new york yacht club 1983

Published on July 23rd, 2020 | by Editor

America’s Cup: Looking back on 1983

Published on July 23rd, 2020 by Editor -->

When Australia won the seven race series to claim the 1983 America’s Cup, the New York Yacht Club would finally lose its hold on a trophy which it had successfully defended over a period of 132 years. While much has been attributed to the innovative wing keel of Australia II, we go to the archives in which Tom Blackaller describes for Sports Illustrated why he believes it happened:

(March 12, 1984) – I didn’t get involved in last year’s defense of the America’s Cup out of some long-standing desire to be a Cup skipper or out of patriotism or anything like that. I did it because Dennis Conner was apparently going to sail unopposed straight into the 25th defense.

Gary Jobson and I began talking about a Cup effort toward the end of the 1980 trials, but the reason it actually happened was that a fairly large group of people, sailors I respect and admire, also thought there should be some competition. We felt sure we would be able to provide it, and we might have if….

I’m trying to figure out what went wrong for us and for the U.S. How was the longest winning streak in the history of sport broken? How in the world did it happen? And why?

The obvious answer is that the U.S. was out-designed by Ben Lexcen. No doubt about it, Australia II was the better boat. It maneuvered better, which in match racing is critical. If you have a boat that maneuvers well and you can get ahead of your competitor, there’s no way the guy can get around you. On some points of sail, Liberty’s straight-line speed was probably pretty good, but she was hopelessly inadequate in the tacking duels.

But Lexcen wasn’t the only reason the U.S. lost the America’s Cup. And neither were Conner’s tactics in the last two races. I think Conner and his guys sailed the wheels off Liberty. Accusing Dennis of losing the Cup because he didn’t cover on the run in the seventh and final race or on the beat in the sixth race is total bunk. Conner’s tactics were arguable, but he did what he thought he had to do, based on what he knew about that boat, and he was goddam lucky to get to the seventh race. Enormously lucky.

Think about it. Race 1, Australia II is in the lead, and her steering gear breaks. She luffs up, her spinnaker collapses, and still she loses by only 1:10. Race 2, Australia II’s main halyard comes unlocked, and the head of the mainsail rips off. The Australians shouldn’t even have been able to sail, and still they lose by only 1:33. Race 3, the Australians win going away, but the time limit expires [a race must be finished in five hours and 15 minutes], and the win doesn’t count. Race 3 is rerun, and Australia II wins. Race 4, Conner and company sail a perfect race. They win the start with a daring port-tack maneuver, every wind shift goes their way, they make not a single mistake in 24 miles and they win by 43 seconds.

The score is 3-1 Liberty, but it could very easily have been 4-0 Australia II.

In my opinion, all three of the main players in the American effort are to blame for losing the Cup—the New York Yacht Club’s America’s Cup Committee, the Liberty syndicate, and my own group, the Defender/Courageous syndicate, though not necessarily in that order.

Let’s begin with the New York Yacht Club. The defender of the America’s Cup has always been chosen by the America’s Cup Committee. You don’t have races to decide who wins the right to defend the Cup; instead, you perform for a committee that presumably rates your performance on the basis of some specific criteria, but no one tells you what the criteria are.

For us it was like playing a game without knowing the rules. The committee would start and then abandon races between the U.S. boats, or they would shorten races, and you were left to guess what it meant. An America’s Cup course is 24.3 miles long, yet Defender, our boat, which was conceived and designed to try to defend the America’s Cup, never once in her 14-month existence raced a full America’s Cup course.

In fact, there was only one full-length race held between American boats all summer long. That was Liberty vs. Courageous on July 24, and it was also the best race of the trials. Liberty won by 15 seconds.

Meanwhile, of course, the foreigners, who ran their own trials for the right to challenge and who were independent of the America’s Cup Committee, were sailing full-length races. Out of 164 races among the challengers, 20 went the full 24.3 miles.

It was almost as if our committee members were trying to confuse everybody—the press, the owners of the boats, the sailors—to keep them all off balance and have it all be a total muddle so that when they did make their decision nobody could question it. That’s the way it seemed to me.

It was comparable to having some committee of NFL people decide who would play in the Super Bowl: “That bounce was really a random bounce so we’ll give x amount of credit to this team and y to that one, and we’ll balance it all out eventually, but you’ll have to trust us to decide which way the ball would have bounced if it had bounced correctly,” the committee might say. You can imagine what that might do to the competitiveness of all the teams playing the game all season long.

One time we really had Liberty at the start. We crossed the line and, 35 seconds later, she crossed the line. Then, one minute after that, the race was abandoned. O.K. But in another race, I think it was on the same day, Liberty did approximately the same thing to us. She crossed the starting line some 30 seconds ahead of us, but the committee let that race go on. We lost it, but it was a good, solid contest. We almost caught her. But the race that was abandoned might have been a good one, too. So what did it mean? How did they score it? You never knew.

The newspapers printed scores, but they were only guesses, because nobody knew how, or even whether, the committee was scoring the races. It was all very confusing and very depressing. I don’t know how the other people involved reacted to the arbitrary power of those men on that committee, but it weighed heavily on me.

As it turned out, there was a way to find out what the criteria were, but it took a while for me to figure it out: You talked to the various committee members, in private. That’s how the old boys do it, I found out. You establish personal communication with individual committee members.

The Liberty people did it every day, two or three times a day. It was one of their priorities, like getting a good boat, good sails, or a good crew. They figured it was part of the game, and, by God, they were right. It is part of the game, but it’s dead-ass wrong!

As a sailor I can understand having 10 races, throwing out two and recognizing the boat with the best score as the winner. I understand that. I’ve raced all my life. But obviously my approach to this whole thing was far too simplistic. I thought, “This isn’t the way it should be,” and so I didn’t, as a matter of principle, or pigheadedness or naiveté, call it what you will, play the game. I didn’t say one word to the committee the whole damn summer.

Well, that’s not quite true. I said something in July, when the committee’s handling of the keel controversy was really bothering me. At that point the committee members were questioning the decision of the official measurers, who had said Australia II was a legal 12-meter.

What the committee said was, “We’re not questioning the decision, we’re questioning the interpretation of the rule that was used in the measurement.” They had to say that so the question would go back not to the measurement committee, which was clearly going to stand behind its original decision, but to the International Yacht Racing Union, with which they thought they might stand a chance.

Eventually, of course, the whole thing blew up in their faces when it was revealed by Peter de Savary, the head of the British syndicate, that the I.Y.R.U. had declared in writing a year earlier that winged keels were legal. But in July ’83, the members of the selection committee didn’t know that yet, and “reinterpretation” was their ploy.

They wanted that boat, Australia II, out of there. They felt that figuring out a way to get her out was just part of the game. Anyway, in July, I didn’t understand how they thought they could overrule the decision of the measurement committee, no matter how they went about it, when right in their own race conditions it says that the decision of the measurers is final.

So I said something at the end of one of our protest hearings. After everyone except me and the committee had left the room, I said, “I feel compelled to say to you guys something I feel in my heart that I think probably represents the feeling of a lot of the sailors in the U.S., and that is, this keel thing has gotten way out of hand, and if there’s any way you can tone down what’s going on, it would really be good for sailing.” I also said, “I realize that you guys feel that you have to do what you have to do, and I respect that, but what I’m saying is that it doesn’t look right. It really looks bad.”

They landed on me hard, Bus Mosbacher in particular. He said, “You’ve let the press get to you.” I said, “Wait a minute, that didn’t have to do with the press or anything else. That came from my heart, and that’s all. I won’t say any more.” And then I walked out. That was my only run-in with Mosbacher, and although Defender was not entirely out of the running at that time, I figure this incident may well have closed the book on her as far as the committee was concerned.

It’s wrong for the selection committee to have that much power. It can’t be good for the racing. It destroys the competition. The protest hearings were more like a kangaroo court. In match racing, the protest is very important. In any other kind of racing you stay out of the protest room at all costs, but in a match race you have to force things, and the protest becomes an integral part of the competition. Sometimes, unfortunately, the legal part of it gets more important than the racing.

Anyway, the N.Y.Y.C. was not interested in who won or who lost the protest, but more in how the protest was submitted and whether it was submitted in a manner that was approved by the club. The first couple of protests I was involved in, I couldn’t believe that the issue wasn’t who was right or wrong on the racecourse, which might well have decided who won the race, but rather that the immense knowledge of the America’s Cup Committee of the New York Yacht Club be imparted to us competitors.

The selection method has been in use for a long time. Not only does it diminish competition, it has also had the effect, over the years, of keeping away a lot of sailing talent and money that might otherwise have gone into the America’s Cup effort. That, too, depresses the level of competition in the long run.

Although I think the America’s Cup Committee, particularly its chairman, Bob McCullough, handled many situations badly last summer, by far the worst, in my opinion, and the least discussed, was the way the committee got in bed with Conner and the Liberty group in the matter of multiple measurement certificates.

To Conner’s credit, he figured out an unorthodox but legal way to alter Liberty to suit the conditions. By first having the boat measured in three different configurations and then, on the basis of the weather forecast for the next day, jerking a thousand pounds or so of ballast off, he managed to make his turkey a little better in light weather.

He and his designers should be congratulated for that. But for making some kind of an agreement with the N.Y.Y.C. to keep what they were doing secret from the other American competitors, they should all have been drawn and quartered.

Paragraph 23 of the N.Y.Y.C.’s own “Conditions Governing Races for the America’s Cup (1983)” says that if a change, such as one in a boat’s ballast, is made, the change must be within the 12-meter rule (which this was), that the boat must be remeasured (which Liberty was), that the race committee must be notified of the change (which it was), and that the other boats must be notified of the re-measurement (which we were not).

There are two reasons for notifying the other boats, both having to do with keeping the competition fair. The other contenders could make sure the re-measurement was done properly, and they would be aware that the boat they prepared to race against today may behave somewhat differently than it did yesterday.

Technically, the “Conditions Governing Races for the America’s Cup” apply only to the Cup races themselves, but because there are no written rules that I know of governing the Cup trials, surely the same rules and the same reasoning would apply to the trials, especially because the selection committee is supposed to be impartial in its selection of the best American boat.

If the committee is not impartial, then a lot of people who have contributed millions of dollars in good faith—the backers of the Defender/Courageous syndicate—are throwing their money down a hole.

So as I see it, the N.Y.Y.C. broke its own rules by not telling Defender and Courageous what it was doing. It was ungoddamn-believable. People cheat and things like that, but it’s doubly bad to have this committee that’s supposed to be the referee, judge and jury, in collusion with one of the competitors.

In spite of my objections to the way the committee operated, however, I should make one thing clear: Given what they had to look at, I think the committee made the correct decision in choosing Liberty. But if things had been different, the committee might have had more and better boats to choose from. Therein lies the rest of the sad tale.

