officially for competition between the 12-meter yachts. The city of San Diego will appeal the court order to higher courts. Meanwhile, officials of Sail America, the San Diego race coordinators, announced on Wednesday that they had no choice but to accept the New Zealand challenge and hold a race for the cup next year. Sail America still will hold the 1991 international competition among 12-meter boats, but it is unclear now whether it will be for the America’s Cup.

The J-class yachts are lovely, graceful boats--not quite as fast as the 12-meter craft, but much more costly. The idea of turning the clock back 50 years has some appeal, but not as a replacement for the America’s Cup competition as it has evolved in recent years.