AMERICA’S CUP : It’s America 3, Start to Finish : Sailing: Il Moro fouls at line and a penalty turn sends her 30 seconds behind, the U.S. defender’s margin of victory.
Paul Cayard suggested it was he, not Bill Koch, who deserved a hit in the head.
For three years the Italians’ American skipper painstakingly built their America’s Cup program, and for 38 races here he patiently taught them how to win. He got them to the America’s Cup match, but when the moment--the moment-- of truth arrived Saturday, it all fell apart at the starting line.
Cayard, pushed by a strong current, had Il Moro di Venezia over the line prematurely when a shotgun fired, signaling the start of the first race of the America’s Cup, a best-of-seven series for sailing’s greatest prize.
By the time Il Moro returned to re-start, helmsman Buddy Melges had America 3 30 seconds in front--the same time as its winning margin 2 hours and 21 minutes later.
America 3 led by as much as 52 seconds but generally played defense, always staying between Il Moro and the next mark.
The 20.03-nautical mile course was surrounded by 560 spectator boats--the Coast Guard’s estimate--and in lively southerly winds of 12 knots, building to 14, then fading to eight, the two race boats’ speeds seemed equal.
Skipper Bill Koch’s only complaint was, “I have a splitting headache.”
Koch, who is 6 feet 5, was standing when equipment struck him on the right side of the head and knocked him to his knees while approaching the second mark.
“My head hurts like hell,” Koch said after the race, “(but) I feel terrific.”
That was America 3’s only apparent glitch, while Il Moro appeared to have regressed three years. After the botched start, the crew allowed the line trimming the headsail to override itself and jam on the winch, then bungled a late spinnaker takedown at the second mark that left the chute trailing like an air brake.
“We had a bad start to the day,” Cayard said. “We got a little out of phase with our weather forecast, and we changed our main(sail) a few times (before the start). We spent more time doing that than really concentrating on the course or a lot of things.
“It’s hard to have a worse day than we had today, from all aspects. But we’ve been trained to race from this position.”
The Italians won, only 5-4, in the challenger semifinals and trailed New Zealand, 4-1, in the best-of-nine finals before winning a protest and rebounding to a 5-3 victory.
Caya is an aggressive sailor and had the upper hand on Americac,63 starting helmsman Dave Dellenbaugh through most of the 10-minute pre-start sequence, even when both boats were three lengths over the line two minutes before the gun.
After they returned to below the line, Cayard chose to go to the left end, as Dellenbaugh went right. That’s when Il Moro’s trouble started.
From his position aft, the helmsman can see only one end of the 200-yard-long starting line--the committee boat right or an inflated buoy left--and must rely on other eyes and electronic systems to tell him where he is relative to the line.
“We had all that stuff,” Cayard said. “But the humans or the machines were off. . . . We didn’t account for the amount of current. We thought it was a half (knot). It was really a knot.
“I made a fundamental mistake. I personally wasn’t looking at the pin-end buoy for about the last 20 seconds. I was relying too much on the other information around. At the last little bit I was getting pretty nervous about where that thing was, and when I went down there to (the leeward side of the boat to) look at it I realized, ‘hey, we’re up way too close.’
“I bore off about six seconds to the start and . . . I was over by about half of the boat width. I was paralleling the line at the (gun).”
As the gun fired, Cayard headed up, then returned when told the committee boat had posted his code flag to recall him. He turned downwind to get below the line but was too close to the buoy to dip quickly and had to circle around to restart.
“I guess it was all at the start, eh?” Melges said. “Over the line a little bit, that red boat?”
Koch said: “Baloney, (the race) wasn’t over at the start. It was Buddy pulling us out a crucial point. He did a magnificent job.”
Because of the blow to his head, Koch didn’t attend the post-race news conference, leaving a description of the incident to Melges.
“Dave (Dellenbaugh) didn’t pull up the runner as briskly and as seamanlike as he should have,” Melges explained. “He conked our leader on the head, and I don’t think that was too intelligent.
“It sounded like, uh . . . BONK! “ It was a different sound than the runner just hitting the hollow boom. The next thing he was at my feet. I turned around and saw he was still scrambling, so I (said), ‘OK, Bill?’ and he said, ‘Yes,’ so we went on about our business.”
The business will continue today.