The committee, in the person of Bob McCullough, repeatedly said to me and to members of the Defender/Courageous syndicate, “Anything we can do to help you, we’ll do. Just tell us what you want us to do.” The only thing we asked them to do was, please, organize races between the Defender/Courageous group and Conner’s group, first in September ’82 and then in March ’83, to measure the progress of the boats.

We got absolutely nowhere. In September ’82, the four boats would have been Defender and Courageous, Freedom, and Spirit. It would have taught us all a lot.

Because Freedom would have killed Defender in any kind of breeze at all, it would have taught us what a dog Defender was in heavy weather, possibly early enough to have done something about it. It would have taught Dennis, right off the bat, how slow both Freedom and Spirit were downwind, because Defender would have blitzed them. And Liberty, which was in the design stage at the time, could have been approached with that in mind. Since, as it turned out, Liberty’s downwind weakness was her downfall, the decision not to race may have been critical.

Even if we had raced in March 1983, after Liberty had been launched, her poor downwind performance would have been obvious, and the money and effort of the Conner group could have been concentrated on solving the problem. It would have been a simpler proposition to make Liberty faster downwind than to make Defender better upwind.

So, why did the New York Yacht Club not do as we asked, since clearly it was in the club’s best interest to do so? It could have. It could have demanded that all the American boats meet in a U.S. 12-meter championship, or even a California 12-meter championship. Our winter camps in San Diego and Newport Beach, Calif. were only 80 miles apart. We could have gotten all four boats together in one day.

But the committee wouldn’t do it because Conner wouldn’t do it. He wouldn’t budge, and they wouldn’t take it upon themselves to budge him. Conner sat there, thinking he knew everything, that he had all the knowledge and we had none, and that all that would happen if we raced was that we would learn from him, thereby improving our chances of beating him and decreasing his of beating us.

Now that, to me, is totally unsporting. Maybe I’m not tough enough about trying to win. I mean, I love to win, but I want to win knowing that I’ve done my best against people who’ve done their best. But some people don’t sail that way. They guard all their little secrets, but I think it’s wrong, dead wrong.

Both Jobson and I knew that those races were critical, not only to our effort but to the whole American effort. We pleaded with our syndicate managers to try to make something happen. No way. With hindsight, one thing becomes clear: When those races didn’t get off, the Cup was gone.

But the greatest and most obvious failure of the entire American effort was in the area of design. In the end, we all suffered from an excess of conservatism.

In our case, the error was in thinking we could sail our way to victory and therefore not budgeting enough money at the beginning to do an even adequate job of exploring the possibilities of a radical design. In the case of Conner and his group, they started off on the right track. They knew they had to find a better boat because the foreigners might come up with a better boat, and so they budgeted a godawful amount of money—I would estimate $5.5 million—to find that boat.

They built three new boats, trying to improve on what they had left from 1980. Two of them, Spirit and Magic, they discarded. But the Conner group didn’t have the engineering talent to pull it off. Whether Conner picked the wrong guys, or those guys picked the wrong parameters to investigate, or whether they just weren’t capable of forward enough thinking isn’t clear, but in my opinion, part of the problem was that Conner himself is conservative with regard to boat design. So am I.

I think Dennis also felt he didn’t really have to have a radical boat, that his sailing ability, his crew, and its experience were enough. It’s obvious that he didn’t get a radical boat because Liberty, designed by Johan Valentijn, was the final attempt at a new boat and was nothing more than Freedom in disguise.

Dennis knew, as Jobson and I did, although we failed to convince the rest of our syndicate, that the committee wouldn’t pick an old boat. So he built a boat that was little, if any, better than Freedom, which he had won with in 1980.

This failure to experiment with an advanced concept may well date back to 1974 when Britton Chance, an established designer with a good imagination, thought up Mariner to compete against Intrepid and Courageous in the American trials.

Mariner was a radical departure from the 12-meters of that day, and she also turned out to be radically slow. Almost like Advance, the Australian entry that was the dog of the 1983 challenger trials, Mariner ended up as a joke, and Chance’s career suffered as a result.

From that point on, all American Twelves have been of fairly conventional design. New ideas have had trouble flourishing, particularly since success with conventional designs had come so easily for so long. There seemed to be no need to go out on a limb.

The 12-meter rule, which was devised in 1906, is very strange. Ben Lexcen didn’t miraculously discover a principle of hydrodynamics that suddenly would make boats go faster. What he discovered was a quirk within the rule that made a boat of a certain design—one with wings on the keel and a particular waterline and a large sail area and all that—work.

It was a miraculous discovery, all right, but only within the confines of that very restrictive rule.

I think having the world’s so-called premier yachting event held in these behemoths, the 12-meters, is stupid, but it’s tradition. I’m not saying tradition is stupid, but I am saying that a lot of valuable development could be achieved if the America’s Cup were sailed under another rule, even the International Offshore Rule, which assigns a handicap allowance to each boat. At least that was written in 1970.

But the Australians make the rules now, and at this stage, holding as they do a huge edge in 12-meter technology, they’d be fools to switch to anything else. Alan Bond paid a lot for that edge, and he is certainly no fool.

However, I digress. I have blamed the New York Yacht Club, and I have blamed Dennis Conner. Now it’s time to examine the failures of the Defender/Courageous syndicate and my own part in those failures.

Like Conner, I thought that Jobson and I and the crew we recruited could sail our way to victory in the America’s Cup, even without the best boat. How wrong I was. It was a fatal error. Although our budget originally had a provision for the building of a second boat if the first wasn’t good enough, we never really thought that would happen.

Also, we were relatively late in getting our financial support organized. In fact, when Defender was launched in June 1982, we were half a million dollars in the hole. I realized then—and the effect on my spirit was devastating—that if something was wrong with this boat, there was nothing we could do. It meant that one degree of our freedom was taken away. We had to work within the limits of the boat we had.

But I told myself—what else could I do?—that I could sail my way out of a bad boat. That was major error No. 1. Major error No. 2: I hadn’t realized far enough ahead how much money we really needed. Major error No. 3: We failed to buy Courageous outright. Instead, we had to lease her from Dave Vietor and his partners, which meant that Vietor got to be at the helm through 1982.

While Vietor is a great guy and a good sailor, he isn’t a match racer, and he has never been truly successful in one-design sailing. In my opinion he wasn’t able to realize Courageous’ full potential, and that masked, for much too long, the fact that Courageous was a lot faster than she looked. That, in turn, masked the fact that Defender was slower than we thought she was.

It’s a problem unique to sailboat racing. If you wanted to develop a faster miler or a faster race car, you’d go out on a track and time them. If the runner did a 3:54 mile or the car hit 200 mph at Indianapolis, you’d know they had possibilities, and you’d go to work. But there are almost no absolutes in sailing.

You can’t tell by looking at an instrument whether the boat is actually performing or not, because conditions change so radically that absolute data become meaningless. The sea comes from different directions, and the wind changes in direction, velocity and angle in relation to the water. So all you can do is take another boat, put it alongside in the same conditions with identical sails and with the best people you can find in the crew, and then compare the two.

It’s very complicated, expensive and time-consuming, but there’s no other way.

Now, the thing about the America’s Cup is that the syndicates go out and work by themselves. That’s the reason we never knew how good Australia II was. Even the Australians didn’t know what they had, because Australia II did a lot of her early testing by herself, with instruments or something. Even after they’d had a short series of races with another Australian boat, Challenge 12, they couldn’t tell for sure.

But, again, you have to give Conner credit. He figured out in 1980 that the way to win was to work out an elaborate two-boat program and spend all that money and all that time on it. He knew he needed the time. Now everybody has to spend the same amount of time Dennis does. It frustrates me. I’m just not equipped with the doggedness. If I ever did it again, I’d have to have somebody else develop the boat, because I don’t have the patience it takes to endure the testing and the politics.

Anyway, although I tried, through Max O’Meara, to get John Kolius onto the helm of Courageous early, I didn’t try hard enough. As I recall, O’Meara’s objection was that we hadn’t fulfilled our financial commitment to Vietor and his partners for the chartering of Courageous, and if he were to take Vietor off Courageous, Dave might take his boat and go home.

I don’t think he would have done that, but then, I wasn’t the one who would have had to tell him. That had to come from the syndicate, and the syndicate didn’t have the nerve to do it, or else they just didn’t believe that it was important.

Finally, in January 1983, while we were in winter training in California, Vietor became vice-chairman of the syndicate and Kolius took over the helm, but it then took him about four months to learn how to sail the boat. So for a while Defender was eating up Courageous, and I allowed myself to be lulled into thinking maybe Defender would be all right.

By the time we left California for Newport in May ’83, Kolius had gotten Courageous moving and things had evened up. They stayed that way for quite a while. Defender was a little bit better in light air, a lot worse in heavy air, and still she managed to come out about even. But that wasn’t nearly good enough. I could sort of sense it, but I couldn’t admit it.

Meanwhile, by January ’83, things were getting rough within our syndicate. The financial and political situations were very bad. Fundraising was lagging badly, and arguments were raging about who controlled the syndicate.

Chuck Kirsch—who was syndicate chairman because he had come to Jobson and me and asked, “What can I do to help?” and we’d said, “Why don’t you be chairman?”—became increasingly difficult for me to deal with. I think the money was oppressing him as much as it was Jobson and me.

The main problem, though, was that with Courageous beginning to come on, the syndicate managers adopted the policy that both boats should be treated entirely equally. That was the syndicate’s fatal error, because Courageous, no matter how good she was and how total her redesign had been, was 10 years old. The committee would never select her. It had to be a new boat.

My syndicate heads didn’t know that, and the crew of Courageous didn’t know that, and I wouldn’t have expected them to. But I did, and Kirsch and I began to have battles. Then we had a bad falling-out having to do with my personal life, and that was it. I was finished. I should have been able to take it, but I couldn’t. I just sort of retired mentally.

Kirsch continually threatened to fire me for one thing or another. Lee Smith, another syndicate member, even went to Atlanta to talk to Ted Turner about replacing me. Turner, who hadn’t sailed in three years! I only found out what he was doing because I have a friend who works in Turner’s office.

I was beat up, and I lost my desire. I probably should have given up my place in the program to somebody else, but there was nobody around who’d been in the system long enough. I was screwed up, and it blunted my ability to think rationally.

I should have done things differently, and my syndicate should have, too. And if our effort had been better, Conner’s might have been better, and if Conner’s had been only a little bit better, the America’s Cup might still be in a glass case at the New York Yacht Club instead of at the Royal Perth Yacht Club.

In saying all this, I don’t mean in any way to minimize what the Australians accomplished. They got it just right. Bond properly perceived that he couldn’t beat the Yanks unless he had something special.

