Troubled water ran its course

Newport afloat despite '83 Cup loss

By Tony Chamberlain, Globe Staff, 9/26/2003

NEWPORT R.I. -- As the season darkened into fall 20 years ago, down came the greeting sign on Interstate 95 that for years had proclaimed "Welcome to Rhode Island, home of the America's Cup."

Gone were the brightly colored 12-meter sailboats from all over the world that had competed since June in what became both a festival and battleground for the most intense sailing match ever staged.

Gone were the sailors and the revelers, the syndicates, and their whole international entourage -- the stylish Italians and French, the dogged Brits, and the dangerous Australians -- all suddenly gone after that histrionic summer, taking away the one symbol that identified this city almost as much, in its scale, as the Eiffel Tower identifies Paris. Gone from Newport was the America's Cup. Black Monday: Sept. 26, 1983.

Of course, the actual Cup, a rather homely silver-nickel urn, was not in Newport but at the New York Yacht Club, which had won the trophy -- emblematic of yacht design, building, and world sailing supremacy -- in 1851 and kept it ever since. The New Yorkers had won the trophy from the British in a race around the Isle of Wight, and for more than a century they had challenged anyone in the world to come to the United States and win it back.

For the first 79 years, the Cup was contested in New York waters, but in 1930 the New Yorkers moved the event to their summer playground, Newport, and the identity of America's Cup City jelled quickly. So habitually did America win the Cup -- 25 times in a century and a third -- that a gag line was often thrown around that the first US skipper to lose the Cup would replace it on its pedestal with his head.

In fact, no challenger before 1983 had really come close, so the scalps of American sailors seemed safe, given the weight of history, and considering another ancient joke about the power of holding the Cup at home: "New York Yacht Club rules the waves and waives the rules." Thus, this glittering old port with its overlay of an American royal class created in the industrial revolution was wholly unprepared for the season of '83, the race of Sept. 26, and the aftermath of suddenly being Newport without the Cup.

In two decades since, Newport has changed much or hardly at all, depending on whom you talk to. Also a matter of conjecture is how much the city misses the Cup, or if its absence "left a hole in our heart," as one native put it. But there's one note of unanimity: You can't find a soul in these parts over the age of 30 who does not remember that day with perfect clarity.

And, for that matter, the night that followed. As victorious Australia II and defeated Liberty came into their berths in the dark of the September evening, the party had been raging for hours already. Police estimated that a half-million revelers jammed the streets and dock area trying to catch a glimpse of the players -- the teary-eyed Dennis Conner making his concession to the jubilant Australians and their leader, Alan Bond, who had spent a fortune in three attempts to win the Cup, and who finally this day succeeded in changing the history of the world's oldest continuous sports event.

"I was in college at BU," recalls Brad Read, a Newport native and now executive director of Sail Newport. "I left the Dugout on Commonwealth Avenue as Liberty just rounded a mark comfortably ahead. By the time I came back from class, Australia II was in the lead and went on to win the race. I just remember how demoralized and depressed I felt."

But not as much as Charlie Dana, who was steering a spectator boat with the late Stanley Rosenfeld, the famed yachting photographer, who was shooting the event for United Press International.

"When Liberty rounded the first windward mark with a 57-second lead," said Dana, who went on to serve as commodore of the New York Yacht Club, "I heard a champagne cork pop. As it turned out, it was a little premature."

Sail Newport has a phone number ending in 1-9-8-3, corresponding to the year Australia won the Cup. But it's more than symbolic of losing, said Read, largely because the creation of Sail Newport was a deliberate reaction to losing the Cup, as Newport began to reinvent itself.

"We thought we needed an organization to bring major sailing events to Newport when the Cup left," he said. "We needed to keep our identity with sailing."

But over the years, Sail Newport has morphed into a community sailing center open to the public, with a heavy accent on kids' one-design race programs -- a far cry from the glitterati surrounding big-time racing.

"The interest has just exploded," said Read. "For too long, sailing was seen as a rich man's sport, so in a way the loss of the Cup gave us our waters back. We would love the Cup back in some ways, but losing it could have been the best thing for sailing in Newport."

