AMERICA’S CUP UPDATE : NOTEBOOK : Italians’ Carbon-Fiber Sails Remained a Well-Kept Secret

Sometimes at North Sails the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing, and that’s the way they want it.

Peter Mahr, president of the subsidiary North Sails Cloth, said that North Sails Group Inc. president Tom Whidden, marketing director Dave Dellenbaugh and North Sails East loft manager Andreas Josenhans didn’t know Mahr was working on carbon-fiber sails for the Italians the last two years.

Whidden also is Dennis Conner’s tactician on Stars & Stripes. Dellenbaugh and Josenhans are in the America 3 afterguard. As Mahr tells it, they were as surprised as anyone when Il Moro showed the gray-to-black sails for the first time this week.

“If you’d asked me (about carbon-fiber) sails two days ago,” Josenhans said, “I would have said, ‘Huh?’ We work in different spheres.”

All work in Milford, Conn. Whidden and Dellenbaugh are three blocks down the street, but Josenhans is on the ground floor of the same building as North Sails Cloth, which developed the patented laminating process NorLam.

“The stuff is pretty distinctive looking,” Mahr said. “Anybody who would catch a glimpse of it would know what it is, so we had to sneak around to prevent that from happening. There were a couple of times when North Sails East people walked in and we kind of shuffled it under the rug.”

Even when the boss, Whidden, came around, he never asked specifics about what Mahr was working on.

“I was always happy when he never really pressed me on that,” Mahr said, “because I wasn’t gonna tell him.”

The project started when Mahr met with Il Moro at the Montedison headquarters in Milan two years ago. Subsequent meetings with Il Moro’s chief sail designer, Guido Cavlazzi, were in San Diego. As far as Mahr knows, nobody around Milford suspected anything.

“If they did, they didn’t ask. Everybody knows that special things are being made, and they’re polite enough not to go poking around.”

Il Moro skipper Paul Cayard said the crew had been testing the sails “for quite a few months,” far offshore, away from prying eyes.

“It’s a card I’ve been counting on,” Cayard said. “It may be an ace in the end. At least it’s a face card.”

Il Moro’s revelation this week raised the question of what else North might be working on in secret.

“This is the most dramatic thing,” Mahr said. “There is a North Sails project that is a relatively dramatic thing, if it comes together in time for the Cup. It would be available to all syndicates.

“I know that America 3, in particular, has two developments that I’m not aware of.”

But Dellenbaugh and Josenhans aren’t telling him.

Il Moro first used a carbon-fiber sail on Thursday (although not on Saturday).

That night, at 1:45 a.m., the syndicate said in a statement, “an intruder tried to break into the Il Moro sail loft. He ran away as soon as he realized he was being watched by the security.”

Those longing for the wet and windy America’s Cup of ‘86-87 looked with nostalgia upon this week’s racing at Fremantle, Western Australia.

Stars & Stripes alternate helmsman John Bertrand has Dennis Conner’s Formula One in first place in the World Yachting Grand Prix and needs to finish only third among four boats to win.

On Saturday, Bertrand’s was the only boat to set a full spinnaker in 20 knots of wind and immediately went out of control when a sheet jammed. He recovered from last place to finish second, following a victory Friday.

On Friday Chris Law’s Pacesetter broke its spinnaker pole and collided with Harold Cudmore’s Scottish Enterprise. The judges disqualified Pacesetter not only for the collision but for sailing without a spinnaker pole--tough judging, which also has been lacking off San Diego.

Syndicate manager Peter Blake rode as the 17th man on New Zealand’s boat Saturday.

There is one strict rule: “You can’t say anything about the sailing of the boat whatsoever . . . looking at a wind line or anything. It’s actually a very frustrating position to be in.

“You may ask for a cough drop or where you’re going for dinner tonight.”

A reporter asked, “Is that a code?”

Blake: “I hadn’t thought of that.”

Syd Fischer received a tribute from Louis Vuitton Cup media operations manager Bruno Trouble after announcing this would be his last Cup campaign.

The Challenge Australia chief, conceding his cause is hopeless, as well as winless, also said he would sail in next month’s third round and has offered to help Spirit of Australia’s campaign.

“Syd Fischer is a great sportsman and one of the most important figures of the America’s Cup,” Trouble said. “(He) is not giving up, though. He is not the kind of man to do so.”