He spent the money—$1.5 million for the design alone, I’ve heard. He set up an organization and kept it intact through four campaigns. His crews learned how to sail the boats, and they sailed very well. The system worked.

My point is that even though Australia II was much the better boat, she still nearly lost. She had a lot of terribly bad luck, and she barely survived. Conceivably, Liberty wouldn’t have had to be very much better to have won that last, deciding race. On the second-to-last leg, Liberty started the 4½-mile downwind run with a 57-second lead. Within just a few hundred yards they could see aboard Liberty that Australia II was gaining and had already cut the lead by a third. At that rate, Australia II was obviously going to sail right past her.

Dennis elected to defend against that speed by trying to jibe on wind shifts. It didn’t work, but he was in a pickle and he didn’t have many choices. With hindsight, I’d say it might have been possible for Liberty to luff Australia II far enough off the course so that Liberty could reach back to the leeward mark. Liberty was fast on a reach, maybe even faster than Australia II. However, it would’ve taken forever, and your chances of holding off even a slightly faster boat for that long are small.

Rounding the leeward mark, Australia II had a 21-second lead and Liberty initiated a furious tacking duel. There were 47 tacks in all. By rights, Liberty should have lost about one second per tack. Instead she lost only 20 seconds, because Conner did a very clever thing.

I was watching it on TV. He tried a very weird maneuver. He would hold the boat head-to-wind for a long time, then let her fall onto the new tack at a very, very low speed. He was just trying to do something different to throw the Australians off, while at the same time hoping that in all the tacking the Australians might rip a sail or have an override on a winch—anything.

As it was, both boats tacked superbly each time, and Australia II just slowly sailed away.

But consider this. Australia II won that race by 41 seconds. In spite of her much greater maneuverability, she had gained only 20 seconds on that last beat. If Liberty had been 40 seconds faster over the 4½ miles of the previous downwind leg, she could conceivably have held the Australians off.

And if Conner and his people had known soon enough that Liberty was very slow downwind, if they’d raced with us as I’d wanted them to, they might have been able to do something about it.

All of us—the New York Yacht Club, the Liberty syndicate, and the Defender/Courageous syndicate—could have and should have produced a better effort.

I’m not happy that the Australians won the America’s Cup, but I think it’s nothing but good for the event that they did. I think the Australians, being great sportsmen, will make the Cup a lot more competitive, a lot more fun. And a lot more fair.

They’ve yelled for so many years about the N.Y.Y.C. and how screwed up the America’s Cup is, I hope they remember what happened and don’t do the same thing. They’ll take it very seriously, but they won’t put winning it ahead of making it competitive. I think that’s what the N.Y.Y.C. did, and it was unhealthy for sailing.

The America’s Cup would be a better event if somebody could figure out a way to limit the expenditure of time and money, but anybody who wants to get into it better have 1.5 million bucks in his war chest right now to begin the research process. That’s where it has to begin. We paid Dave Pedrick $100,000 for the design of Defender and $80,000 for testing it. Alan Bond spent 10 times that much.

Personally, I prefer a test of sailing to a test of which designer put the right lines on a piece of paper two or three years ago. To me, that’s not very interesting. But a lot of people do care about which boat is the best, and this year we found out. At the moment, the Australians have a very sizable edge in the design of 12-meters. Now we have to go down there and get ’em. But it’s not going to be easy.

Details: www.americascup.com

36th America’s Cup In addition to Challenges from Italy, USA, and Great Britain that were accepted during the initial entry period (January 1 to June 30, 2018), eight additional Notices of Challenge were received by the late entry deadline on November 30, 2018. Of those eight submittals, entries from Malta, USA, and the Netherlands were also accepted. Here’s the list:

Defender: • Emirates Team New Zealand (NZL)

Challengers: • Luna Rossa (ITA) – Challenger of Record • American Magic (USA) • INEOS Team UK (GBR) • Malta Altus Challenge (MLT) – WITHDRAW • Stars + Stripes Team USA (USA) • DutchSail (NED) – WITHDRAW

Of the three late entries, only Stars+Stripes USA remains committed , however, it is unclear what entry payments have been made, nor is there knowledge of a boat being actively built or sailing team assembled.

Key America’s Cup dates: ✔ September 28, 2017: 36th America’s Cup Protocol released ✔ November 30, 2017: AC75 Class concepts released to key stakeholders ✔ January 1, 2018: Entries for Challengers open ✔ March 31, 2018: AC75 Class Rule published ✔ June 30, 2018: Entries for Challengers close ✔ August 31, 2018: Location of the America’s Cup Match and The PRADA Cup confirmed ✔ August 31, 2018: Specific race course area confirmed ✔ November 30, 2018: Late entries deadline ✔ March 31, 2019: Boat 1 can be launched ( DELAYED ) ✔ 2nd half of 2019: 2 x America’s Cup World Series events ( CANCELLED ) ✔ October 1, 2019: US$1million late entry fee deadline ( NOT KNOWN ) ✔ February 1, 2020: Boat 2 can be launched ( DELAYED ) ✔ April 23-26, 2020: First (1/3) America’s Cup World Series event in Cagliari, Sardinia ( CANCELLED ) ✔ June 4-7, 2020: Second (2/3) America’s Cup World Series event in Portsmouth, England ( CANCELLED ) • December 17-20, 2020: Third (3/3) America’s Cup World Series event in Auckland, New Zealand • January 15-February 22, 2021: The PRADA Cup Challenger Selection Series • March 6-15, 2021: The America’s Cup Match

Youth America’s Cup Competition • February 18-23, 2021 • March 1-5, 2021 • March 8-12, 2021

AC75 launch dates: September 6 – Emirates Team New Zealand (NZL), Boat 1 September 10 – American Magic (USA), Boat 1; actual launch date earlier but not released October 2 – Luna Rossa (ITA), Boat 1 October 4 – INEOS Team UK (GBR), Boat 1

Tags: 1983 , America's Cup , New York Yacht Club , Sports Illustrated , Tom Blackaller

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The america’s cup, the america’s cup—that go-fast modern sailing race where millions of dollars are spent on boats and gear, where the sailing crews are muscular tanned guys (and some women too), where national pride and rivalries run high, and where most of the rest of us don’t know a lot about it..

Schooner Yacht America , 1851, Currier & Ives.  Today’s America’s Cup boats are multi-million dollar enterprises and very high-tech.

The America’s Cup is the oldest trophy in sports. It was originally called the “Hundred Guineas Cup,” and it was renamed the “America’s Cup” (named for the winning boat, America, not for the country) after a famous race in 1851 when the New York Yacht Club accepted an invitation by Great Britain’s Lord Wilton, the Commodore of the Royal Yacht Squadron, to send over a boat to race against the British yachts. Think about this—1851 was 45 years before the first modern Olympic games were held; the America’s Cup precedes soccer’s World Cup, tennis’s Davis Cup, hockey’s Stanley Cup, and golf’s Walker Cup. The actual cup, or trophy, itself was one of three solid silver ewers (a fancy, vase-shaped pitcher) made in 1848 by the Royal Jeweller in England. The Royal Yacht Squadron acquired it in 1851 and offered it as a prize for a race around the Isle of Wight.

This was no small race. The course around the Isle of Wight was approximately 53 miles; throughout the race, the lead changed hands plenty of times, but at the end, America trounced her competitors—8 cutters and 6 schooners. With her victory came the cup, which was brought home to the New York Yacht Club. Since then, the Cup has been challenged 30 times and will have its 32nd competition in June 2007.

The winning boat’s home country (actually, its yacht club) gets to take the trophy home and keeps it until another competitor challenges and wins it from them. The New York Yacht Club held onto the Cup from 1851 to 1983 when the Australians upset the American team and took the Cup home to Australia. Since that time, the Cup has been won by New Zealand two times, the US three times, and most recently by a Swiss team.

In the early races, the boats were one- or two-masted, made of wood, and sailed to the race location across the oceans. There have been several evolutions of the rules and design of the boats in the last 150 years. Today, the race itself is a “match race” between just two boats, and the boats are very high-tech both in design and materials used to construct them. About 50 years ago, rules were changed so that the new smaller-class boats, the 12-meters, were not required to sail to the race locations across the oceans.

Today, competitors’ boats are transported across the oceans in larger ships and even on airplanes. The Cup has been challenged by the US, England, Australia, New Zealand, Italy, and Switzerland. In 2003, the Swiss team, sailing in Alinghi, brought the Cup back to Europe for the first time since that first race in 1851. Look for news of the 32nd America’s Cup in June 2007.

Did You Know?

Albert Einstein loved to sail and he sailed his whole life.

Renowned as one of the greatest mathematicians and physicists of all time, by most accounts Einstein was also a terrible sailor! Making a boat go in a particular direction is a very interesting bit of science, so you wouldn’t think he would have had any trouble with it—but you’d be wrong.

What’s the secret to sailing any place you want to go, no matter which way the wind is blowing?

Read more at Albert Einstein, Sailor 

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Home Topics History & Culture Looking back: The 1983 America’s Cup win

Looking back: The 1983 America’s Cup win

“I’LL TELL YOU what: any boss who sacks a worker for not turning up today is a bum.” Australians tend to remember these words fondly coming from the mouth of then prime minister Bob Hawke after Australia II won the America’s Cup yacht race, breaking a 132-year winning streak for the USA.

“In many ways, really, he gave people permission to celebrate,” explains John Bertrand, who skippered the Royal Perth Yacht Club vessel to its win on 26 September 1983 UTC (27 September AEST).

The America’s Cup is the oldest continuously awarded trophy in the world. It predates the American Civil War. Between 1851 and 1983, the New York Yacht Club (NYYC) had won every race and cockily bolted the Cup to a stand in their trophy room.

But in the 1970s, Aussie entrepreneur Alan Bond came up with a plan to unseat it from NYYC’s altar, and enlisted the help of self-taught boat designer and Novacastrian Ben Lexcen. It took four attempts at the Cup, but Lexcen’s winged keel model eventually steered the team into history.

Yacht racings psychological battles

In May 1983, when the Australian crew arrived at the start of the cup in Newport, Rhode Island, the eyes of the media locked on the skirt drawn tightly around the keel.

The boat’s design was a closely guarded secret, but its reputation preceded it. As the American and Australian teams faced off across the race marinas, rock songs blared from speakers on opposing yacht decks and the green and gold boxing kangaroo flag, commissioned by Bond for the race, flapped from the Aussie mast.

In the end, the Cup – won by the best of seven races over several weeks – was tied at three-all at the final start line. Australia II ‘s crew battled nerves after a false start, but after swapping the lead with the New York Yatch Club’s  Liberty three times, the wonders from Down Under won by 41 seconds. Rather than joy, John says his first feeling was “absolute relief that we got the job done”.

