America’s Cup Race May Head to San Diego After Compromise

The America’s Cup may be taking a U-turn back to San Diego, but not in a catamaran.

The head of the San Diego Yacht Club’s America’s Cup defense committee said he sees no real problem with a compromise offered by New Zealand’s Michael Fay Tuesday to resolve their impasse.

If Sail America will scrap its catamaran and sail his kind of boat off San Diego instead of San Pedro Bay, Fay will agree to postpone his America’s Cup challenge from September until the spring of 1989, and open it to all comers.

“I don’t see anything there that is any real problem,” said Gerry Driscoll, chairman of the seven-man defense committee that has the final word on venue.

Club Commodore Doug Alford said that Fay’s offer was encouraging but declined further comment.

It’s no secret, however, that the club would be delighted to have the event back in home waters.

The Sail America Foundation, which is managing the defense for the club, may be unhappy about scrapping its plans for a futuristic catamaran, and the city’s America’s Cup Task Force would have to update its plans for a full-blown defense in 1991 that was projected to pump $1.2 billion into the local economy.

But the only reason Sail America was building a catamaran was to give itself a better chance of winning with a short amount of time to prepare. In addition, the reason it planned to defend in San Pedro Bay was because the stronger winds would be more favorable to a multihull boat.

Driscoll said of Fay’s new offer: “It means that we have time to prepare and get other defenders involved, and they’ll have a year to get a boat going. I just think it will be a hell of a regatta.”

No Sail America official was immediately available to comment on Fay’s offer, but Driscoll said: “The acceptance would have to come from the San Diego Yacht Club.”

Driscoll and Alford agreed that Fay’s offer closely matched Sail America’s proposal of Jan. 27 to conduct an all-comers defense in 1990 in boats with 70-foot waterlines.

Fay’s proposal would permit him to sail his nearly completed, $7-million, 90-foot-waterline boat while giving the defenders and other challengers time to build similar craft.

“New Zealand has time and time again shown that all they want is a fair and square match on the water,” Fay said in a prepared statement.

The only impact on Cup competition, Driscoll said, was that “the 1991 event was to be in 12-meters, and I’m sure an event like this makes it less likely that we’ll ever see 12-meters in the America’s Cup again.”

The San Diego Yacht Club, is under obligation by court order to meet Fay’s challenge no later than September but had announced it would do so in San Pedro Bay in a multihull.

Fay cried foul on both counts, claiming that his boat was designed for San Diego’s home waters and would be unfairly disadvantaged against a catamaran.

Fay’s New York lawyer, George Tompkins, formally presented the new proposal Tuesday to Judge Carmen Beauchamp Ciparick of the New York Supreme Court, which customarily rules on the legal ramifications of the Cup. The San Diego Yacht Club was handed a copy by messenger.

Fay agreed that the winner of a challenge elimination series to start Feb. 1 would “be substituted as the challenger, provided that any competing yacht in such an elimination series shall not exceed the (boat measurement) specifications set forth in the Mercury Bay (New Zealand) Notice of Challenge.”

Fay also proposed that the championship round start May 1.