America’s Cup Notebook : Leaks Are Both Sides’ Big Fear

The three New Zealanders should have stopped discussing their secret among themselves. After all, the bellboy carting their luggage was a Yankee. But they chattered away, and what resulted last July in a hotel hallway in Washington, D.C., provided one of the few light touches to America’s Cup XXVII.

The three, a physicist, an international investment banker and a yacht designer, were completing their plan to submit a challenge to the San Diego Yacht Club for the Cup.

Their biggest fear? That a spy, or anyone else, would discern their intentions. Such a leak could result in a preemptive challenge by another country.

No matter, they thought, he’s only a bellboy.

But, just like in the movies, the blasted bellboy just happened to be something of a yachting expert.

“The guy turns around and says ‘You guys sailors?’ ” recalled Tom Schnackenberg, the physicist and sail coordinator for the New Zealand Challenge. “He understood us. He said his dad works for Horizon Sails or something; he wanted to know what we were doing.”

The three Kiwis--Schnackenberg, Michael Fay and designer Bruce Farr--though frightened, were prepared. They pretended that they were part of a “little company” and “nattered away about takeovers and so forth.”

The bellboy swallowed the story, the challenge reached the San Diegans, and there the fun stopped--and the sniping between the sides began.

Schnackenberg, who lived in San Diego in 1976-77 while working for North Sails, was also one of the grown men being hyper-secretive about a boat in 1982-83, when he helped disguise the winged keel on Australia II.

It seems Schnackenberg, a 43-year-old with a handlebar mustache, is your basic genius who dabbles as Maxwell Smart.

“It is kind of funny, running around like that,” he said. “We’re like children, really, and all of the guys I’ve enjoyed working with are childlike in that sense. Running around like kids, playing cops and robbers and cowboys and Indians. It’s a war game without any violence--so it’s perfect.”

Schnackenberg also worked in the Australian campaigns for the Cup in 1980 and last year, when, because the Kiwis were a later entry, he was actually working against his own country’s campaign. He also offered advice to his friend John Marshall, the Stars and Stripes’ designer and former president of North Sails, when Marshall and Lowell North had their troubles with Enterprise in 1977.

Ideally, the Cup transcends national boundaries. Schnackenberg spoke fondly of his experience in previous Cups, when he had foreign sail designers over to his house for wine and discussion.

But even if San Diego is something of a home to Schnackenberg, this Cup campaign has been less fun for him, he says. That is because of the deep chasm between the two sides over each’s interpretation of the Cup’s Deed of Gift.

“We (he and his friends from San Diego) haven’t spent much time together, and that is disappointing,” Schnackenberg said. “It’s been a little bit festive, a little exciting in the past.

“But this Cup, it’s probably a little worse than the Russians and the Americans. The conclusions that the Americans have come to are so different. . . . It’s uncomfortable. I haven’t talked to any of my friends here about (the two sides’ points of contention). We talk about other things.”

Add Schnackenberg: How did he expect the Americans to respond to the Kiwis’ challenge, which is a monohull boat with a 90-foot waterline?

“Well, I thought they’d come back with three 90-footers, and that we’d have a pretty slim chance of beating them,” Schnackenberg said.

John Marshall seemed amused at that comment.

“It always seems that the other side thinks the Americans have unlimited resources,” Marshall said. “Actually, we are stretched fairly thin financially and in terms of human resources.”

Negotiations concerning television revenues and whether a camera would be placed on New Zealand were broken off between Sail America’s Tom Mitchell and New Zealand syndicate chairman Michael Fay Wednesday. Marketing groups from each side will take up negotiations.

According to Mitchell, Sail America offered Fay the rights to sell the broadcast to New Zealand Television; 50% of whatever four foreign countries--Japan, England, Australia and France--offer for the telecast and other inducements worth “six-figures.”

Fay had sought 50% of the $1.7 million telecast fee ESPN paid Sail America.

Mitchell said he asked that Fay allow a camera on New Zealand and help redesign the two-leg course so as to make it more suitable to a viewing audience.

But Fay, who charged Mitchell with blackmail, has said that changing the course would hurt his boat’s chances. “Maybe there has been miscommunication on both sides,” Mitchell said.

Notes

A new boom and a lighter bow sprit were installed on Stars and Stripes’ soft-sail rig Wednesday, resulting in a weight reduction of 150 pounds, said John Marshall, design manager. A new mast, to be installed by today, will result in another 150-pound reduction on the soft-sail catamaran. For the ninth consecutive time, H-3, the hard-rig Stars and Stripes with the larger wing-sail, defeated its soft-sail counterpart. H-3 won by about two minutes; the boats were sailing a course with two 10-mile legs, one to windward. How fast are the catamarans going? About two minutes per mile faster than they did in May. “The winds have averaged 7-11 knots, and our cats are relishing these conditions,” Marshall said.. . .

The Kiwis sailed a spinnaker that had the equivalent of the Surgeon General’s warning printed on it--an obvious jab at the Americans, who accepted sponsorship from a cigarette producer. . . . Gary Jobson, ESPN’s race analyst, on the task faced by Kiwi skipper David Barnes: “Barnsey is tough, but one thing we are doing is preparing a lot of features for (during) the race.” . . . Sail America, organizer of America’s Cup XXVII, likely will lose money on the event, said Tom Mitchell, Sail America’s vice president of communications.