Wild celebrations as Australia finally wins the America’s Cup

“I remember seeing a cannon go off on one of the New York Yacht Club boats, but heard no sound,” John says. “The harbour was so packed with boats you could walk across it. Then Alan Bond ordered the boat to be lifted out of the water to show people the keel. People were jumping into the water to touch [it], I remember one guy in there in his dinner suit.”

The Cup hasn’t returned to New York. The next race, in 1987, was won by the San Diego Yacht Club; since then it has been won by international and US teams.

The September 2013 Cup featured an almost unrecognisable pair of carbon-fibre catamarans, with sails bigger than a Boeing 747’s wing.

An Australian James Spithill skippered the American boat that won this year, proving the Aussies can still hold their own in this now, very-expensive race.

Syndicates today pour hundreds of millions of dollars into boats and teams, a far cry from the $12 daily stipend the 1983 Australian crew received.

Source : Australian Geographic , Issue 116 (Sep/Oct, 2013)

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A RECOUNTING OF THE '83 AMERICA'S CUP SERIES THAT'S A SEA OF NEW INFO

• Author: Sarah Pileggi

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ORIGINAL LAYOUT

For three long months last summer, like a roller coaster climbing to the first height on its run, the 1983 America's Cup campaign rose slowly toward its September climax. Then, with the selection trials past and the first Cup race between Australia II and Liberty finally under way, events quickly gained momentum and roared off toward the historic seventh race. Then, abruptly, it was all over. The Australians had won, the press had left town and questions that had burned for want of answers one day became dead issues the next.

Fortunately, two veteran America's Cup reporters—Barbara Lloyd of America's Cup Report, an insiders' newsletter, and Michael Levitt of Nautical Quarterly magazine—stayed on the job. During the month that followed the Aussie victory, Lloyd and Levitt pursued their sources to their home ports, asking the questions required to conclude the story. The result of their work is UPSET: Australia Wins the America's Cup (Workman Publishing, $7.95), a 212-page paperback with a 16-page insert of color photographs by Dan Nerney that tells the sprawling tale of the 1983 America's Cup Challenge more completely than it has so far been told by anyone.

This book is a real page-turner. Its principals, now released from the secrecy that kept many of them gagged during the summer, are proud, angry, bitter, triumphant or resigned, but all speak with welcome candor. One of the most eloquent is John Marshall, who was the mainsail trimmer on Liberty. "We lost the America's Cup," Marshall told the authors, "for want of the right ideas in yacht design. Maybe for want of an environment that lets bright young designers focus on 12-meter design, make it their life's work, and come up with the right answers."

John Longley, Australia II's project manager and port winch grinder, provided a rare glimpse of life aboard the winning boat: "Australia II was very much a crew of 11 people who were all of equal standing...the whole crew fed information back [to skipper John Bertrand]. There is always this thing about how the crew should sail quietly. We didn't sail quietly. There was no idle chatter, but the whole time there were comments like 'The wind is coming....' Continual conversation, continual input the whole time."

And Vic Romagna, secretary of the America's Cup Committee of the New York Yacht Club, revealed that a meeting had been held the day before the Cup races began. There the members, convinced that Australia II was an ineligible boat—they believed it hadn't been wholly designed by an Australian citizen—but frustrated in their attempts to prove it, considered and then reluctantly dropped a proposal that the races be unilaterally canceled. It was a proposal that Romagna, for one, still thinks should have been adopted.

Grace under pressure was sorely lacking in Newport last summer, and Upset is, in part, a fascinating, detailed recounting of sorry behavior on the part of people who knew better. Two notable examples: the badly timed, clumsily phrased and still unsubstantiated charges of cheating hurled at the Australians, particularly at Ben Lexcen, the designer of Australia II, by the New York Yacht Club; and the feuding and deception that crippled the "team" effort of the Defender/Courageous syndicate.

But courage and clear thinking in the face of imminent defeat were also part of the story. Marshall's reconstruction, race by race, of the strategies and tactics employed by the Liberty afterguard, of which he was part, as it fought off the inevitable, is Upset's most dramatic reading. In describing the first, upwind, leg of the last race, as Australia II was taking the early lead, Marshall recalls, "We decided to see if we could get Bertrand to go into a conservative mode of reflexive tacking. We waited until we got a pretty good lift, and tacked. Sure enough, Bertrand followed us, despite the fact that what we were doing was wrong.... The next time we came together we had gained substantially. Bertrand made a mistake. He simply covered us without thinking."

We'll have to wait for a later book to learn more about what was going on in the cockpit of Australia II at the same time, but if the telling of that tale is as gripping as Upset, the wait will have been worthwhile.

THE CUP THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING

The considerable advantage that the New York Yacht Club had exerted on the Cup since it first defended with a fleet of yachts on home waters in New York against the railway heir James Ashbury in 1870 was, by the 1960’s, beginning to erode. A memorandum in 1962 had declared that if multiple challenges were received within 30 days of a successful defence that they would be ‘received simultaneously.’ The fact that the Australians and British came to a gentleman’s agreement in 1964 precluded multiple challengers from entering that year and in 1967, despite a non-starting entry from the French, two rather mis-matched Australian boats vied for the challenger slot and only one, Dame Pattie, arrived in Newport.

Furthermore, the NYYC, so long the iron-fisted holder of the Cup and writer of the rules, adopted a stance via a memorandum on January 19 th 1970 that many commentators believe signed the America’s Cup to an inevitable destination – away from the New York Yacht Club. The memorandum clarified the protocol going forward and paved the way for multiple challenges to be accepted. And in 1970, the Cup world was all about to change with the emergence of one of the most colourful men in America’s Cup history – the French manufacturing tycoon Baron Marcel Bich – who kick-started the French involvement in the America’s Cup.

As soon as the 1967 regatta was concluded with the successful defence by Intrepid, no less than four challenges were received by the New York Yacht Club. Australia would be back with a renewed Sir Frank Packer campaign, meanwhile Great Britain and Greece tentatively threw their hat in the ring. But the real eye-catcher was the French who had sat out the 1967 event due to a perceived lack of experience but were busy buying up the 12 Meters (Kurrewa V, Constellation and Sovereign), commissioning Britton Chance for a side-project and setting up camp in Hyeres.

Baron Bic spent a reported $4m, a simply huge sum in 1970, with a commitment to bridging the experience gap to the Americans, Australians and British. He hired in Eric Tabarly, the undoubted star of French sailing whilst also bringing in 5.5 Meter Champion Louis Noverraz, 505 champion Jean-Marie le Guillou and Poppy Delfour one of the country’s top skippers. In Britton Chance he commissioned the American on a one-off basis to build an out-of-class 12 Meter called ‘Chanceggar’ in order to give appointed naval architect André Mauric, the son of a Marsellais cabinetmaker who had designed the fastest Starboat in the world at the time, a baseline of data from a modern 12 Meter. It was money-no-object, as well as being an almost party-scene in Newport with the enigmatic Baron setting up house at one of the grandest mansions on Bellevue Avenue, but acted as a huge boost to France’s participation in the America’s Cup.

Whilst the French were getting immersed in their first campaign, the Australians under Sir Frank Packer had re-grouped and appointed Alan Payne as chief designer. Payne’s long experience by now in the Cup led him down an ever-more scientific path. Tank testing at Sydney University was now a far more technical approach with tools developed under the watchful eye of Payne whilst the introduction of wind tunnel testing on the rig produced some major advances that made the Americans, most notably Olin Stephens, sit up and take notice. Perhaps one of the biggest advances was discovered by Professor Peter Joubert, Payne’s good friend, who spent a day sailing with skipper Jim Hardy and realised that the greatest struggle for a skipper of a 12 Meter was visibility and being able to see both the genoa and the waves. This led to the implementation of the twin wheels that became ubiquitous on 12 Meters thereafter and was notably a feature on the American defender also in 1970. Gretel II as she was named, was everything that the original and much-modified Gretel was not. In the hands of Jim Hardy, this was an Australian challenge that had all the hallmarks of being one of the strongest challengers in Cup history.

The French, however, were the first hurdle for Gretel II to overcome. Baron Bich’s syndicate built their 12 Meter across the border from the Egger Boatyard in Lake Neuchatel in order to meet the strict build nationality restrictions of the Cup, with French labour to Meuric’s lines but at launch, ‘France’ as she was named attracted derisory comments from the American, Britton Chance, who said: “France is a copy of my boat (referring to ‘Chanceggar’ that he had designed privately for Bich) with mistakes; the only changes they made are wrong.”

In the early challenger trials though, France looked a match for Gretel II, and with Louis Noverraz on the helm in a thrilling opening race, led all the way around only to fall into a wind hole on the last leg. Inexplicably, Bich replaced Noverraz on a whim and installed Poppy Delfour for race two which was held in desperately light airs that would have suited Noverraz perfectly being that he had grown-up sailing on the Swiss lakes.

Delfour lost the start and was some 200 yards astern at the top mark but in the fluky conditions, aced the run to the leeward mark and the French were leading before again being overtaken upwind leg. But in a repeat of the first lap, on the final downwind, as the wind shut down completely, Delfour managed to get France ahead again before a shrewd sail change from spinnaker to ultra-light genoa on Gretel II pulled her away, ghost-like, into an unassailable lead. True to form, Delfour was replaced on the spot by Bich in favour of Novarraz, adding to the chaotic shoreside presence that marked France’s first foray into the America’s Cup.

The change had little effect as the third race of the challenger series was held in heavy breeze that topped out at 29 knots and well out of the design range of France, affording the Australians who excelled as sailors in the breeze, a comfortable victory. But more drama was to come from the French following race three with the indomitable Bich sacking both of his helmsmen and then, dressed in a white double-breasted suit, white shirt, yacht club tie and white gloves replete with a white topped yachting cap, stylishly took the helm for the final race with Eric Tabarly beside him as navigator.

Quite why the gallant Baron chose to helm remains a source of speculation with some suggesting that he chose to grasp the story and take the blame of defeat (if there were to be any) and deflect criticism back home from his appointed skippers. Whatever the truth of the matter, Bich’s turn on the helm was somewhat of a ‘Catastrophe!’ as quoted in the French journal La Monde, with France getting lost circling in the Newport fog whilst Gretel II sailed the course and sealed the Challenger slot. France would be back and lessons of a haphazard but ultimately fun campaign that is burnished in the memory of all who witnessed it, were hard learnt.

The New York Yacht Club meanwhile had high hopes pinned on its superstar designer Olin Stephens for a new yacht, ‘Valiant’, that was built to the order of vice commodore Robert McCullough. Britton Chance meanwhile was hired by William Strawbridge to update the all-conquering Intrepid from 1967 and both designers went to work tank-testing at the Stevens Institute in Hoboken. With so much confidence in Stephens, the expectation around Valiant was for another rocket-ship that would move the dial on yacht design once again.

