An Odd Couple: Long Beach and a Catamaran

It was a year and two days ago that Dennis Conner sailed the big, blue 12-meter Stars & Stripes ’87 across the final finish line at Fremantle, Australia, to reclaim the America’s Cup.

Who would have dreamed that his first defense would be less than two years later?

And at Long Beach. In a catamaran.

The event has changed more in that year than in all the years since World War II. The past year has been marked by the feud between Sail America and the San Diego Yacht Club over selection of a defense committee, and then the challenge from New Zealand’s Michael Fay.

Traditionalists may accept Fay’s big planing monohull--after all, there have been Cup boats much larger than his 90 feet at the waterline--but they will need a while to come to grips with the fact that the Cup will be defended in a catamaran.

If Rodney Dangerfield were a boat, he would be a catamaran. Sail America apologizes that it wouldn’t be using one if it had more time to build a decent monohull, and if the estimable Bruce Farr weren’t designing Fay’s boat.

As for San Diegans who thought they now owned the Cup, conducting the defense at breezier Long Beach takes what little wind they had out of their sails.

But this way, Sail America says, it will have a better chance to sink the Kiwi challenge and get on to a real defense in 12-meters at San Diego in ’91.

Sail America’s announcement two weeks ago that it would build two multihulls was met by some degree of disbelief. But designer Brit Chance said this week by phone from Connecticut: “There is a firm commitment. I’m sending out the lines tomorrow or the day after.”

At least the first boat will be assembled at RD Boatworks in Capistrano Beach, Orange County, which also will build the hulls and cross members. Other components, including the spars and rigging, will be sub-contracted out.

“My obligation stops at the mast step,” proprietor Bob DeLong said.

Above that, the design is limited only by the active imagination of John Roncz, an airfoil expert who designed the wings for Voyager’s non-stop flight around the world. One possibility: Fixed-shape sails that are rotated to the wind.

Gino Morelli of Newport Beach, who worked with DeLong in building the Formula 40 catamaran that Randy Smyth sailed to the European championship in ‘86, will be liaison between the designers and the builders.

Like Smyth’s craft, the Cup boat will be built of light but strong carbon fiber amid strict security. DeLong has screened his back fence and will have a 24-hour security guard.

“They’re real serious about security,” DeLong said of the Sail America people. “Nothing can be outdoors.”

Espionage is part of any decent America’s Cup program. Fay claims to have caught two Sail America spies trying to get into the Marten Marine facility in Auckland where his boat is being built.

All of this could bring catamarans new respect. Already, the “Ultimate Yacht Race” pro event at Corpus Christi, Tex., May 6-15, has added Hobie 21s to its fleets of 30-footers and J-24s. A fleet of 8 or 9 cats is due to return to next weekend’s mammoth Midwinters event after an absence of nine years. They’ll get the first start in the Seal Beach Yacht Club group, through the efforts of longtime multihull advocate Vic Stern of Long Beach.

Stern, 65, is so dedicated to catamarans that he plans to sail the tough coast-hopping Pacific 1000 (mile) this summer on a 20-footer. He conceded that defending the America’s Cup in a catamaran “is non-traditional, but Fay’s challenge is non-traditional.

“If the catamaran becomes the hero and saves the day (and the Cup), nice things will be said about it,” Stern said. “If it loses . . . “

If it loses, Dennis Conner will never look at a catamaran again.

A Sail America source hints that New Zealand’s boat may be illegal in its conception.

“I think they’re in trouble on Rule 62,” the source said.

Michael Fay, required by the Deed of gift to state his boat’s basic dimensions, declared an extreme beam of 26 feet. But Sail America believes designer Bruce Farr planned to have trapezes or hiking racks for the 40- or 50-man crew extending out to as far as 45 feet on each side--90 feet overall--for ballast, making it basically a blown-up version of an Australian 18-foot skiff.

The deed states that the “races shall be sailed subject to (the defending club’s) rules and sailing regulations.”

The San Diego Yacht Club observes international Rule 62, which states: “ . . . a yacht shall not use any device, such as a trapeze or plank, to project outboard the weight of any of the crew.”

The Sail America source says when Rule 62 came up during recent ground-rules discussions with Fay and his legal counsel, Andrew Johns, the other side of the table got very quiet.

Sailing Notes OLYMPICS--Anticipating light wind at Pusan, the Olympic Yachting Committee scheduled trials July 1-16 for light-air venues Newport, R.I., (470 men and women, Flying Dutchman, Tornado catamarans and sailboards), Marblehead, Mass,. (Finns) and San Diego (Stars and Solings). Last week they announced they’re sticking with the schedule, although winds howled up to 30 knots at the Olympic Practice Regatta at Pusan in September. That could mean they’ll be selecting a light-air team for a heavy air regatta. At least the crews are scheduled to practice off Long Beach before going to South Korea. . . . The “Long Beach Olympic Sailing Team”--nine men and women living and training there before the trials--will have a fund-raising social evening Wednesday, Feb. 17, 5:30-8 p.m., at the Hyatt Edgewater on the east side of Long Beach. Minimum donation is $30. . . . Sign of the times: Volvo will help sponsor the U.S. Olympic sailing team.

PROFESSIONAL--Long Beach promoter Bruce Golison says his “Yachting Pro/Am” scheduled April 11-18 has been “indefinitely postponed (because of) insufficient entries.” With $10,000 entry fees, he had only three paid One Tons and two ULDB sleds. Apparently, the problem was an idea whose time has not yet come, not lack of promotion skills. Golison’s Audi Sobstad Race Week (June 24-26), with no entry fees and no prize money, has been highly successful its first three years.

WOMEN--Carol Buchan of Seattle and her crew of three won the Adams Cup, which represents U.S. Women’s Sailing Championship in competition at Miami. Suzanne Spangler and crew Vicki Call Sodaro, Heather Ann Lockwood and Nancy Grams of Newport Beach placed fifth. Buchan is the wife of Carl Buchan, who won a gold medal as crew for Jonathan McKee on a Flying Dutchman in the ’84 Olympics, and the daughter-in-law of Star gold medalist Bill Buchan.

NOTEWORTHY--John Sturman of Canoga Park, with crew Kevin Hall of Ventura, placed fourth in the Youth Worlds at Sydney during the Australian bicentennial. Sailing International 420s, an Israeli team placed first, followed by France and Italy. Sturman and Hall, both 18, earlier won the U.S. Youth title at Dallas in Laser IIs. Sturman is a pre-engineering freshman at UC San Diego. Hall is a math and French literature major at Brown University. . . . Deborah Shapiro and Rolf Bjelke will present their 1 1/2-hour “Northern Lights” slide show Saturday night at 7:30 in the science lecture hall at Orange Coast College. They sailed to both poles on a 53-foot cutter. Admission is $5. . . . Former Frenchman Guy Bernardin is celebrating his new American citizenship by sailing solo from New York to San Francisco around Cape Horn--the hard way--aboard a 60-foot sloop. Two weeks out, he is shooting for the 1854 record of 89 days, 8 hours set by Captain Josiah Creesy’s 229-foot clipper ship with full crew. Bernardin placed fourth in his second solo BOC Challenge around-the-world event last year.