Fay Rejects San Diego Offer to Discuss His Cup Proposal: Just Say Yes or No

New Zealand’s Michael Fay Friday rejected a response by the San Diego Yacht Club and the Sail America Foundation to talk about his proposal to resolve their America’s Cup dispute. Fay just wants a yes or no answer before he decides whether to go back to court.

The Auckland banker this week offered to postpone the event from September to the spring of 1989 if San Diego would move it from San Pedro Bay back to San Diego as an all-comers’ event, with no catamarans.

Club Commodore Doug Alford said at a press conference Friday that after a late Thursday night meeting among club and Sail America leaders, it was decided to “contact (Fay) and suggest that we’d like to sit down and talk to him further about his proposal . . . to set up a meeting within the next day or so, if that’s possible.”

It was proposed that Alford, John Marshall, Sail America vice president, and Gerry Driscoll, America’s Cup committee chairman, meet Fay halfway--geographically, at least--in Hawaii.

No way, Fay wired back. “The basic principles of the New Zealand proposal are clear and easily understood, and capable of a yes or no answer.”

If it’s yes, Fay said, then they can talk. If it’s no, he indicated, he may see them in court to fight their plan to conduct the defense against Fay’s 90-foot boat on San Pedro Bay in a catamaran this September.