Unfortunately, those hopes were mis-placed. Valiant was a difficult boat to steer and her trail wash was considerable. Stephens later lamented that the small-scale test runs in the tank threw up inconsistent data and highlighted, amongst other things, the design conclusions of the small-scale modelling that led to Charles Morgan’s beautifully adapted but ultimately slow ‘Heritage’ – one of the prettiest 12 Meters ever built. Chance however, had put together a programme with Bill Ficker as helmsman of Intrepid that was un-relentingly precise in its execution with every detail and every modification carefully considered, noted and assessed.

The American trials were a four-way affair with Valiant, Intrepid and Heritage joined by the much-upgraded Weatherly of 1958 with George Hinman on the wheel. In early trials, Valiant and Intrepid shared wins but easily dispatched Heritage. By the end of the first series Valiant was 5-3 up against Intrepid but the New York Yacht Club harboured grave doubts about Valiant’s straight-line speed and headed into the observation trials in July 1970 eyeing the possibility that Intrepid could be, once again, the yacht to defend the America’s Cup.

The NYYC Cruise regatta did little to enhance Valiant’s case after a race where she struggled to beat Heritage and a further race against Intrepid that saw her unable to point anywhere near as high off the line and suffered through manoeuvres. Immediately after the Annual Cruise, all the boats were sent for upgrades – some more dramatic than others with Heritage undergoing reconstructive surgery on her mast, keel and rudder whilst Weatherly tacked on a new mainsail. Intrepid, under the design of Britton Chance, opted to upgrade with wide fairing strips that led from the maximum beam mark all the way back to the rudder to lengthen the waterline.

When racing recommenced, it was what proved to be, a false dawn for Valiant who won the first race by a margin of 42 seconds against Intrepid and then went on to win races against Weatherly and Heritage. Intrepid dispatched the elder boats too in quick succession and it came down to a straight fight between Intrepid and Valiant for the defence slot. Bill Ficker aced the next six races, steering Intrepid to wins of greater and greater margins supported by an afterguard consisting of Steve Van Dyck as tactician and Peter Wilson as navigator who gelled in a variety of conditions and left the New York Yacht Club with no other choice. The 1970 America’s Cup Match would be Intrepid versus the hard-charging Gretel II and Newport was alive to the contest.

The racing certainly didn’t disappoint. Right from the first starting gun, the now established match-racing tactics of circling and trailing were much in evidence. Jim Hardy was fired up for the contest and the first protest flag of the series flew as the two boats bore away on opposite tacks in close quarter. Hardy seized the initiative and trailed hard on the stern of Intrepid and with 30 seconds to go, tacked off on a mis-timed run into the line. Bill Ficker held course on a perfect line and at the gun, Intrepid was at full speed.

It was a lead that she would never relinquish despite the race turning into something of a farce as it proceeded. First, Gretel II wrapped her kite around the forestay before snapping her spinnaker pole on the first hoist before being almost swamped by the wake of the spectator fleet following Intrepid. As the wash trundled down the deck, it flushed oil from the winches and in a dramatic moment, Paul Salmon the foredeck boss, was washed overboard meaning a return to collect him. It took two attempts to get him back onboard. Further calamity struck the Australians on the final leg as a US Destroyer and a Coast Guard crossed her path before the spectator fleet broke the imaginary boundary and entered the racecourse, causing the chop to increase severely. Gretel II finished the race some 5 minutes and 52 seconds astern of Intrepid with both syndicates complaining colourfully to the NYYC Committee Chairman Dev Barker. The Coast Guard was called in for a meeting and promised to do better. They held true to their word for the rest of the series.

Shoreside though, a number of protests were heard relating to the pre-start hunting that Jim Hardy had inflicted on Bill Ficker with many observers believing that the Australians had a very strong case being on starboard and with rights. However, the protest committee were having none of it and as Jim Hardy said afterwards: “We left the protest meeting like little boys who have just been lectured by their schoolmaster.” Two protests were summarily dismissed. The score was 1-0 to Intrepid. 

Immediately after the race, Hardy called a meeting with an idea to install Martin Visser as the starting helmsman due to the fact that he had shown more aggressive tactics at close quarters in trial races. Sir Frank Packer and skipper Bill Fesq agreed, and Hardy would resume the helm position once clear of the line. It was a shrewd move by Hardy and in the second race, Visser stuck Gretel II expertly ahead and to leeward on the line in a classic match-race start that caused Intrepid to quickly tack away.

By the top mark, the Australians were in a commanding lead of almost two minutes but after two poor reaching legs found themselves astern at the leeward mark as mild fog crept across the racecourse. Now came a bizarre call from the NYYC Committee that was, it was later found, based on suspicion of outside assistance being accepted by the Australians. The Americans had noted several races in the challenger selection series against France where Gretel II seemed to uncannily be able to position themselves perfectly around the racecourse in fog and suspected that they were receiving course plots externally. The truth is that Bill Fesq had innovatively installed a doubled electronic system, set at right angles, from the UK nautical electronics firm Brookes & Gatehouse that gave an accurate dead-reckoning position, but the suspicion was intense amongst the Americans and the race was dramatically abandoned on the second upwind leg and the suspicions raged for years, decades even, afterwards.

With an increasingly fraught backdrop enveloping the regatta of 1970, the re-run race two was to see a further souring of relations between the Australians and the Americans, centred around a pre-start foul that took aerial photographic evidence to eventually decide. However even before the starting sequence had begun, drama occurred on Intrepid as Steve Van Dyck, the American navigator was bitten by a ‘Yellow Jacket’ wasp and suffered a severe reaction so bad that he had to be taken to a tender and then airlifted by the US Coast Guard to hospital.

With the crew drama resolved, in light airs, and after considerable circling, both boats were coming in on the approaches to the start-line with Gretel II set up for a committee boat start and Intrepid seemingly trapped to windward. In the final seconds, Gretel II sought to shut out the Americans aggressively. However, the timing of Visser was arguably slightly adrift and in the desperately light airs, he struggled to get Gretel II’s momentum through the water enough to make the block. Bill Ficker, Intrepid’s helm spotted the gap emerging before him and with more speed effectively barged in at the committee boat only for Gretel II to respond with a slow luff that saw the two boats come together with the Australian bow glancing Intrepid just behind the shroud plate a few seconds after the starting gun had fired.

What followed was a fascinating light air duel whilst both boats carried protest flags. A 24-tack tacking duel ensued up the first windward leg with Intrepid emerging ahead at the top mark but good sailing downwind by David Forbes who assumed the helm for the offwind legs from Jim Hardy saw the gap close. On the next windward leg, with Hardy back on the helm, Gretel II closed again before handing back to Forbes to work his magic downwind. With a smaller spinnaker set perfectly, Gretel II passed Intrepid and led at the final leeward mark by over 100 yards. Hardy brought Gretel II home after a short tacking duel to score what looked like a fabulous win by 1 minute and 7 seconds, but the race was set to be decided in the protest room.

For all the world, the Australians felt that they had every chance of success in the protest room and still to this day, many of the famous sailors who graced that campaign – including John Bertrand who was the jib trimmer of Gretel II and who went on to win the America’s Cup in 1983 – felt that Intrepid had barged in and had no rights. The protest committee however, received first a detailed explanation from Bill Ficker, an architect by profession, who presented not only precise prose outlining the American viewpoint but explicit and detailed drawings of the situation. Ficker’s presentation was ultimately amplified by the emergence of photographic evidence in the form of a series of stills that even showed the smoke emanating from the starting canon and the protest committee’s decision was swayed.

In effect what it boiled down to was an interpretation of when Gretel II was obliged to give room to Intrepid. Ficker argued that Rule 42.1 (e) of “not sailing past close-hauled after the starting gun and before the line,” had been violated by the Australians and after much deliberation, and with all the evidence presented, the committee agreed. It was 2-0 to the Americans and Sir Frank Packer was incandescent, calling for an immediate re-opening of the case and re-instatement of Gretel II’s win. It fell on deaf ears and a short response was issued by Devereux Barker III, Chairman of the Protest Committee, citing no new evidence being presented and therefore no reason to re-open the case.

The Australians remained furious at the decision but recognising that they not only had to win against a yacht but also against a hometown protest committee (despite the presence on the committee of a non NYYC member in Gregg Bemis), Jim Hardy re-assumed the helm for race three to quieten down the aggressive starting practices of Visser. It proved to be a mistake as Ficker seized the advantage in the pre-start and then pushed Gretel II over the line early. Whilst both boats were over, Intrepid was in a better position to duck away and come back onto the wind with even more speed. With Hardy having to duck right away, Intrepid was off to the races and in a choppy sea was never headed but never really extended. The final delta proved to be almost the time that the Australians had lost at the start – 1 minute and 18 seconds. It was 3-0 to the Americans and match point.

What race three had shown however, was that Gretel II was a match for Intrepid in anything under the mid-range conditions and the Australians, with an afterguard of stellar sailors, was a match for the Americans. Newport denizens and seasoned American commentators were still uncomfortable about the destiny of the America’s Cup and their worst fears were confirmed in race four.

On an atypical Newport day with the wind clocking and backing through a 15-degree arc, Bill Ficker took the decision to try and close out the regatta through a run-and-hide strategy, refusing to engage with the Australians and only mildly responding to a tacking duel once ahead. The American skippers’ tactic though was found out rather cruelly on the final leg, in a rapidly dying breeze, and with a lead of over a minute as a 90-degree shift filtered across the course, favouring the Australians who had spent the race closing the gap down to just 100 yards and who now seized the lead for a fraught final leg to the committee boat finish line. Despite rolling the dice with a clever positional move, the shift never came back for Intrepid, and the Americans were beaten by 1 minute and 2 seconds. It was Sir Frank Packer’s second clean victory in the America’s Cup and a cause for much celebration in Newport that night.

The repercussions though of the race two disqualification sat uneasily on Jim Hardy’s mind and following consultation with the likes of the designer Bruce Kirby and the established authority on yacht racing rules, Gerald Sambrooke-Sturgess in London, Hardy convinced Sir Frank Packer to try and re-open the case on appeal. It was shut down curtly by the New York Yacht Club once again and the boats emerged on the 28 th September 1970 for what would prove to be a thrilling final race of the series.

Race five was held in a shifting, light northerly airflow, conditions well-suited to the Australian design of Alan Payne that was regarded as a faster boat in the lower ranges. Jim Hardy won the start convincingly and, with pace, quickly stretched into a commanding lead of some 200 yards. With no other option, Intrepid had to try and force an error and instigated a tacking duel with Bill Ficker in phase with the shifts to such a degree that he reeled the Australians back at an alarming pace. In the final approaches to the top mark, the Americans seized the lead, powering over the top of Gretel II as she attempted a lee-bow position to leeward and perfectly on the layline. It was the slam-dunk move that forced the Australians to put in a short two-tacks to get round the mark and handed Intrepid a 150-yard lead down the two reaches.

