Looks Like San Diego in September for the Cup

The next America’s Cup defense apparently will be a two-boat shootout in San Diego in September--New Zealand’s massive monohull with the 90-foot waterline against a catamaran skippered by Dennis Conner.

Some philosophical distance remains between the two adversaries, but they closed a hundred miles of ocean Saturday when the San Diego Yacht Club and Sail America Foundation agreed to defend in home waters instead of San Pedro Bay.

The New Zealanders had vowed to show up off San Diego for the first race no matter where Sail America planned to sail.

“Seeing they’ve rejected our proposal, we will be on the start line in San Diego on Sept. 19,” Peter Debreceny, spokesman for merchant banker Michael Fay, said by phone from Auckland Saturday.

The San Diego club says the race probably will start Saturday, Sept. 3, on Labor Day weekend, to avoid a conflict with the Olympic Games, which start Sept. 17 in South Korea.

“We’re prepared to talk about it,” Debreceny said. “We understand and can appreciate the practical problems.”

New Zealand still isn’t happy about sailing against a catamaran, but Saturday’s announcement by the yacht club conceding the venue met one major point of Fay’s proposal, made five days ago, to resolve the dispute.

Asked if the Kiwis will pursue the catamaran issue, Debreceny said, “We didn’t say that.”

Asked if they planned to drop it, he said, “Didn’t say that, either.”

Sail America Vice President John Marshall, informed of Fay’s response, said, “I can’t tell you for sure (what it means), but I see a little glimmer of light. He’s prepared to sit down and talk about the regatta conditions.”

The exclusion of other potential challengers isn’t a big problem. Conscious of their international images as sportsmen, the two sides blame each other for that circumstance, though more competition would not be to either side’s benefit.

San Diego is under court order to defend against Fay in September or forfeit the Cup. In his proposal, Fay offered to postpone the event until the spring of 1989 if San Diego would move it back to San Diego as an all-comers event, without catamarans.

The way SDYC Commodore Doug Alford read it, Fay had offered “to consent to the participation of other challengers.”

Fay said, “The way Sail America and the San Diego Yacht Club have handled everything around the Cup seems to suggest confusion and disarray. They’ve now rejected the opportunity to create a multi-national America’s Cup in boats of the 20th century in 1989.”

When San Diego offered to talk about the offer Friday, Fay demanded he get a yes or no response first. Instead, San Diego offered San Diego in September.

That wouldn’t give other challengers enough time to build their boats, but Sail America executive Tom Ehman said even a year wouldn’t be enough--although New Zealand will be doing it in nine months.

“Sail America has received input from challengers around the world saying it would be virtually impossible to be ready in 90-foot boats by February 1989,” Ehman said. “Most have strongly urged us to turn down Fay’s proposal and meet him on the water in September.”

But Britain’s Peter de Savary has said he would be ready, and Ehman said he hadn’t heard from Australia’s Alan Bond, who recently blasted Sail America for shutting out everybody else.

Sail America, which is managing the defense for the yacht club, said a month ago it would run the event in windier San Pedro Bay, where its catamaran would be more effective.

“We realize we’re giving up a little bit,” Alford said of the move back to San Diego, “but we’re willing to do it under the circumstances.”

Marshall, coordinator of the design team, said, “We’re happy to meet New Zealand anywhere. A design has to be optimized for local conditions. We’ve got plenty of time to make some adjustments. Had (New Zealand) raced in Long Beach, they could have made some adjustments to their boat.”

Even if time allowed, Sail America strongly resisted scrapping its catamaran project, which has already cost more than $1 million, according to Ehman.

“And to stop the program would still cost several million dollars for obligations already incurred,” Ehman said.

Work on two identical carbon fiber catamarans--one to be equipped with a futuristic wing-type airfoil instead of a conventional soft sail--is continuing at RD Boatworks in Capistrano Beach.

Project chief Gino Morelli said a crew of 20 to 25 is working, sometimes in double shifts.

“Forty percent of the cost is labor, and that’s a done deal,” Morelli said. “The other 60% is material, and we’re probably a third into that.”

He estimated the wasted cost of stopping at this point would be “easily $3 million.” That’s about all the money Sail America has, including a sponsorship from Pepsi for about $2 million.

The airfoil is being built at Burt Rutan’s Scaled Composites plant in Mojave, where the airplane Voyager was built to fly around the world without refueling.

Sail America has borrowed a similar but smaller 25-foot Class C catamaran to train on until its boats are finished. Conner planned to sail it on San Diego Bay this afternoon.