And in the aftermath of the loss, there was another new beginning with an ironic twist. The New York Yacht Club bought and refurbished a waterfront estate from the family of a former commodore and established its first Newport headquarters, Harbour Court.

"To some degree, Harbour Court would not have happened if we still had the Cup," said Dana. "It happened in the aftermath of [the Cup loss]. So for our club I think most members think [losing] was a good thing. It forced the club to reinvent itself."

But after thinking about it for a moment, Dana adds: "I still think Newport misses the Cup."

`Race of the century' What actually happened on the waters of Rhode Island Sound that day -- and what should have happened -- has become one of those sports arguments never to be settled. The simple question: Did Conner and team make a fatal error in Race 7 by failing to cover, allowing Australia II, driven by John Bertrand, to get past Liberty on the fifth leg?

The series was tied at three races apiece. With the huge drama and enmity between the camps building all summer, Race 7 was billed as "the race of the century." It was scheduled for a Saturday, and ABC brought a crew of around 300 journalists and technicians to town, while CBS had about half that number. But light winds caused a postponement, about which Globe scribe Leigh Montville quipped: "This is the only sport that gets canceled because the weather is too good."

Conner called for a layday on Sunday, believing that stronger winds were in the forecast for Monday. So, much to the dismay of the networks, which wanted a weekend showcase, the final square-off began Monday, a glittering fall day with the winds not living up to Conner's hoped-for 15-plus knots, which he felt would nullify Australia II's light air speed advantage.

For most of the race, Conner held the advantage. The afterguard, with Tom Whidden, John Marshall, and Halsey Hereshoff, was outthinking and outmaneuvering Bertrand and crew, at one point even tricking the Aussies into covering an errant tack. When the Americans rounded Mark 4 after a strong weather leg and opened their lead to 57 seconds, the home spectators sighed with relief. The Cup seemed safe. Conner would keep his head.

But the sailors on Liberty knew that in the lightening breeze Australia II still had the speed to attack. And attack she did. Sensing that Australia II was sailing both faster and lower, Conner jibed Liberty away to the left on a small shift, while Australia II kept sailing far to the right side of the course. After two more jibes by Liberty, the boats sailed back together, Australia II having destroyed most of Liberty's lead, and still sailing faster.

To this day, Whidden, now president of North Sails, insists that Liberty in fact did cover. "I remember that race really well," he said last week. "We did jibe back and cover them, and were still ahead."

Despite Liberty's small lead, however, Australia II was sailing right in her groove in the flat seas and calm breeze. Taking a lower (more direct to the mark) angle, Australia II slipped past Liberty and went into the leeward mark with a 21-second lead.

Conner and crew initiated a tacking duel up the final leg, even throwing in some false tacks to try to confuse the Australians. Forty-seven times, Conner swung the wheel, while the grinders pumped their shoulders again and again. But Bertrand's crew mirrored Liberty's moves and stayed well ahead, crossing the finish line with a 41-second victory. Through the years, Conner has insisted that since there was no way to hold off Australia II with her speed, his only alternative tactic was to look for fresh wind rather than try a close cover on Australia II.

Bob McCollough, who was chairman of the race committee in 1983, disagrees. "No, Dennis didn't cover and he probably should have," said McCollough, now 83 and still sailing out of Greenwich, Conn. Ten years earlier, as head of the Courageous syndicate, McCollough had hired the 31-year-old Conner as an aggressive starting helmsman. "But the real problem they had was that Australia had better spinnakers."

Whatever the truth of that race, all is hindsight, of course. But as the hilarity of that evening spun on in the bars and restaurants and dockside streets so packed with revelers that one could scarcely walk through town, the only truth remaining was summed up in the cheery insolence shouted earlier that day by writer Angus Phillips from the spectator boat: "Newport, kiss that Cup goodbye!"

`Keelgate' The closest Cup match series ever sailed on the water capped off a season of bitter tension off the water between combatants, with the world press taking -- as New Yorkers saw it -- the Aussies' side.

"It was awful, just awful," recalls McCollough, who was often called on to stand up and defend New York's positions to an increasing petulant -- and fast-growing -- press corps. McCollough still maintains, as many Americans do, that Australia violated the country-of-origin rule in the Cup's Deed of Gift by accepting help in designing and testing a revolutionary keel in a Dutch tank-testing laboratory.