The second upwind leg was a thriller however, with a big windshift that briefly put the Australians ahead before abating and coming back to Intrepid. The gap had narrowed to just 100 yards by the second windward mark and was further narrowed down the final run with Gretel II closing to within 30 yards but as the boats came into the last leeward mark, a persistent windshift filtered across the Newport racecourse turning the beat to the finish into a fetch and Intrepid maintained station to record a 4-1 series victory.

Australia were left smarting about ‘what could have been’ and in Gretel II they knew that they had the boat to beat the Americans in typical Newport conditions. Intrepid was victorious due to its remarkable skipper in Bill Ficker, enhanced by a crew that was drilled to military standards, and supported by key decisions going their way.

From the outside it was an easy, and almost certainly false, suggestion to make that the New York Yacht Club was in some way biased but Sir Frank Packer left a memorable quote that stayed long after the 1970 series: “Protesting to the New York Yacht Club is like complaining to your mother-in-law about your wife.”

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AMERICA'S CUP

AMERICA'S CUP; Challengers and Defenders Are Ready to Sail

By Barbara Lloyd

• Sept. 28, 1986

The following descriptions of America's Cup contenders were prepared and written by Barbara Lloyd. UNITED STATES Syndicate: The America II Challenge Boat: America II Sponsor: New York Yacht Club Skipper: John Kolius Budget: $15 million Headquarters: Newport, R.I.

If grades meant anything in the America's Cup, the America II camp would get an A for effort. The team was the first to build a new boat for the 1986-87 races, and the first to begin practice sailing in Australian waters, two years ago. The New York Yacht Club's defeat in 1983 marked the end of a 132-year winning streak for the club. The group's budget is among the largest, and with three new boats and more than 50 of its personnel in Australia, the syndicate has a strong presence. New York and 34 affiliated clubs were called upon in the fund-raising effort. The syndicate struck gold in the corporate world, with several contributions of $1 million each. But money isn't everything, as was shown last February when America II placed third - behind the Australian team - in the 12-Meter World Championship, a kind of dress rehearsal for the Cup trials.

Syndicate: Sail America Boat: Stars & Stripes Sponsor: San Diego Yacht Club Skipper: Dennis Conner Budget: $15 million Headquarters: San Diego, Calif.

No one has more riding on this challenge than the man who lost the America's Cup: Dennis Conner of San Diego. He has fashioned a syndicate to his personal style. Three of America's top naval architects have created a fleet of four new 12-Meters named Stars & Stripes. In addition to engineers from Grumman Aerospace and the Boeing Company, Conner has enlisted the expertise of Scientific Applications International Corporation, a high-technology contractor. By using Liberty, the boat he skippered in 1983, as a basis for comparison, the syndicate was able to gauge whether the new boats were faster. Apparently they are. The syndicate announced last month that Liberty was for sale for $300,000. The 1985 and 1987 versions of Stars & Stripes are in Perth for the elimination trial races, and Conner recently announced that Stars and Stripes '87 would be used in competition. Conner is determined not to be beaten by a faster boat, as he was in 1983 when the 12-Meter Australia II beat Liberty. e Syndicate: Eagle Challenge Boat: Eagle Sponsor: rrNewport Harbor Yacht Club Skipper: Rod Davis Budget: $8.5 million Headquarters: Newport Beach, Calif.

Larger-than-life graphics of an eagle in flight sprawl across the hull of Eagle Challenge. The syndicate has decided against hiding the boat's winged keel, as other groups are doing. Johan Valentijn, the designer of Eagle, insists that every boat will have winged appendages in Perth, and that there is no point in hiding them. Eagle is his fifth America's Cup contender; his last was Liberty. While the Dutch-born designer maintains artistic license, he has not shut the door on technology. Arvel Gentry, an aerospace scientist at Boeing in Seattle, volunteered his time to help Valentijn design the wings. The group has found fund-raising arduous. Syndicate: Heart of America Boat: Heart of America Sponsor: Chicago Yacht Club Skipper: Buddy Melges Budget: $7 million Headquarters: Chicago

Chicago is new to this game. The city had to go to the State Supreme Court of New York, where the America's Cup deed of gift was filed in 1857, to ask for permission to race. Rules in the deed say that a challenging yacht club must hold its annual regatta on the sea, or an arm of the sea. The Chicago Yacht Club argued that the St. Lawrence Seaway and the Great Lakes constituted an arm of the sea, and the court agreed. The Midwest has rallied behind its skipper, Buddy Melges. In the days before the syndicate raised any of the $5 million it has to date, Melges swore he would get to Fremantle, even if it meant that his team had to pitch tents next to the fancy condominiums of wealthier syndicates. Chicago will be relying on the wizardry of Melges, but the team does have a place to live in Perth - and it's a condominium. Syndicate: St. Francis Golden Gate Boat: USA Sponsor: St. Francis Yacht Club Skipper: Tom Blackaller Budget: $10 million Headquarters: San Francisco

San Francisco city officials seem convinced that the America's Cup series belongs in that city. The bay beneath the Golden Gate Bridge might be a natural staging area for spectators to watch future Cup races. The St. Francis Yacht Club's 1,300 regular members agreed to an additional assessment of $360 each to defray syndicate expenses. Tom Blackaller, Golden Gate's skipper, tends to boast about San Francisco as much as he touts his crew. More than $7 million has been raised. The syndicate has built two new boats: The first was labeled an evolutionary design, or E1, and the second, a revolutionary boat, R1. R1 has proved to be the faster of the two. It was shipped to Australia with nearly as much secrecy as the Australians insisted upon in 1983. More San Francisco's high-tech approach may have turned out a boat that is more radical than most. Syndicate: Courageous Challenge Boat: Courageous IV Sponsor: Yale Corinthian Yacht Club Skipper: David Vietor Budget: $11.2 million Headquarters: White Plains, N.Y.

The Courageous Challenge was one of the early risers in the 1986-87 campaign, but it might be one of the first to fall. The syndicate started out by modifying Courageous, the boat that won the America's Cup races in 1974 and 1977, and was a serious contender in 1980. Leonard Greene, the founder of the syndicate, is an inventor with more than 60 patents to his name and an expert in aerospace engineering. But his America's Cup syndicate isn't as successful. Legal battles with its initial backer have drained the syndicate of both its money and energy. CANADA Syndicate: Canada's Challenge for America's Cup Boat: Canada II Sponsor: Royal Nova Scotia Yacht Squadron Skipper: Terry Neilson Budget: $13 million Headquarters: Toronto

A group from Halifax, Nova Scotia, built two new 12-Meters under the True North name. A group from Vancouver, British Columbia, chose to modify an old boat, Canada I, designed by Bruce Kirby, a Canadian living in Rowayton, Conn. Finances eventually gave way, and a pact was made: The fastest boat would carry the Canadian banner to Perth. Kirby won. New funding was found, and Canada II stands ready in Fremantle. Kirby has given Canada II a winged keel, and the boat has done well. BRITAIN Syndicate: The British America's Cup Challenge Boat: Crusader Sponsor: Royal Thames Yacht Club Skipper: Harold Cudmore Budget: $6.8 million Headquarters: London

Diana, Princess of Wales, broke a champagne bottle over the bow of Crusader, the first of the British team's two new boats. The second came out of the shed about six months later. The first model represents the syndicate's conservative design and is a refinement of two previous British 12-Meters created by Ian Howlett. The second Crusader is something else. Designed by a British boat model maker, David Hollom, it is unusually long for a 12-Meter. While most other 12's are close to 70 feet, his is about 75. Its hull is extremely full below the waterline, a feature that quickly prompted the nickname Hippo. The team formed a public company to finance the campaign. Two weeks ago, Guiness announced that it will back the group with a $1.6 million sponsorship package to promote its White Horse Scotch Whiskey. With that, the boat's name was changed to White Crusader. FRANCE Syndicate: Challenge KIS France Boat: French Kiss Sponsor: Societe Des Regates Rochelaises Skipper: Marc Pajot Budget: $10 million Headquarters: La Rochelle

The French America's Cup team is young and brash. The name French Kiss comes from the team's sponsor, KIS France, the international photo development firm. The name is a new twist for a regatta in which most boat names are larger than life - Freedom, Defender, Liberty - but whether it will stand up to the scrutiny of the racing rules remains to be seen. Boats may not be named after their sponsor. Marc Pajot, the skipper, is a sports hero in France, an offshore multihull sailor who is equally at ease racing a monohull inshore. French Kiss proved to be fast during skirmishes in Fremantle last winter, and has been given a new keel. The camp also may turn up with extraordinary sails. The same material that was designed by the French for a space research balloon is being used in its mainsail. Syndicate: French Challenge for the America's Cup Boat: Challenge France Sponsor: Societe Nautique de Marseille Skipper: Yves Pajot Budget: $6 million Headquarters: Marseille

Yves Pajot, Marc's brother, for is the skipper of Challenge France, whose syndicate has been in and out of bankruptcy court. By July, the new boat still wasn't finished, and it wasn't until mid-August that the team knew whether it was going to Australia. But finally, new sponsorship revitalized the group. The Challenge France was rushed aboard a cargo vessel bound for Australia. The hull was built by Aerospatiale, a leading French aircraft manufacturer. And the finished boat reportedly carries sophisticated computer equipment. But the group has only 30 people in Fremantle to tend to the boat, a skeleton crew. ITALY Syndicate: Consorzio Azzurra Boat: Azzurra Sponsor: Yacht Club Costa Smeralda Skipper: Mauro Pellaschier Budget: $10.7 million Headquarters: Milan

The Azzurra team entered its first America's Cup competition in 1983. At the time, crew members were inexperienced. But hard work and determination found them a solid niche among challengers. This time, with 13 challengers instead of seven, the job might be harder. The syndicate coffer is rich enough, and its sponsor - the Yacht Club Costa Smeralda in Sardinia - is a base for the Aga Khan, whose interest in sports runs from race horses to luxury yachts. The hiring and dismissal of key crew members has kept the camp in a perpetual state of flux. But a certain amount of pride went into the last Italian Cup effort, and leading commercial interests hope to revive that memory. Two new 12-Meters have been designed by Andreas Valicelli, the same naval architect who created the 1983 boat. Others pressed for a third boat, one that was already on the drawing board of the Sciomachen design firm from Bologna. Now the syndicate has to choose one. Syndicate: Consorzio Italia Boat: Italia Sponsor: Yacht Club Italiano Skipper: Aldo Migliaccio Budget: $8.6 million Headquarters: Milan

