If you are a sailor anywhere in the world, and presuming that you are old enough of course, you will, or at least should remember where you were 43 years ago this week. Furthermore, it was either a fantastic week for you, or a pretty grim one. There was not much of an in between.
I remember where I was. I had just started working for Hood Sailmakers in Marblehead, MA. I had done the ‘81/82 Whitbread and then spent a year living and screwing around in the south of France before I got a call to join the Hood. Most of the company, office staff, sales people and the actual sailmakers were crowded around a small television set up on a table in the handwork department.
The TV picture was not that clear, but what was clear was that what we were watching was history in the making.The longest sporting streak in history was about to be broken.
The waters on Narragansett Bay off Newport, Rhode Island were sparking in the late afternoon sun. Indian summer was keeping the cold winds of winter at bay. From above we could see that there was a ruby red boat sailing on starboard tack, their red, white and blue spinnaker leaving no doubt that it was an American yacht. Coming in on port tack was a white boat with a white spinnaker that had green and yellow stripes, the distinctive colors of Australia. As the two boats converged it was slowly became clear that the white boat was going to cross in front, and that was pretty much about that. They were at the last leeward mark of the last race of the 1983 America’s Cup and John Bertrand and his crew on Australia II were going to win the regatta.
There were two things that I remember thinking; I was the only non-American in the room and had secretly been cheering for the Aussies, and also, why on earth did Dennis Connor not cover Australia II? They had the lead and they blew it by not staying between the mark and their competitor. It’s a sailing must-do as old as there have been sailing-must do’s. It’s one of the first things you learn sailing optimists.
Earlier that year I had given a talk at the New York Yacht Club and seen that magnificent trophy housed in a display case in the famous model room. At the time, to me anyway, it looked like the Cup would likely stay there for another century, but a few months later that display case would be opened and the Cup was removed. There was a bit of drunken reveling going on in Newport that night, as well as some somber self-criticism and reflection. The cup was going downunder and not only had sailing history been changed, so had the America’s Cup.
There was something quite magical about those 12-meter days. The boats were like ghosts out on the race course looking like they were entangled in some well choreographed dance. Everything seemed to be in slow motion and races were won or lost by mere seconds. It wasn’t that the boats only looked like they were dancing in slow motion, they were just going pathetically slowly. I remember hearing in a following America’s Cup when they had started to mic up some of the sailors in an effort to bring the TV footage to life, and heard Dennis Connor’s tactician Tom Whidden coaxing Dennis after a tack.
Whidden was saying, “Speeds coming up Dennis. We are 4.2 knots, 4.3 now. We are looking at a target speed of close to 6 knots.” This was going on in a decent breeze. Those 12-meters were lugging around a lot of lead and it took a stiff breeze and a lot of gravity to get them up over 10 knots.
These days the AC75’s are routinely sailing at close to 50 knots giving them a closing speed with a boat on the opposite tack of around 100 mph. It’s balls-to-the-wall racing and the sailing requires lightning fast thinking and reflexes. I love watching the boats and will admit that I was wrong back when the new designs with their weird foils were first announced.
I wrote that it couldn’t possibly work and that the boats looked like a dog taking a piss. I got a call from a top sports radio host in Auckland asking me to come onto his show to explain myself, which I did. I made a good argument but I was wrong. I was, however (somewhat) correct on one point. At the time sailors were longing for the old match-racing days where the boats lumbered up the windward leg throwing in 50 tacks to cover their opponent. That was exciting to watch and exhausting for the grinders.
The age of multihulls took all that away. The boats slowed too much when tacking to bother tacking. Instead you picked a side and banged the corner, or the layline if that’s where you were. There were no close tacking duels. I wrote that the new designs would be the same. No point in slowing even for a few seconds just to throw in a tack; rather hitting a corner would be a better option.
It seems as if the new boats have been refined enough, judging by the AC40s, and the sailors adept enough that they can tack without losing speed so maybe we will see a return to those days of slam-dunking it up a windward leg.
One thing is for sure. The genie is out of the bottle and we will never go back to the old lead-sleds. If you miss those days my advice is to watch YouTube. – Brian Hancock.
