Cup Regatta Called Success on Water, a Mess Off It : Sailing: Divorcing the organizers from the trophy’s defenders is one key proposal for improving management of the event next time.

As Bill Koch steered the wheel of his America 3boat back into San Diego Bay, knowing he had won the America’s Cup, Bruno Trouble said the sight filled him with sadness. It wasn’t because Trouble is the front man for the challengers, whom Koch defeated.

“It was like no other America’s Cup I’d ever seen before,” said Trouble, who has sailed in two America’s Cup regattas for his native France, and who, for the third time in a row, organized the foreign syndicates known as the challengers.

“No one was cheering or applauding,” Trouble said. “And this man had just won one of the most coveted trophies in sport. To be a spectator, you had to be on the water or watching on a television set. It shouldn’t be like that.”

Nevertheless, Trouble, like many of his contemporaries, labeled San Diego’s America’s Cup regatta a success, saying it provided “some of the best racing” in the history of a sport that dates to 1851.

But, in some very specific areas, it was a failure, Trouble said, as in “its complete lack of local support. That has to change when the event comes back here, in 1995.”

Tom Ehman, executive vice president of the troubled America’s Cup Organizing Committee, said “make no mistake,” the event will return to San Diego, with the finals once again being raced off Point Loma, in May, 1995.

But next time, Ehman promised, much will need to be done differently, out of necessity. Critics say the management of the event--apart from the racing itself--was often a mess from stem to stern.

Next time, Ehman, like Trouble, believes the people organizing the race have to be different from the ones defending the Cup. In the case of the San Diego Yacht Club and its appendage, the America’s Cup Organizing Committee, they were one and the same.

“You end up having to walk too fine a line between what’s best for the defense and what’s best for the race,” said Ehman, who acknowledged that the ACOC may be replaced by a new entity in ’95.

Ehman said organizers made the decision early to avoid major corporate underwriting of the races themselves, fearing that it would rob defense syndicates of lucrative income.

“We knew it would tie our hands,” Ehman said. “We struggled. But we feel it was the right decision. We won the thing, and that was our primary objective.”

Next time, however, Ehman said that major corporate underwriting of the event itself is almost a certainty. And perhaps, as some have suggested, the hiring of a Peter Ueberroth-like figure to handle all aspects of organizing is not out of the question.

Thomas Wilson, spokesman for the San Diego Yacht Club, said Wednesday that no decision about the future management of the race has been made and won’t be for some time.

“We don’t want to start putting out things bits and pieces at a time,” Wilson said. “We’re just now formulating a process of which way to go and when. I can tell you that every facet of management, both of the race and of the event, is being looked at, toward the goal of bettering the event.”

Wilson declined to discuss the future of the ACOC; its performance, good or bad, and whether it will be retained, restructured or abandoned altogether.

“It’s premature to say anything about that,” he said. “But the racing itself turned out to be a grand success.”

Fred Delaney, commodore of the yacht club, said, “All on-the-water stuff--race management, spectator control, TV coverage worldwide--ended up being very positive events for San Diego, particularly the TV coverage.

“The city will benefit from that for many years to come. In terms of financial impact, I don’t know if it will be $100 million, $200 million. If it’s anything over $1, it’s a plus in today’s economy.”

From the standpoint of organization, the ACOC took on criticism almost from the start. The challengers’ Trouble said much of the problem--and much of what has to be corrected--is a matter of logistics.

Too many syndicates were scattered too far apart, he said, robbing the event of focus and cheating the public.

“The community could not feel the event,” Trouble said. “Nor could she (sic) feel the atmosphere of the racing teams. They were all separated by such great distances.”

Trouble suggests putting at least half, if not all, syndicates in side-by-side compounds in an easy-to-reach location in San Diego Bay. He then recommends a “gangway” over team compounds, allowing pedestrians access while keeping a syndicate’s sense of privacy intact.

“If syndicates demand secrecy, maybe we could open up each compound for, say, two hours a day, so that everyone is happy,” Trouble said. “Maybe the Navy could give up a mile of its seashore . . . I don’t know. San Diego needs, somehow, to keep the syndicates together.”

“That’s obviously the desirable thing to do,” said Wilson, the yacht club’s spokesman. “Everyone has an opinion about what’s right and wrong and do-able, and we just don’t know how many dollars it would take (to place the syndicates together). It could all happen in Mission Bay. . . . Who knows? A lot of things are being considered.”

Delaney, the commodore, said grouping syndicates could be difficult to impossible, if only because obtaining permits and setting up shop is, at a minimum, an 18- to 20-month undertaking, with 36 months between now and the next races.

Ehman suggested that facilities could be built to allow the city and the San Diego Unified Port District a continuing use, long after the regatta has gone.

But Trouble said repeated American victories could keep the Cup here “a very long time.”

Indeed, the possibility exists that San Diego could keep the event for a century or more, as the New York Yacht Club did until 1983, when the Australians won, moving the defense to the western shore of their country in 1987.

Almost everyone agrees that heavy, behind-the-scenes politicking is certain to occur between now and 1994, when syndicates start pouring in for the next round of races. Ehman said the idea of grouping as many as possible has come up again and again.

But, as he and Port District executives often say, San Diego is not Newport, R.I., or Freemantle, Western Australia, where, out of geographical necessity, syndicates had to be grouped together--to the betterment of the entire event.

“San Diego is like a sponge--it soaks up an event like this,” Ehman said, “whereas the event overwhelmed Newport and Freemantle, which are towns of 60,000 people, if that. The most difficult thing for our event was that it lacked focus, or gravity, which needs to be worked on immediately, well before the next races.”

Ehman said some syndicates already have expressed interest in being where they were this time, meaning the notion of banding together may already be doomed. Deputy Port Director Dan Wilkens said the idea gets even more complicated.

“We understand why they want to do that,” Wilkens said. “But it’s very difficult when you have a completely urbanized or utilized waterfront. You can’t accumulate land unless you throw somebody off. Or, you have to ask, ‘Who’s first?’ in volunteering to give up a waterfront lease.”

Wilkens termed the “on-the-water part” of the races an “outstanding success” but said, “We probably don’t have much to say beyond that. What we’re looking for is to hear from the San Diego Yacht Club about its plans, how it wishes to proceed . . . what role, if any, it wants the port to play. And we have yet to hear from them.”

Wilkens said the port may end up giving the ACOC about $6.8 million, a figure that could end up lower since part of it is “reimbursable expenditures.” But, he said, the port’s outlay “won’t exceed that figure.”

The ACOC had originally asked for $20 million.

Trouble, the challengers’ spokesman, said part of the problem is one of adjustment. The regatta has been, for most of its life, an East Coast enterprise, inextricably linked with East Coast money and an East Coast “way of doing things.”

But now, after races in Australia and San Diego, it’s carving out a new, Pacific Rim identity, and it’s only natural, he said, that growing pains accompany the transition.

“The odd part about it was, these races were an international, public-relations smash, shown on television in countries all over the world,” he said. “They just weren’t as popular here as they were in the rest of the world.”

Trouble said he expects the number of challengers to increase by two in 1995, with France, New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Sweden, Russia, Germany, Spain, Italy and Great Britain all setting up compounds on the San Diego waterfront.

“Enough about negatives,” Trouble said. “Let’s dwell for a moment on positives. The racing was much better than expected, and the city is gorgeous. They don’t come much prettier than San Diego.”