The Italia syndicate entered the world of America's Cup in style. It was in 1984, and the place was the Azzurra compound at Porto Cervo, Sardinia. The Aga Khan was staging the first 12-Meter world championship, and eight international crews raced, including his own. The Italia crewmen showed up resplendent in blue and yellow Gucci shoes, jackets, shirts, vests and shorts. Few took them seriously at first, but Italia won that regatta - albeit with help in the cockpit from the United States Olympic champion, Rod Davis - and there has been no stopping them since. The syndicate is fueled by 12 corporate sponsors, and the group has built two new boats. It appears that Italia II will be its choice. Like their Azzurra counterparts, there has been internal strife. And the syndicate had the misfortune last June of watching Italia II dropped from a crane within a few days of its launching. The boat was damaged severely, but was rebuilt. NEW ZEALAND Syndicate: Cup Challenge Ltd. Boat: New Zealand Sponsor: Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron Skipper: Chris Dickson Budget: $8 million Headquarters: Auckland

A song about sailing has reached the top of the record charts in New Zealand. Titled ''Sailing Away,'' it is about New Zealand's quest for the America's Cup. New Zealanders have a mania for yachting events anyway, but few other challengers have come so far in so little time. It wasn't until mid-1985 that the initial syndicate backing was in place from Michael Fay, a leading New Zealand merchant banker. Since then, the government-supported Bank of New Zealand has become a major sponsor. The syndicate has been bold in its management decisions. It put together a huge team, told members not to worry about expenses, and set them to work around the clock. Instead of building an aluminum 12-Meter, as others have done, they built three fiberglass boats. The first two were completed within days of the 12-Meter World Championship in Australia last winter. One placed second, ahead of America II and Australia II. AUSTRALIA

The Australian boats are sponsored by the Royal Perth Yacht Club, the defending club. Syndicate: America's Cup Defence 1987 Ltd. Boat: Australia III or IV Skipper: Colin Beashel Budget: $11 million Headquarters: Perth The man whose team won the Cup in 1983 is faced now with trying to defend it. Alan Bond, an Australian multimillionaire, spent as much as $16 million and a decade to win yachting's oldest trophy. Winning was a triumph, but apparently not enough. The 1987 defense effort is costing twice the 1983 price. Bond is not footing the bill himself. A large fund-raising network has sprung up across Australia. The money is going into Bond's two-boat effort. But he is up against stiff competition from his countrymen, whom he must beat to win the right to be named defender. Syndicate: Taskforce '87 Defence Boat: Kookaburra Skipper: Iain Murray Budget: $9.8 million Headquarters: Perth

Kookaburra is an Australian bird. In the yacht racing world, it has also come to mean a powerful 12-Meter that could upset Bond. It is ''an aggressive, determined bird, quite capable of eliminating any opposition,'' said Kevin Parry, the wealthy Australian businessman who is funding the syndicate. The syndicate has launched three new 12-Meters over the last two years. The Bond camp chides Parry and his team for being overly aggressive. But Kookaburra is seen as a possible stumbling block to the defense. Syndicate: South Australian Boat: South Australia Skippers: Phil Thompson and John Savage Budget: $4.3 million Headquarters: Adelaide

The team from Adelaide has surfaced as the country cousin of Bond's syndicate. Sir James Hardy, an Australian winemaker who is also one of Australia's most respected yachtsmen, has been the catalyst. The city is located on the Indian Ocean in Australia's central Outback. Hardy has the credentials for America's Cup sailing, but his team hasn't had the financial backing that Bond has. Bond and Hardy share a yacht designer, Ben Lexcen. The South Australia boat is reportedly similar in shape to Bond's new Australia III. But the likeness ends there. Hardy hasn't as experienced a crew, nor the same resources at his disposal. Syndicate: Eastern Australia America's Cup Defense Boat: Steak'N Kidney Skipper: Gary Sheard Budget: $2.4 million Headquarters: Sydney

The name for Australia's East Coast boat was not what the yachting establishment in Sydney might have hoped. The name Steak 'N Kidney was devised to appeal to the masses in a last-minute appeal for money. There is a rough slang to the phrase; when spoken fast, the name sounds like Sydney, the eastern capital. Sid Fischer, a Sydney businessman, formed the syndicate on the foundation of his ill-fated 1983 America's Cup campaign. The fact that the boat was tank-tested in the Netherlands, where Australia II was developed in 1983, is its best advantage.

Bob Hawke, Alan Bond and Ben Lexcen were key players in Australia II's extraordinary 1983 America's Cup victory

It was the David and Goliath story that put Australia on the world sailing map, an extraordinary feat that ended the longest winning streak in any sport, anywhere in the world.

And with a rich list of characters including a larrikin prime minister, a millionaire businessman whose dodgy business dealings funded the enterprise, and a genius inventor whose top-secret keel design was to revolutionise the yachting world, the story of how Australia snatched the famed America's Cup from the New York Yacht Club (NYYC) in 1983 is the stuff of legend.

In the storied 132-year history of the cup, no challenger had come close to threatening the dominance of the well-to-do NYYC, which had held the trophy since winning a sailing race around the Isle of Wight in the UK in 1851.

Indeed, some NYYC members seemed to regard the prestigious trophy as the club's unassailable birthright, over which it would have permanent custody.

Alan Bond, however, had other ideas.

The national hero who became a villain

Yet to be unmasked as a corporate villain who swindled millions from investors and taxpayers, Bond in 1983 was well on the way to becoming the national treasure the America's Cup would turn him into, albeit temporarily.

Back then he was the rags-to-riches success story that so many Australians aspired to be, the humble sign writer turned millionaire property developer who had migrated from the UK in 1950 without a penny to his name.

Over the subsequent decades, his burgeoning business empire would go on to encompass land developments, breweries, television stations, diamonds, oil, gold, an entire English village, a Gold Coast university and even world-famous Impressionist paintings, to name just a few of his colourful enterprises.

Bond's passion for making money was matched by his skill at self-promotion, and in the America's Cup he sensed an opportunity to make a name for himself on the world stage.

Journalist Paul Barry's biography, The Rise and Fall of Alan Bond, quotes him telling a journalist: "Anyone who considers racing for the America's Cup isn't a business proposition, is a bloody fool."

If increasing his profile and leveraging opportunity was the aim, Bond succeeded wildly.

By 1983 he'd already financed three America's Cup challenges, earning an Australian of the Year award for his efforts in 1978.

And his perseverance was to pay even bigger dividends on the fourth attempt when Australia II crossed the finish line on September 26, 1983, to snatch the unlikeliest of victories from the jaws of defeat, making Bond a national hero and giving him the sort of wall-to-wall publicity even he could have scarcely dreamed of.

The top-secret advantage

Like Bond, boat designer Ben Lexcen was a self-made man with little formal education.

After designing three previous boats for America's Cup challenges, only one of which managed to win a single race, Lexcen knew a radical new approach would be needed to win the cup.

Ever the gambler, Bond was prepared to back his man.

Lexcen was sent to a sailing design institute in the Netherlands, reportedly with a blank cheque from Bond, to work on a new design.

What emerged from months of testing has gone down in the annals of sailing history.

Lexcen had developed a radical new 'winged' keel, like nothing the sailing world had ever seen before which was to herald a revolution in yacht design.

The winged keel made Lexcen's new boat, Australia II , much faster and more manoeuvrable – and importantly, the Australians' secret weapon also became a psychological weapon.

The team went to great lengths to hide it from the outside world and the Americans in particular, shrouding the keel in tarpaulins as it was transported and hiring armed guards around the clock to protect it from prying eyes.

The unlikely victory

With six unsuccessful challenges behind it, beginning in 1962 with media mogul Frank Packer's yacht Gretel, Australia was thought to have little chance of winning the imposing sterling silver trophy from the iron grip of the US.

But when Australia II  began to dominate the trial races to choose a contender for the 1983 America's Cup, the scions of the NYYC were determined to do everything in their power to win.

First, they tried to buy the keel design from the Netherlands testing facility where it was developed, and when that failed, they repeatedly tried to claim the keel violated the rules of the race, though it had been earlier deemed allowable. That tactic also failed.

Nonetheless, the 1983 competition had begun in emphatic style for the US team on their boat Liberty, which easily defeated the Australians in the first two races, helped by equipment failure on Australia II .

Then unexpectedly, the Australian boat won the third race of the series, only to lose the fourth, leaving the Americans in a commanding position at 3-1 in the best-of-seven series.

But when the Australians snatched victory in the fifth, then the sixth race, sailing fever engulfed the nation and suddenly everyone wanted to be a part of it.

It was the first time in 132 years the tournament had even run to a seventh race – usually the Americans won it convincingly in just four – and tensions ran high.

The defining moment came in the middle of the night Australian time.

After starting the race well behind Liberty, Australia II surged forward in the last leg of the nail-bitingly close final to cross the finish line ahead by a convincing 41 seconds.

Improbably, the cup was Australia's.

The nation's pride

Forty years on, it's almost impossible to convey the sheer joy and pride that washed over Australia in the wake of the victory.

Millions had tuned in overnight to watch the coverage on television, and apart from the joyous moment Australia II sailed across the finish line, were additionally treated to images of an ecstatic prime minister, who had rushed to Royal Perth Yacht Club for the celebrations.

Dressed in an unforgettable jacket emblazoned with the word Australia and doused in champagne, an almost hysterically excited Hawke famously declared: "Any boss who sacks anyone today for not turning up is a bum".

Waking up bleary-eyed the next day, it was as if the country had taken leave of its senses.

Boxing kangaroo flags decorated shops and houses (a windfall for Bond who owned the image), those that had taken Hawke's advice to take the day off flocked to pubs and clubs to celebrate, and television and talkback radio was giddy with the excitement of it all.

The anthem of the Australia II team, Men at Work's Down Under , was played incessantly, and the nation revelled in the glory.

It was more than just a sporting contest. Somehow this relatively obscure tournament held on the other side of the world had united the country in joy and excitement.

Australia loves an underdog and the country's larrikin spirit, embodied in its prime minister, was elevated to new heights by the minnow yachting syndicate from an obscure sailing club in Perth trouncing the might of the US establishment.

The country erupted in a celebration that was to last weeks, the culmination of which was the triumphant return of the boat and its crew to Australia a month after their stunning victory.

Perth's moment of glory

Home city Perth threw a huge parade through the city and a day-long concert on the city's foreshore featuring the crème de la creme of the 1983 entertainment scene, including Peter Allen and the now disgraced Rolf Harris. 

More than 200,000 people are estimated to have turned out that day – nearly a quarter of the city's population – to cheer on the conquering heroes and get a glimpse of the famed trophy.

Freelance photographer Roger Garwood remembers it well, and his anecdote about that time encapsulates the heightened emotions many felt.

Inundated with requests from editors around the world for an image of the cup itself, Mr Garwood phoned Royal Perth Yacht Club to ask if he could photograph it, and was surprised to be told the club would deliver it to his home in Fremantle.