Echoing the famous political scandal of a decade before, the dispute was dubbed "Keelgate" and grew more and more acrimonious, with syndicate director Warren Jones outfoxing the New Yorkers at every turn on the PR front. So bad was the NYYC attacked in the press by the aggressive Aussies that after the series was over, McCollough said he received an apology.

"Warren Jones sent us a letter apologizing for some of the things that happened that summer," McCollough said. "That was nice of him, but things really were bad."

The late Warren Jones often met reporters in the morning in casual breakfast chats at a deli just across from the Armory on Thames Street that housed the press center. In these off-the-cuff talks, Jones would give his version of whatever situation was hot at the moment, leaving the New Yorkers little opportunity to reply except at formal press conferences where they often spoke guardedly, without Jones's candor.

"Every day the reporters would just buy what the Bond machine wanted them to buy," said a former Cup sailor who asked not to be named. "And it would get in the paper just the way they wanted it to be."

Nor were US anxieties relieved by a chilling midsummer memo from Halsey Herreshoff, a yacht designer and navigator for Conner. "If the closely guarded peculiar keel design of Australia II is allowed to remain in competition, or is allowed to continue to be rated without a penalty, the yacht will likely win the foreign trials and will likely win the America's Cup in September."

Thus began the wrangle over the keel, with New York trying to get it declared illegal and Australia brushing off the accusations while at the same time painting the NYYC as a bunch of whiners who, if they couldn't win the Cup on the water, would try to steal it by whatever means possible. In fact, just before the finals, the race committee had a 5-4 vote on the question of whether New York should race at all.

Even when it was over, the residue of bitterness remained. After Conner gave a gracious, tear-filled congratulations and farewell on the night of the race, Jones took the podium and said: "All I can say is, `Mate!' That is the very finest Australian saying. All summer it's been `Check' to the New York Yacht Club, to the British, to Dennis . . . We were playing chess with them. Check, check, check, check. And today we say, `Mate!' "

Chilly waters In 1958, with the resumption of racing after a 21-year hiatus caused by world war, the Cup adopted a smaller design, and the first match pitted Columbia against the British challenge, Sceptre. Columbia won in five races to usher in the 12-meter era, contested nine times over the next 25 years. In all, 47 match races were sailed, with the US winning 35 of them.

On the Newport waterfront now is a fleet of 13 12-meter boats, with Cup champions such as Intrepid, Columbia, Courageous, and Freedom restored to pristine condition and sailing smartly. This fleet is active in the charter business and occasionally puts on nostalgic and spectacular races between Newport and the Cape.

Meanwhile, the Cup as an event has taken several turns, with New York attempting three unsuccessful challenges. Conner went on to take revenge by beating the Aussies in 1987, but because New York and Conner had not been able to come to an agreement for the '87 challenge, the Cup went to Conner's home city of San Diego. To many, as a new high-tech 75-footer was adopted, with eye-popping budgets needed to build and race them, much of the luster had gone from the event, certainly from the Newport view.

"Damn Cup has gotten so commercial now," said McCollough. "I'm not sure Newport could even have it here anyway."

Most New York Yacht Club members are resigned to the idea that they probably won't get another shot at the Cup after their three disappointments. The new Cup is so costly, with budgets pushing $80 million, that Dana and others in the club leadership are certain the membership would not financially support another challenge.

"We couldn't raise that kind of money from sponsorship," he said. "We've had some meetings about [the next Cup], but we won't be in it the next time around. Maybe we'll be looking at the Cup after this one."

And if Newport misses the Cup, as Dana suggests, the wounds have long faded. The city chokes with tourism all summer, and the reminders of Cup life are not hard to find, starting with the main street along the waterfront, America's Cup Avenue. But long gone is any sense of the mournfulness that was captured in a quote from the book "Upset" by Barbara Lloyd and Michael Levitt, the first and one of the best books on the '83 Cup.

As fears were raised all summer about losing the Cup, Eileen Slocum remembered, "No one ever thought at the time it could happen. Only Mrs. Winslow [co-chairman of the ball] said over and over, `I'm so afraid this is going to be our last America's Cup Ball. I want it to be so perfect.' Oh, yes, she said it very sadly, and she was right."