U.S. Sailors Encounter Ill Wind in Australia

San Diego’s America’s Cup interests must hope that a couple of sailing mishaps in Australia recently were not a bad omen.

First, the Cabrillo Beach Yacht Club’s airfoil-winged catamaran was destroyed in a flip before the the start of the Little America’s Cup races near Melbourne.

Then Dennis Conner, sailing the Aussie 12-meter Kookaburra III against Iain Murray on Kookaburra II, ran aground--with the help of an Australian navigator--in a rematch of the skippers of the 1987 Cup finalists at Sydney.

This time, Murray--who lost, 4-0, at Fremantle--won, 5-3.

In the draw at Sydney, the Kookaburras II and III should have been equal boats, but Conner’s crewman and boat manager, Bill Trenkle, didn’t think so.

“We figured we got shortchanged on the sails,” Trenkle said. “We’d win the starts and then those guys would sail right through us.”

There were other factors. Everyone in Sydney seemed to be out in the harbor to watch the race.

“They are America’s Cup crazy down there,” Trenkle said. “It’s unbelievable how popular Dennis is--much more than he is here. One poll said he was the fifth most popular sports figure in Australia, behind (people like) Greg Norman and Pat Cash.”

Trenkle talked of sailing into “a wall of boats,” some so close that K-III’s spinnaker pole once went into the rigging of a spectator boat.

“We could have run Iain right into the spectator fleet on one start, but we let him off the hook,” Trenkle said. “That put him right on top of us, and that was one of the races he won.”

Needing to win two of three races on the final day, Conner cut too close to Shark Island to save distance, ran aground and had to be pulled off. His navigator was Hugh Treharne, a veteran of several of Australia’s America’s Cup campaigns.

That event came soon after Cabrillo Beach Yacht Club’s disastrous bid for the Little America’s Cup, formally known as the International Catamaran Challenge Trophy, for 25-foot catamarans with fixed-shape rigs.

When the radical boat with the seesaw wing sail capsized and was destroyed in 17-knot winds and heavy chop eight minutes before the start of the first race, it was suggested that a helicopter from a Melbourne TV station was responsible.

At the time, boat builder and team leader Lee Griswold of Ventura downplayed the chopper’s effect. But back home this month, he said the helicopter “really was the cause of flipping the boat.”

“We didn’t make an issue of it down there because we were their guests. We didn’t want to sound like sour grapes, and there wasn’t anything to do about it afterward, anyway. But that was the cause, and other people on both sides agreed. They knew they’d goofed. No sense rubbing their noses in it.”

With that kind of attitude, they’ll have to stop calling it the Little America’s Cup, for fear of setting a good example of sportsmanship.

Oddly, when the American boat, Wingmill, flipped, the Aussie defender, Edge II, had already headed back in, willing to forfeit the race rather than risk the rough conditions. Wingmill was sitting dead in the water near the starting line, waiting to sail easily around the course to collect the victory, with the chopper circling overhead. The pilot later said he was 200 feet away. Others said it was more like 50 feet.

According to Griswold, “one of the (race) jurors offered to swear in any court that the boat flipped entirely as the result of the helicopter.”

Steve Dair, who crewed the boat with his brother Bryan at the helm, said: “I thought (the helicopter) was a little bit of a factor, but we didn’t want to push the issue.

“We had just jibed, and we could see the gusts were getting a little disturbed by the helicopter, plus we had two big chop waves come through.”

With the wing and the mast, the boat was somewhat top-heavy. Dair said: “The wing started gyrating back and forth, and all that weight got moving in one direction. It flipped over in about a second.”

One member of the American team was so concerned about helicopters before the event that he had asked the race committee if he could brief all pilots about keeping their distance. He was told that it would be taken care of.

Griswold and Dair said they would like to try again, if they can find a sponsor and have more research and development time.

“It was a little bit like the Wright brothers, learning to fly, that type of thing,” Dair said. “After everything we learned, we could do it much better the next time.”

The only good part of the incident, Dair said, is that “we have a good video of the whole thing.”

Shot from the TV helicopter, of course.

The significance of a Pearl Harbor-to-Hiroshima race catches one’s attention, harking back to those landmarks of World War II.

Taizo Kubota, chairman of the race’s steering committee, was in town recently to promote the event, with help from interpreter Shigeko Morgan of San Marino.

It seems like a good idea--commemorating Hiroshima’s centennial and the 30th year of a sister-city relationship between Honolulu and Hiroshima--but the timing couldn’t have been worse.

The 4,000-mile race will start June 18, two weeks before the biennial Transpac race from Los Angeles to Honolulu, which will involve some boats that might have been interested.

Kubota said organizers weren’t aware of the conflict until it was too late.

“We hope in the future to schedule it so the Transpac racers can continue on to Hiroshima,” he said.

Kubota said he had hoped for 50 entries and is sure of 15, including three Americans.

Japan, which also has America’s Cup hopes, is trying to get into the flow of international sailboat racing, and the rest of the world is accommodating them.

The San Diego Yacht Club even lent the Cup to a boat show in Tokyo recently.

Last year, the Long Beach Yacht Club invited Kazunori Komatsu of the Nippon Ocean Racing Club to compete in its internationally prestigious Congressional Cup, although he lacked competitive credentials. No surprise, Komatsu went 0-9.

This year, for the March 13-19 event, the club has invited the unknown Makoto Namba of the same club. It’s a nice, hospitable gesture but, really, the Japanese should be getting their match-racing experience someplace other than in world-class events.

A better choice would have been John Kostecki, the San Francisco sailor who in ’88 won an Olympic silver medal, earned the Soling and J-24 world titles and was voted yachtsman of the year.

Kostecki, who finished fourth and second in the Congressional in ’83 and ‘84, was not invited.

Otherwise, the field is strong, including defending champion Peter Gilmour of Australia and two-time winners Rod Davis, representing New Zealand, and Dave Perry.

Sailing Notes

Judge Carmen Ciparick will issue her ruling soon in New York on whether the Stars & Stripes catamaran was a legal America’s Cup defender against New Zealand’s big monohull at San Diego last September. . . . Honored along with John Kostecki were Allison Jolly of Long Beach and Lynne Jewell of Newport, R.I., as yachtswomen of the year--the first time since the award was started in 1961 that it has gone to a skipper and crew team. Sailing a 470 dinghy, Jolly and Jewell won the United States’ only gold medal in the ’88 Olympic sailing at Pusan. Each had won the award individually, Jolly in ’76 and Jewell in ’80.

Some changes for the 60th Southern California Yachting Assn. Midwinter Regatta next weekend include the addition of an Ancient Mariners class and Prindle catamarans at Cabrillo Beach, sailboards at Mission Bay in San Diego and Windward Sabots at Marina del Rey and Westlake. In total entries, more than 800 last year, the Midwinters rank second in the world only to Kiel Week in West Germany. . . . Bill Trenkle of Dennis Conner Sports Inc. said the group hopes to re-rig the soft-sail S-1 catamaran to go for a speed record in the Newport-to-Ensenada race in April. . . . Anyone interested in learning to sail can phone 1-800-447-4700 for information on schools and dates nationwide.