THE AMERICA’S CUP : This Cup Is Worth Bickering About

Things you may have been wondering about America’s Cup . . .

What has America’s Cup been doing since it came to San Diego a year and a half ago?

To my understanding, it is a little bit like the San Diego Chicken. It does super market openings, bank promotions and Tupperware parties. I think it even might have thrown out the first pitch at a Padre game.

Don’t they drink out of it . . . or put flowers in it?

Not too easily. The auld Cup hath no bottom. All they do is bicker over it and look for loopholes in the Deed of Gift trying to win it and occasionally race for it.

What is this Deed of Gift everyone keeps talking about?

It is a 101-year-old document that sets the guidelines for what it describes as a “friendly competition between foreign countries.”

Isn’t it a bit antiquated?

It can be brought up to date very easily. Eliminate the word “friendly.”

You mean people like Michael Fay and Dennis Conner are not friendly with each other?

Let me see if I can best express how it appears these men feel about each other . . .

Fay considers Conner to be a short-cutting, opportunistic cheat.

Conner considers Fay to be a short-cutting, opportunistic intruder.

Given these obstacles to a warm relationship, they seem to do their best to be civil. Thus far, neither has challenged the other to a duel at dawn . . . probably because neither trusts how the other might be armed.

How good a sailor is Michael Fay?

Frankly, I don’t know if Fay knows a winch from a wench or aft from daft or port from a glass of wine. He is not the skipper.

One of the great misconceptions about this week’s event is that Fay is matched against Conner in anything other than a war of words. Fay is the chairman of the Kiwi challenge, and Conner is the skipper of the defender. It is comparable to saying Joan Kroc is pitted against Tom Lasorda when the Padres play the Dodgers.

New Zealand’s skipper is David Barnes. It’s kind of like everyone knows George Steinbrenner owns the Yankees, but no one’s quite sure who this week’s manager is.

Do the Kiwis have a chance?

Not to hear them tell it. Their projections are that the Stars & Stripes crew will be washing the dinner dishes before they finish. Either they have no business on the water or they are like a doom-saying football coach playing psychological games.

What we are talking here is a fast and stable monohull going against a fast and fragile multihull.

How fast is fast?

Experts in yachting say the fastest multihull beats the fastest monohull. Experts in computer simulation say the same thing. And so do experts in physics.

But one question lingers in my mind . . .

Does the New Zealand have to be fast enough to win . . . or just fast enough to press the catamaran to a breaking point?

Speaking of catamarans, how much experience does Dennis Conner have in multihulls?

Not as much as Stars & Stripes crewmen such as Cam Lewis, Randy Smyth and Duncan MacLane.

Then why is Conner the skipper?

Simple. Conner is the boss. The boss does what he wants to do.

Where will these races take place?

Today’s race starts three miles off the coast of Point Loma and goes straight west for 20 miles . . . and then back. To get a feel for the how far they are going, consider that Jamul is approximately the same distance directly east of Point Loma.

Friday’s race will be on a triangular course, again starting three miles off Point Loma. This one goes 13 miles west, 13 miles southeast and then 13 miles northeast. The bottom point in the triangle is within a bowsprit of Mexican waters.

Forget about seeing much, if any, of this spectacle from the tip of Point Loma. The lighthouse wouldn’t do it. You would need the Palomar telescope.

Then how can this race best be seen?

Let’s hear it for the couch potatoes of the world, for they are in their glory.

Folks who try to get out on the water and get close enough to see what is happening are going to feel a little bit like they are watching a Padre game from Mission San Diego.

Hello, ESPN.

Has this event captured the fancy of the general public?

I should say so. I was walking along the Embarcadero Monday when Conner brought the US-1 catamaran out for a test run, zipping up the harbor with a mini-armada of pleasure boats trying to keep up.

Suddenly, a man sitting nearby on a picnic table put it all in perspective.

“Go for it, Dennis,” he yelled. “I got a six-pack bet on ya.”

This was it. This was Archie Bunker. This was Americana.