SAILING : Crew Hoping to Make Cut, Then Win Back Cup
Long Beach sailors Pete Melvin and Steve Rosenberg are the United States’ latest hopes to win back the Little America’s Cup from Australia.
The cup, known officially as the International Catamaran Challenge Trophy, is for 25-foot, hard-winged, C Class catamarans, and U.S. sailors would rather forget about the last time they tried to win it.
That was in January of 1989, when the Cabrillo Beach Yacht Club sent San Pedro sailmaking brothers Steve and Bryan Dair to Melbourne with a radical craft called “Wingmill,” whose rigid sail tilted for changing tacks.
Moments before the start, with winds whipping up to 20 knots, a photo helicopter flew too close, and its downdraft blew the boat apart.
“We decided to go with a more reliable structure, use better American technology and design on a proven boat, and have better sailors (than the Australians) to make it a better weapon,” Rosenberg said.
The new boat, sponsored by the Chula Vista Yacht Club, is similar in design to Edge II, which the Australians built for the last defense and plan to use again, with modifications. The U.S. boat, called “Freedom’s Wing,” is being built at RD Boatworks in Dana Point, where the Stars & Stripes catamarans were built for the 1988 America’s Cup defense against New Zealand.
Gino Morelli, who worked on that campaign, also designed Freedom’s Wing. He was assisted by Melvin, who sailed a Tornado catamaran for the U.S. in the ’88 Olympic Games and quit his job as an aerospace engineer to work full time on the project. Its debut was scheduled for Nov. 3-4 in south San Diego Bay, but now that is uncertain.
“We had a little snag in the building of the wing,” Rosenberg said.
Translation: “We ran out of money.”
They estimate the campaign will cost $400,000, and an infusion of cash has them almost back on schedule.
A sailoff with a French challenger is scheduled Dec. 16-28 off Melbourne, followed by the final series Jan. 12-22. The French are sailing a tilt-wing design similar to the “Wingmill.”
Melvin and Rosenberg defeated the Australian defenders, David Churcher and Tim Daddo, in a 2-0 series off San Diego last July, but that was using Tornados, with which they were far more familiar. The Americans hope to start serious training on Freedom’s Wing at Melbourne in late November.
Sailing Notes
J.J. Isler of San Diego will be the first woman to compete on the World Match Racing Circuit when she sails in the Omega Gold Cup off Bermuda starting Saturday. She will have three men as crew--not including husband Peter Isler, who is ranked sixth on the circuit but will be doing commentary for ESPN. J.J. Isler is one of eight seeded competitors among 24 entries because of her victories in the women’s match racing world championship at Portofino, Italy, last May. Larry Klein, a hopeful America’s Cup skipper and latest winner of the Rolex yachtsman-of-the-year award, is unseeded. The rest of the field includes New Zealand’s Russell Coutts and Rod Davis (formerly of Coronado) and Australia’s Peter Gilmour.
Randy Smyth, with crew David Scully, won the first Tahiti Mondial Cat Challenge, an eight-leg, 500-mile race on Hobie 21s through the Society Islands of French Polynesia. Smyth and Scully won only one leg but placed second on six others to finish 11 minutes ahead of Carlton Tucker and Keith Notary of the United States in the 23-boat fleet. Other Americans: Hobie Alter Jr./Tom Linskey, fourth; Cam Lewis/Steve Rosenberg, 13th; Jeff Alter/Jeff Newsome, 16th, and Roy Seaman, crew for Japan’s Koji Ikeda, 17th
Eight ULDB 70s are entered and two more sleds are expected in the Los Angeles YC’s race to Cabo San Lucas, via Guadalupe Island, scheduled to start Nov. 9-10. . . . The first leg of the BOC Challenge--a singlehanded round-the-world race--will be shown on ESPN Monday at 6 p.m. and repeated Wednesday at 6 a.m. and Nov. 7 at noon.