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March of Time: 20 Years Ago

Posted 1 year, 2 months ago

March of Time: 20 Years Ago
About all your Ed. can say about this article from Time Magazine 20 years is, "How time flies when you are having fun," and "Thank goodness for mutual consent." If the racing in this current edition of the Cup is the best since 1983, if not the best ever, the racing in 1988 was the worst. Both sides deserved plenty of blame for the fiasco, but the cheeky Kiwis sure were confident after the November 1987 court ruling that their challenge was valid.... Does K Stand For Killjoy? by Ezra Bowen When Skipper Dennis Conner brought home that yachtsman's grail, the America's Cup, from Australia in February, his backers in the San Diego-based Sail America syndicate seemed to have landed a cargo of gold. The cachet of a home- waters defense in 1991 figured to pump $1.2 billion into San Diego. But hold on a mo', mates. A shrewdly unsettling tack by a New Zealand banker, Michael Fay, aims to sink San Diego's big party. When Fay sent his unconventional fiberglass New Zealand into the elimination series in the last go-around, Conner tweaked the Kiwis, intimating they "wanted to cheat" their way to victory with design legerdemain. Within seven months, Fay had conceived a comeuppance from Down Under. Since 1958 yachtsmen around the world have informally agreed to compete every three or four years in the roughly 65-ft. boats called 12-meters (the meter designation refers to an abstruse architectural equation to which the craft must conform). But Fay proposed to vie for the Cup in a new 120-ft. K boat, a throwback to the majestic J boats used before World War II. In San Diego's light breezes, her soaring 160-ft. mast and other outsize features could give her a runaway advantage over existing defenders. The backwinded San Diego crew at first stonewalled the challenge. Then Fay hauled them into court in New York City, home port for the Cup's original deed of gift, with an unexpected ploy. The deed specifies that a challenger may be built any old way, so long as she measures no more than 90 ft. on the waterline, which just happens to be the K boat's dimension. The deed also provides that the Cup is forfeit if the challenge is not met in ten months. Full story K Boat: 1988 challenger under the literal terms of the Deed of Gift. Lacking mutual consent as to a class of yacht, SDYC responded with a catamaran, which also proved legal under the Deed of Gift. SDYC won 2-0. Never before or since was the Cup run without mutual consent on the conditions governing the event -- including agreement on a "class" of yacht. May it always be so. Those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it. Photo by Gilles Martin-Raget. Your Ed. did not realize he was that old. :-) Full Story »

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