Possible America’s Cup Defenders Size Up Rules

Eight representatives of potential America’s Cup defenders met with the America’s Cup ’95 Defense Committee in an informal get-together Wednesday at the San Diego Yacht Club.

Prospective defenders discussed a range of issues from the goals of the committee--to successfully defend the Cup--to upcoming deadlines for the defense syndicates.

“Basically, we went over class rules, cost containment, facilities and the parameters the defense committee is trying to come up with to be eligible for a defense,” said committee chairman Bill Munster.

The deadline to file a defense application and the nonrefundable $150,000 fee that goes with it has been set at Feb. 1, but it’s not the final cutoff date.

“Nothing has been set in stone, yet,” Munster said.

The committee also would like to have filed by the February date a loose business plan and proof of $10 million in a line of credit, sponsorship commitments or, where applicable, a International America’s Cup Class boat.

“Say Dennis Conner brings in Stars & Stripes, that would account for about $3 million,” Munster said. “So he’d have to come up with $7 million more.”

For the ’92 event, potential defenders had to show the ability to produce $6 million, a figure the defense committee said was unrealistic next time around. America 3 spent almost that much on its spy budget.

“We felt the $10 million was as bare bones as we could make it,” Munster said.

The committee hopes that by Dec. 5 it will have more specific guidelines in place for the qualifying, which it will send out to the eight groups represented Wednesday, and two additional interested parties that couldn’t attend.

The most familiar groups represented were Bill Koch’s America 3, which successfully defended the Cup against Il Moro di Venezia last May, and Dennis Conner’s Team Dennis Conner, whose one-boat syndicate lost to America 3 in the defender trials.

Also on hand were: 1992 Olympic Soling silver medalist Kevin Mahaney of Maine; San Francisco’s John Kostecki, who joined Koch’s group for a brief time; San Diego’s Phil Freedman, representing America Venture Alliance; Linda Corrado, the force behind the all-woman Pegasus effort; La Jolla’s Peter Isler, who did commentary for ESPN in this year’s event, was represented by Eric Johnson; and Peter Houston was a voice for the Boston-based Christina Group.

Munster said the Defense Committee has been in contact with Ted Turner Jr., who is currently involved in a Whitbread Round-the-World effort, and U.S. Racing Group’s John Bertrand of Newport Beach, who was a member of Stars & Stripes crew this year.

If it looks like only three or four of the potential defenders make it to the starting line, the committee has considered pooling resources and creating Team America, a defense syndicate that the SDYC would essentially sponsor.

“We just have to wait and see how many viable syndicates we end up with,” Munster said.