AMERICA’S CUP / RICH ROBERTS : Now, It’s You Show Me Your Keel and I’ll Show You Mine

It was like the Paris spring fashion show. All the top designers were there, eager to see what their rivals had created and how their own creations would be received.

Team New Zealand’s Peter Blake, about to reveal Doug Peterson’s work, said he felt “like a bride on her wedding night.”

Around town, one by one the skirts dropped to reveal . . . keels.

What’s the big deal with keels? Every boat in the America’s Cup has a big lead bulb hanging from the bottom, with wings attached. OneAustralia has one that looks like a squashed sausage. Some are shaped like porpoises. Dennis Conner’s boat has a big, round one that somebody said looked like, uh, Dennis.

A keel has two purposes: to give the boat stability and to provide what sailors call “lift,” like an airplane wing, when sailing upwind. That part is easy. The hard part is shaping and sizing it so it doesn’t drag like an anchor downwind.

“It’s a trade-off,” said Bruce Kirby, the Canadian who created the popular Laser dinghy, which has no keel. “If they give lift they also give drag.”

To a sailboat, drag is a drag. But the keel is so important to performance that since it’s the one thing the rivals can hide, they do it. The boats are never out of the water without a tarp shrouding the underbody.

Alan Bond started it with Australia II at Newport, R.I., in 1983, but Bond really had something to hide--the celebrated winged keel. Bond’s skipper was John Bertrand, who now leads the oneAustralia team.

On the great day of unveiling, Bertrand said, “I feel rather naked in this world of secrecy.”

The designers made the rounds of one another’s compounds, and as each skirt dropped to full public view, there was an almost audible sigh of relief.

PACT 95’s John Marshall said, “It was a relief to see that nobody had done anything radical that we hadn’t thought of.”

“It’s very satisfying,” said Dave Pedrick, who designed Conner’s Stars & Stripes. “We basically had no clue what the other boats had.”

Did they expect to see a boat without a keel? Who knows? But there were no tandem keels, as New Zealand used in 1992, and no canard, or forward, rudders that most teams had tested but none had raced with since the late Tom Blackaller’s USA in 1986-87.

Peterson said: “They’re all the same configuration . . . but there are variations.”

Ah, those variations.

“A little change in wing angles, twist, size and position and changes in bulb shape can add up on the race course,” TNZ’s Tom Schnackenberg said.

The interesting thing is that no team ever seems to have a keel it’s happy with--except, possibly, New Zealand, which has won every race with whichever of its two boats it has chosen to use.

Now, oneAustralia isn’t happy with its blob of a bulb. Conner claims to be stuck with his old one, since the new one almost fell off and was damaged beyond repair, he says, while suddenly Stars & Stripes looks faster than ever.

A more intriguing question is why America 3’s Mighty Mary has such a large, deep rudder--much larger than any other boat and so cumbersome that helmsman Leslie Egnot developed neck and shoulder problems wrestling the 80-foot boat around the race course.

Bruce Nelson, who designed rival PACT 95’s Young America, said, “It may be there to compensate other performance elements of the boat.”

Translation: Bill Koch’s designers fouled up elsewhere, and their quick fix was the giant rudder, which, as we have been told, creates more drag than they’d like.

So everybody now knows what everybody else has under their boats. The idea for the show-and-tell exercise was to minimize the oppressive secrecy and discourage the espionage operations that clouded the event in 1992.

“It’s kind of fun,” Peterson said. “It brought a lot of fun to the event.”

Pedrick agreed, saying: “It’s a very healthy thing for the event.”

And then they all went back to their drawing boards, feeling very good about themselves, if not about their keels.

*

There hasn’t been an all-woman crew in the America’s Cup since Bill Koch, citing the experience factor, replaced tactician Jennifer Ann (J.J.) Isler with Dave Dellenbaugh a month ago. But there were 10--eight women to a boat, from across the country--in the recent U.S. Women’s Challenge at Newport Harbor Yacht Club.

What did they think of Koch’s move?

Joan Thayer, Corinthian YC, Marblehead, Mass.: “I think it’s great having a women’s team, but I don’t like what happened. They had a women’s team, and that’s it. Maybe we don’t have the experience, but how are we going to get it?”

Heather Johnson, New York YC: “I was very disappointed with the bearded lady on board. I don’t think they had a problem with their tactician. They would have been fine without him.”

Linda McDavitt, Austin, Tex., YC: “Whatever they do is fine with me. It’s their money. If they want to put a man on the boat . . . (shrug).”

Elizabeth Baylis, Richmond, Calif., YC: “I think they’re doing a great job. The move to Dave Dellenbaugh was good because women don’t have the experience in match racing that the men have. I don’t think they were lacking sailing skills.

“I don’t agree with the distinction between all-women and not all-women. It’s a team effort. It’s all racing, and I don’t think there should be a distinction.”

Cheryl Lanzinger, Seattle YC: “It didn’t matter to me. I just sail with my friends.”

Kathy Patterson, California YC: “I don’t think they should have put Dave on the boat. It was a commitment to an all-woman crew, and they didn’t keep to their commitment.”

Leaders of local women’s sailing associations also are split. Gail Hine, perhaps the most prominent advocate for women sailors, faxed Koch: “I am sure I speak for hundreds of women here in Southern California in saying how disappointed we are.”

But Janet Warner of the Long Beach-Los Angeles Women’s Sailing Assn. said: “The men do have more experience in match racing, and to have one man and 15 women is almost an all-woman crew. If I was on the boat, I would be very accepting for the sake of winning. I know some of the women are irate, but I’m not.”