AMERICA’S CUP UPDATE : NOTEBOOK : ACOC Registers Displeasure of Challenger Jury Complaints

Just when you thought bowsprits and New Zealand were history in this Cup, the America’s Cup Organizing Committee fired another salvo at the Louis Vuitton people who sponsored the challenger trials.

Tom Ehman, executive vice president of the ACOC, wrote L.V. Cup press officer Bruno Trouble that blaming the International Yacht Racing Union for the race jury that handled the issue “is inaccurate and unfair and should be stopped. . . . The Challenger of Record Committee appointed the LVC jury, not the IYRU.”

Trouble said he thought the IYRU, which has jurisdiction over international judges, should have stepped in to straighten out the conflict.

Ehman also pointed out that in making a joint written request to the match jury for its interpretation Jan. 29, CORC chairman Stan Reid said a paragraph must be changed that the match jury’s view wouldn’t necessarily be accepted but that the LVC jury “would consider to what extent your decision will affect the balance of the LVC and defender selection series.”

In case there was any doubt, both sides have confirmed the boats they’ll be sailing--America 3 (USA 23) for America 3 and ITA 25--boat number five--for Il Moro di Venezia.

It’s a formality required by the Conditions governing the match. Each must now submit a new measurement certificate to the race committee by 7 p.m. Thursday. After that, according to the Conditions, neither boat can “take on or remove any ballast or deadweight, or make any change affecting measurements on her revalidated certificate . . .”

Lance Henrichs of Larchmont, N.Y., with crew Gustoff Fretch, Stockholm, and Jim Nicholas, San Diego, won the first Coors Shake-a-Leg Challenge Cup for disabled sailors at Mission Bay Monday.

Six crews sailed Freedom/Independence 20s in the three-day match-racing event. Henrichs’ boat won the final race from a crew of Robbie Spence, Harry Horgan and Beau LeBlanc, all of Newport, R.I.

Nicholas and LeBlanc were the boats’ able-bodied crewmen from the Stars & Stripes and America 3 America’s Cup syndicates, respectively.

The Shake-a-Leg Foundation hopes to establish a permanent sailing center for the disabled on Mission Bay.