"The cup had arrived in a Holden car driven by a security guard," he said.

"It was in a Perspex case, sitting on the front passenger seat and strapped in place by the seat belt.

"We carefully unloaded it and carried it down the hallway to the living room where it was taken from its case.

"Thus [my home] was the first place the cup visited in Fremantle and arguably the first private home in Australia."

Without telling him what was in store, Mr Garwood urged his parents — mother Ethel and his sailing mad father Oliver — to come over quickly.

"They had no clue and walked into the living room where the old boy, now 82, was totally dumbstruck," Mr Garwood recalled.

"He stood for a few seconds staring at the cup, not quite understanding how this moment had come about.

"Then he burst into tears."

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Date that lives in infamy

Looking back at the loss of the america's cup in newport.

EDITOR'S NOTE: The following is an updated version of an article that appeared in the Daily News on Sept. 26, 2013.

NEWPORT — As the wind died down and Australia II passed Liberty on the final leg in the decisive race of the 1983 America’s Cup competition, skipper Dennis Conner uttered the now-famous words: “Does anyone here have any ideas?”

Truth is, Conner — widely blamed for bringing an end to the New York Yacht Club’s 132-year reign as the holder of the Auld Mug — was a man with brilliant ideas. He was at the top of his game, and it would take a better boat, which Australia II was, to beat him.

In hindsight, it's easy to second-guess some of the decisions Conner made in Race 7, which was sailed off Newport on this day 35 years ago. But there might not have been a seventh race had it not been for some of the moves he made in the earlier races of the series.

“That regatta could have easily been 4-0 with Australia winning, and the only thing that kept the U.S. going was the resolve and skill of Dennis Conner,” said Gary Jobson, tactician on the 1977 America’s Cup defender Courageous and sailing analyst for NBC Sports.

Liberty's loss brought an end to the longest winning streak in international sport and forced the New York Yacht Club to hand over the Auld Mug to a nation that had spent more than 20 years trying to capture it. It ended a summer of intrigue, controversy, and physical and psychological warfare. Those races in 1983 won’t be forgotten any time soon. They certified Australia’s credentials as a true sailing nation, put the America’s Cup on the worldwide stage and, for Newport, closed a long chapter in the event’s history.

“I’m constantly amazed at the amount of people who come up to me to tell me what they were doing when we crossed the line 30 years ago,” Australia II skipper John Bertrand said during an interview on an Australian radio station in 2013. “It clearly affected so many people’s lives.”

THE AUSTRALIANS first sent a boat to Newport in 1962, with skipper Jock Sturrock aboard Gretel, in an attempt to wrest sailing’s holy grail from the New York Yacht Club, which had it bolted down at its West 44th Street home in Manhattan.

Skipper Emil “Bus” Mosbacher Jr. steered Weatherly to a 4-1 victory over Gretel, and the Australians tasted defeat again in the Cup finals in 1967, 1970, 1974, 1977 and 1980. Businessman Alan Bond suffered that hurt in his heart, and more painfully, in his wallet. He backed the country’s challenger in 1974, 1977 and 1980, winning a total of just one race in those three series.

“People would say, ‘You’re crazy. There’s no way anyone is going to beat the United States of America,’” Bertrand said. “But the resiliency of someone like Bond was required.”

After the loss in 1980, Bond had seen enough. He and boat designer Ben Lexcen realized they needed to beat the Americans through technology in order to beat them on the water. The result was a revolutionary design that changed sailing’s landscape forever: the winged keel.

The keel, with most of the weight at the bottom to give the boat more stability and better maneuverability, was the subject of great contention that summer. The New York Yacht Club, likely much to its regret today, tried to prove the keel was illegal and attempted to get the Australian syndicate removed from the competition.

That proved fruitless, though, thanks to the endorsement of perhaps the most famous boat designer in the competition’s history.

“Olin Stephens stood up and said, ‘I think it’s a legal keel,’” Jobson said. “When he said that, that was the end of the argument.”

AUSTRALIA II DOMINATED the challenger trials that summer, winning 48 of the 54 races. The Australians kept their winged keel shrouded in secrecy, hidden behind a skirt in the boat yard, taunting the American crew. A Canadian diver was caught trying to photograph the keel, to no avail.

“The credibility just got stronger and stronger, and what the Australians were hiding just became bigger in the minds of the Americans,” Bertrand said during the radio interview. “It was the mystique of it all.”

Despite having been beaten down in so many previous contests for the Cup, the Australians were a proud group. They debuted the boxing kangaroo flag and blasted Men At Work’s “Down Under” through speakers as Australia II was towed out to the race course on Rhode Island Sound.

To Bertrand, beating the Americans was simply getting over a mental hurdle. He had read a story about Roger Bannister, the first man to break the 4-minute mile. They said it couldn’t be done, but once Bannister accomplished the feat, others followed.

It was the same with the America’s Cup: It just takes one. Bertrand practiced how he would handle himself during the press conferences with Conner and the media. He wanted to portray the image of a supremely confident man, and he did just that.

The flag, the music, the hidden keel and the confidence proved to be a recipe for success.

“Those self-image symbols were very important,” he said.

When the best-of-seven final matches began on Sept. 14, it was business as usual for the Americans. Liberty won the first two races, one in which Australia II broke down. While it was a fast boat, it was very delicate. The teams split the next two races, putting the challengers in a 3-1 hole.

Australia II won the next race by 1 minute, 47 seconds — becoming the first challenger since 1934 to take two Cup races in a series. A malfunction aboard Liberty in the sixth race allowed the Australians to tie the score at 3-3.

The decisive contest was dubbed the “Race of the Century,” yet the Americans didn’t feel the pressure to win.

“We had quite a bit of confidence,” Liberty tactician Tom Whidden said. “We had figured out how to win the America’s Cup every time before, so we figured we’d find a way to win it again, one way or the other.”

Conner and his crew had a good handle on the conditions that Monday afternoon, Whidden said, and they raced out to a sizable advantage on the third leg. Then the wind died, proving fatal for the American team.

“The only thing we were scared of, honestly, wasn’t our sailing ability, or how we would do against the Australians,” Whidden said. “It was if the wind got light, they were super competitive against us. They were a bit faster.”

After his syndicate had fallen behind, Bond retreated to the cabin of his tender, Black Swan, but was summoned to the deck to see Australia II gaining on Liberty. Bertrand had decided to split the course on the downwind fifth and final leg, a 4½-mile stretch, and caught a breeze that paved the way for a thrilling finish — and a victory of 41 seconds.

“Everybody said the first skipper and tactician to lose the America’s Cup was in trouble, so we had that to take,” Whidden said. “I don’t think it was the pressure that bothered us, it was just that the race didn’t go our way. None of us imagined this, and certainly we weren’t expecting it. We did the best we could, but it was a little surreal.”

IMMEDIATELY, the questions began to swirl: Were the Americans defeated by better sailors, or were they beaten by a better boat? Whidden is certain it was the latter.

“I think everyone was realistic, and that we did a good job. We sailed better than them some of the time and they sailed better than us some of the time,” he said. “I think the sad part about it is that the Australians didn’t sail better than us, but they came up with a better idea in boat design and you have to give them a lot of credit for that.”

The party in Newport that night was legendary, outdone only by the one in Australia. Bob Hawke, then the country’s prime minister, famously said: “Any boss that sacks someone for not turning up today is a bum.”

The powers that be at the New York Yacht Club, though, hardly were in a celebrating mood. They never expected to lose, and didn’t bring the Auld Mug to Newport. It arrived, sticky and stinking of champagne, in the middle of the night and was handed over to Bond and Bertrand during a ceremony at the Marble House mansion on Bellevue Avenue the following day.

“Even though I’m a longtime member, the New York Yacht Club didn’t handle their public relations so well that summer,” Jobson said.

Conner and Whidden, aboard Stars & Stripes, reclaimed the America’s Cup four years later, beating the Australians 4-0. Conner was backed by the San Diego Yacht Club, which hosted the races in 1988, 1992 and 1995.

SINCE THE DEFEAT IN 1983 , the event has not returned to Newport, clearly a loss for the city. But plenty of good came out of that historic loss.

Almost immediately, Sail Newport was born. Four years later, the New York Yacht Club opened a new clubhouse at Harbour Court, the former John Nicholas Brown estate overlooking Brenton Cove. And the City-by-the-Sea has developed into a much-desired venue for high-profile yacht races, including the America’s Cup World Series in 2012 and Volvo Ocean Race stopovers in 2015 and 2018.

“It was certainly a loss for the New York Yacht Club and for Newport; however, in a very positive way, it got the people of Newport to wake up about what a special treasure Rhode Island is. Newport went to work,” Jobson said.

In defeat, Whidden looks back fondly at the 1983 America’s Cup series.

“I like talking about it because I thought it was a neat time,” he said. “One of the best races I’ve sailed in my life was the loss in the seventh race. So I don’t dislike talking about it, and I think it was a cool time in sailing history. I enjoyed it.”

For the Australian crew, it was a victory that was a long time coming.

“I think it’s the way the team came together, the culture and the trust and integrity,” Bertrand said when asked what he remembers most about that summer and fall. “And when our backs were to the wall, down 3-1, our team was hard to kill off. It was a very, very powerful organization. If anything, it was incredible team spirit.”

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On This Day – September 26, 1983: Australia II Wins America’s Cup in Newport

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It was on September 26, 1983 that Australia II defeated Liberty in Newport to win the America’s Cup trophy that had been in the hands of the New York Yacht Club since the competition begain in 1851.

The 1983 America’s Cup was the occasion of the first winning challenge to the New York Yacht Club, which had successfully defended the cup over a period of 132 years. An Australian syndicate representing the Royal Perth Yacht Club fielded the Australia II , skippered by John Bertrand, against defender Liberty , skippered by Dennis Conner.

Australia II came from behind to prevail 4 races to 3 to win the America’s Cup, ending the longest winning streak in sporting history and ending U.S. domination of the racing series.

The victory on 26 September 1983 was a landmark event for the nation of Australia, not to mention the Royal Perth Yacht Club. The achievement was underscored when Australia II was awarded the ABC Wide World of Sports Athlete of the Year for 1983.

The crew of Australia II for the America’s Cup races was John Bertrand (skipper), Colin Beashel, Will Baillieu, Peter Costello, Damian Fewster, Ken Judge, Skip Lissiman, John Longley, Brian Richardson, Phil Smidmore, Grant Simmer, and Hugh Treharne. The reserves were Rob Brown, Jim Hardy, Scott McAllister. Beashel was an Olympic medal winning sailor who competed at six Olympic games. Richardson was an Olympic oarsman who had stroked the Australian men’s VIII at the Moscow 1980 Olympics.

While the America’s Cup World Series has taken place in Newport since then, the race itself has not returned to Newport.