AMERICA’S CUP : Boat Sinks, but Aussies Stay Afloat and in Race

Famous nautical quotations:

Farragut: “Damn the torpedoes . . . go ahead! . . . Full speed!”

Jones: “I have not yet begun to fight.”

Davis: “Oh, (shucks), we’re gonna sink!”

It’s been exactly five weeks since oneAustralia foundered beneath the feet of helmsman Rod Davis, skipper John Bertrand and 15 others aboard the leaf-green boat, which cracked apart and sank in 2 1/2 minutes.

Davis didn’t really say shucks, but what he and his mates said and did afterward was critical. They didn’t dwell on the disaster. They tried to forget about AUS 35 on the bottom of the ocean, and now they have rebuilt the older AUS 31, hoping to match the speed of whichever of the two unbeaten Black Magic boats Team New Zealand will enter in the best-of-nine America’s Cup challenger finals starting Tuesday.

“We just took that whole thing--the sinking of the boat, the loss of the sails, our best mast, everything--and just blocked it out of our thinking and focused on how to get this boat through the semifinals,” Davis said. “OK, we’ve done that. The next thing was to get it prepared for the finals.”

The winner will meet the U.S. defender--PACT 95’s front-running Young America, America 3’s improving Mighty Mary or Dennis Conner’s longshot Stars & Stripes--in the Cup match next month.

Whoever wins, Davis, 40, doesn’t entirely lose, wherever the next defense may be. He grew up in San Diego, but his wife, Liz, is a New Zealander and they have been living in Auckland since 1987, when he sailed Eagle for the Newport Harbor Yacht Club. The oldest of their three children, Hannah, 8, was born in Fremantle, Australia, at the end of that campaign.

Davis was with New Zealand in ’92. After a bitter end to that effort, he joined Bertrand’s bid with the Southern Cross Yacht Club, this time as helmsman and sailing director.

“I think I’d like to see it go away from San Diego,” Davis said. “There have been certain problems with the America’s Cup here. There’s too much going on. They’ve got the Chargers going to the Super Bowl, conventions, a ton of things. The America’s Cup is such a little piece of the pie.

“If it leaves San Diego, it sounds like I do OK . . . unless I’d have to live in Auckland knowing those guys did what we couldn’t do.”

With a perspective from all three sides, he finds the Aussie-Kiwi rivalry fascinating.

“It’s like two brothers who are constantly bickering and beating up on each other--until some other person picks on one of the brothers. (Then it’s) hold on, now we’re family again.”

His current mates find his U.S.-New Zealand citizenship an inviting target.

“If they think they can give me more flak by calling me a Kiwi, they’ll do that. Or, every time somebody pulls a gun here in Southern California I get accused: ‘Oh, you’re an American, you’ve probably got a gun in your desk.’

“The ’92 campaign was a different style. This campaign is much more relaxed. Neither likes to lose races, but we don’t believe the sky is falling if we do. In ‘92, we used to get a full dressing-down when we lost. I would guess they’ve learned from their past mistakes.”

But Davis doesn’t think the ’92 New Zealand team could have survived the sinking of a boat.

“They didn’t have the arsenal of boats to bounce back, and with the personalities, no, it would have been heavier than the bowsprit (controversy), and the bowsprit was what got the campaign to blink and eventually to fall apart.”

Skipper Paul Cayard of the Italian Il Moro di Venezia, hammering relentlessly on the bowsprit issue, pressured New Zealand on and off the water. Ultimately, team manager Peter Blake replaced Davis with Russell Coutts, but New Zealand lost the last two races of the challenger finals, anyway.

Now Davis returns in a perfect payback position.

“I try not to hold a grudge,” he said. “I’d dearly like to beat Russell Coutts and that team, but he’s doing his job and I’m doing mine. I’m the quarterback here and he’s the quarterback there, and right now his team’s playing better than mine.”

The select company of world-class sailors is too small to allow room for grudges. Even Cayard remains one of Davis’ best friends.

This is Davis’ seventh America’s Cup. He assembled the sailing team, steers the boat and coordinates the sailing operations.

“The thing about the America’s Cup that’s intriguing is putting together a bigger team for a longer period of time,” he said.

The stress takes its toll.

“I told Lizzie the other day, ‘I wonder why I do this to myself?’ ” Davis said.

“I had an attitude check today. Hannah did her first ice skating competition. She fell three times in her routine. But every time, she got up, she smiled, she kept going, and when she got off the ice she was happy. I thought, ‘Why can’t my racing be like that?’ ”

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America’s Cup Notes

The defender finals, revised to a three-way contest, are scheduled to start Monday with a race between PACT 95’s Young America (21-7 overall) and America 3’s Mighty Mary (9-21). Young America will race Dennis Conner’s Stars & Stripes (14-16) on Tuesday. . . . The races will be shown live on ESPN daily at 1 p.m. . . . The public is invited to view the formal unveiling of the keels at the various compounds Sunday. The schedule: PACT 95, 8 a.m.; America 3, 9:30 a.m.; Stars & Stripes, 11 a.m.; oneAustralia, 4:30 p.m.; Team New Zealand, 6 p.m. Details: (619) 221-1995.