U.S. Asleep for Cup Run, Says Chance

Britton Chance, who will design a superboat for San Diego to meet New Zealand’s challenge next year, said Friday that the court-enforced defense “caught everybody flat-footed.”

The San Diego Yacht Club and Sail America Foundation announced Wednesday that they would abide by an order from the New York Supreme Court to defend against Michael Fay’s boat--but no other country’s--late next summer.

Chance said he wasn’t authorized by Sail America executive John Marshall to start work until late Thanksgiving evening, the day after the court’s decision was announced.

“I predicted--and said so to John Marshall--that Fay’s challenge was correct and we should pay close attention to it,” Chance said by phone from his boatyard at Essex, Conn. “But none of the upper management expected (to lose) at all.”

Chance may be an exception on the San Diego side, but he said he is excited about the prospect of building a state-of-the-art boat, rather than a conventional 12-meter.

“I think it’s terrific,” he said. “It offers the most exciting possibilities in yacht design in 100 years. I think it will be spectacular. If this were a wide-open competition, people wouldn’t be building 12s. My personal wish is that it would be wide open.

“I’m interested in the history of yacht design, and what’s proposed is true to the tradition of the America’s Cup.”

Chance, along with Bruce Nelson and Dave Pedrick, was on the team that designed Stars & Stripes, the 12-meter that won the America’s Cup back from Australia earlier this year. Marshall headed the team.

Marshall will be more involved with management this time, with Chance and Nelson handling the design work.

“Bruce and I had been asked since February to do the 12-meter program (for 1991),” Chance said. “We had some things tentatively laid out for this, but no design work had been authorized until last Thursday night.”

Fay’s boat, a monohull built of fiberglass, is well along and due to be launched in late March. By that time, Chance suggested, it may already be obsolete.

Chance hinted that he may design a multihull, or at least a monohull with radical configuration that would make it superior to any other monohull, including Fay’s.

The Deed of Gift that governs Cup competition requires a challenger to declare the basic dimensions of his boat, within the limits of 44 and 90 feet at the waterline. Fay has said that his boat also would have a 26-foot extreme beam--width--14 feet at beam waterline.

Chance said: “Twenty-six feet could be a poor design position.”

For one thing, the New Zealand beam dimensions rule out a multihull. Since the defender doesn’t have to declare anything about his boat until the first race, Chance sees San Diego’s possibilities as unlimited.

“There is nothing in the Deed of Gift barring multihulls,” he said. “And we all know that multihulls are faster than monohulls, so I would focus on them on a possibility. Sails are not limited in any way, so the basic design problem is stability.”

A multihull is much lighter than a monohull of relative size because its stability comes from its wide design, not a lead keel.

Chance said that despite the late start, he can launch a new boat in time.

“It can take only as long as the schedule allows,” he said. “I would shoot for a schedule to be sailing by the first of August.”