AMERICA’S CUP / RICH ROBERTS : Lincoln Has Edge With Size
The wind wasn’t blowing, protests were piling up and dumpsters all over town were overflowing with lightning bolts. If John Bertrand hadn’t fallen overboard and the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln hadn’t blundered out of the fog onto the race course, it would have been a dreary second round in the America’s Cup.
Organizers thought they had seen everything that could ruin the racing. Then the Abe Lincoln showed up.
Visibility was about 500 yards when the flattop, foghorn blaring, emerged from the fog and cruised to a stop 200 yards up the course from the starting line. Navy sailors gawked down at Cup sailors, who gawked back.
Team New Zealand and France 3 had already started their race, but the Coast Guard ordered the next two matches delayed. It didn’t want anybody sailing an 80-foot America’s Cup boat into a 1,092-foot nuclear-powered obstruction.
Who goofed? The Coast Guard and race committee said they had watched the carrier coming on radar for 15 or 20 minutes but were unable to contact it by radio, and apparently the carrier’s sophisticated electronics system didn’t identify the cluster of little plastic boats. What America’s Cup?
The next day Third Fleet headquarters issued a release stating: “The first indication that Abraham Lincoln had entered the race course area was when the forward lookout spotted yellow buoys used to mark the race area. . . . We are reviewing this event to ensure that no similar incidents occur in the future.”
Wonder if they have heard of radios.
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It’s not often that the skipper goes overboard, except when the crew administers the traditional dunking to celebrate a victory. That was appropriate in 1983 at Newport, R.I., after John Bertrand won.
But not during a race. Bertrand had gone forward from his usual position behind helmsman Rod Davis to help push the boom out as oneAustralia followed Team New Zealand around a downwind mark. But when he reached out to push, the boom wasn’t there and he stepped off the boat.
As he fell, Bertrand grabbed a line, and after he was dragged to the stern like a porpoise, three crew members hauled him aboard. Actually, David Barnes could have grabbed him first, but Barnes, a member of the boat’s design team, was riding as the “17th man,” technically only a passenger who isn’t supposed to help sail the boat. Barnes stepped toward Bertrand, then backed away.
But Bertrand had given new meaning to the term Down Under.
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Despite his mishap and two days of racing lost because of lack of wind, Bertrand likes San Diego’s notoriously light conditions better than designer Bruce Farr does.
“The sailing conditions here are terrible,” Farr said. “That’s one of the strongest reasons I don’t like San Diego. This is one of the toughest places to stage fair races. The wind, the sea--I just don’t like it.”
Farr has reason to hate San Diego. The magnificent great white boat he designed for Sir Michael Fay’s renegade New Zealand Challenge in 1988 was trumped by Dennis Conner’s catamaran. The “little red sled” Farr designed for Fay in ’92 was spectacularly successful until it fell on its bowsprit.
Farr is back as the designer of Chris Dickson’s TAG Heuer Challenge entry. Although Dickson is doing well, Farr’s opinion of the venue hasn’t changed.
Bertrand’s opinion: “Well, it’s San Diego. The conditions are for everyone to sort out and to solve. I think they’re quite fair.”
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The test of strength on the Cup boats is a tacking duel, in which two boats try to outdo each other while sailing upwind, putting pressure on the winch grinders whose muscles trim the sails. The America 3women have more than held their own.
“We’re very strong in our tacking duels because we’ve been training for so long,” navigator Courtenay Becker-Dey said. “And our grinders have been working very hard. They’ve pulled us around the course.”
Amy Baltzell, one of the grinders, is 5 feet 11, 165 pounds and a former Olympic rower. She said she thinks the issue of strength has been put to rest.
“We never felt that way,” she said. “I think we’ve proven it’s not the case. As a matter of fact, we’re always like, ‘Let’s go!’ ”