Update
whatever it was Bond’s team was up to were inept. Every step of the way Warren Jones had thwarted the NYYC backstage and won the PR war front-of-house. As he declared with obvious satisfaction at the winner’s press conference: ‘It was a case of check, check, check, until today, when it was Check. Mate.’
The defenders had been claiming that the Dutch were active, not passive partners in the creation of Australia II, making the boat illegal. The NYYC tried to trick the Dutch by attempting to buy a wing keel design from them. The Americans were so incensed that the New York YC America’s Cup committee convened on its beautiful race committee boat the night before Race 1 to consider the nuclear option: aborting the 25th Match. By the narrow margin of one vote the Match was green-lighted.
No person was more central to the NYYC’s belief that the Aussie boat was a rogue Twelve than Vic Romagna. He and Bond had history. Back in 1970 Bond was in Newport with Lexcen preparing for the Newport-Bermuda race in Apollo. They saw Olin Stephens’ newest 12 Metre Valiant in her lift and, as yachties are wont to do when they see something special, went to size her up. Romagna was the foredeck crew boss, disliked the Aussies’ attention and told them, unceremo- niously, where to go. This short shrift triggered Bond to make his first Cup bid in 1974.
Lexcen, not averse to salty language himself, responded to Romagna by saying they would come back and win ‘their bloody Cup’, flatten it with a steamroller and present it back to the NYYC as the ‘America’s Plate’.
At the presentation ceremony of the Cup, conducted by lone NYYC representative Robert Stone with such dignity that the summer’s rancour was soon forgotten, Lexcen remembered his jibe to Romagna. Out came a road-kill hubcap from a Plymouth car. It was the America’s Plate…
It was Ronald Reagan who got Bond right when Australia II’s team were hosted at the White House a few days later: ‘Alan, you represent the kind of tenacity with which Americans and Australians can identify. You just keep on coming.’
Bond was born in Ealing, west London, in 1938. His father ran away from a small Welsh mining village; his mother was from Yorkshire. Bond’s father had continuing hospital treatment after the war and the bitter winter of 1948 prompted him to emigrate to western Australia, with his family travelling out to join him on the assistance programme.
Leaving Fremantle Boy’s High School at 14, Bond became an apprentice signwriter. By the time he was 18 he had already been arrested twice. Restive, Bond took on what he called ‘foreign jobs’. Weekend freelance jobs, which effectively took work from his employer, were his way of breaking the chains of a strict home environment and union-constrained employment.
The Protestant/Roman Catholic communities were another part of Fremantle’s rigid structure, so it was a surprise when, at 17, Bond married Eileen Hughes, 18, daughter of a leading local Catholic councillor and businessman.
In what became a model for the later expansion of his corporate empire, he amplified the value of one asset in order to leverage and borrow to expand further. His first deal was a plot of land bought for a five-dollar deposit. He built a garage on the plot to live in while he developed the main site as a house.
This, his Nu-Signs company, loans from his father-in-law and Bond’s sheer braggadocio saw him grow and prosper. The Lesmurdie Heights Company, founded on unfancied land in the Perth Hills in 1961, became the Bond Corporation in 1967.
The empire became huge, voraciously swallowing other companies, with Bond equally lavish in his personal spending, such as the 1987 auction world record of £36million he paid for Van Gogh’s Irises. Later it turned out that this purchase was part-funded with a loan from Sotheby’s… It was typical Bond: he loved deal-making. And he knew exactly the value his America’s Cup endeavours could bring. ‘There isn’t a bank in the world that won’t take my call now,’ he boasted. He certainly made those calls work, causing an Australian Morgan Grenfell merchant banker to note wryly: ‘He is one of those almost unique fellows who measure wealth by the amount they can borrow
10 SEAHORSE rather than the amount that they have.’
The 1987 recession hit Bond Corp hard. A bitter takeover battle in the UK with the legendary Tiny Rowland saw the British opponent sink his teeth into Bond’s reputation and mortally wound Bond Corp by declaring it ‘technically insolvent’. The nadir came in taking line honours in the 1989 Hobart race with his Pedrick-designed maxi Drumbeat, only to be greeted with the news that receivers had been appointed to his flagship breweries while he’d been at sea. By 1992 Bond was bankrupt and serving his first gaol term. A longer seven-year sentence was handed down in 1997 for siphoning off AUS$1.2 billion from Bell Resources to the ailing Bond Corp. But as Grant Simmer, in 1983 the 21-year-old navigator aboard Australia II and now a four-time America’s Cup winner and Oracle Racing general manager, notes: ‘Alan was a risk-taker. He liked pushing limits. He was the one who took the risks with that boat. With that whole campaign. We certainly pushed the edges but that was exactly Alan’s way.’
TO WIN THE (NEXT) CUP – Jack Griffin
Last month we sorted out the confusion about the yachts – one- design AC45F foiling cats, sky’s-the-limit AC45 development boats and 48ft-mostly-one-design ‘America’s Cup Class’ raceboats. This month we’ll look at an even more confusing format and… and at how to win the Cup.
The America’s Cup World Series in one-design AC45Fs kicks off in July in Portsmouth – and those races could very well determine who
RARA AVES – Bob Fisher
While one can fully understand Julian Everitt’s personal disappointment (Issue 425) at not having the opportunity to design a 12 Metre as a result of the initiative of a few enlightened people in San Francisco, he must have heard and understood the old axiom: ‘Talk is cheap, but it takes money to buy beer.’ Until Tom Ehman proposed the San Francisco Yacht Racing Challenge, news of the 12 Metre class was sparse – a few elderly boats mostly gathered in Newport, RI but nothing in the way of development.
Why then should a modern one-design trash all the existing boats? The twain shall never meet. What many aficionados believe is that the best 12 Metre racing was held in the clear blue waters of Fremantle in brisk winds. Those conditions exist (approximately) in San Francisco Bay and already there is a desire by Geoff Mason, the executive producer of the television for ESPN in Freo – and a 26-time Emmy winner – to do the same for this regatta and any that follow.
Some of those aficionados have declared an interest in purchasing a boat – at least 20 from 13 countries – and that is certainly enough to progress the proposed regatta and the various series that will follow. One of them, I was assured, could buy the 12-boat fleet that is proposed for the first regatta but, that aside, the others, who must remain nameless at this stage, look sufficiently experienced to be aware of all the problems they face – on and off the water.
Geoff Mason knows what he is backing as he sailed on the 12 Metre Nefertiti in the 1962 defence trials, and has detailed ideas of the necessary planning. Likewise, Ehman has been involved in major regatta formation for years and has the support of the local clubs and potential owners of the boats. ‘There are some 45 prospectives – owners, syndicates and sponsored teams – showing interest, but the 20 from 13 countries are known to have the required amount to go ahead at this time.’ Several of the builders approached have shown interest, as have a sparmaker and a marine hardware manufacturer; all will have to produce completely identical items. The sails, like those of the VO65s, will also be one-design and carefully monitored. Far too late now to stop this ball rolling.
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