A glimmer of hope for Chris Dickson’s Kiwi battlers when Dennis Conner’s jib blows out the foil in the second race of what was obviously going to be a brutal Louis Vuitton final. But the Stars&Stripes steamroller, three new boats and two years of heavy-air practice, was ready for it, especially in these conditions. While the USA crew worked to sort things out Conner carefully tacked his boat under eased main to cross ahead of a visibly stunned New Zealand crew; when he tacked back onto the new jib the big blue 12 Metre was right back there still sitting up to weather of Dickson’s crew. ‘That was us at our best,’ said Stripes trimmer Bill Trenkle simply on stepping ashore
Russians at that time… We loved the Australians and we thought they were great people… we still do! So on the way back in from that race
Dennis [Conner] and I sat together for a little while and we talked. We said this was really sad and everyone will be really upset for a while… but let’s go win it back. We actually talked about it then. Now, how serious were we? Well, at that point it was just the right thing to say to each other, but the good thing about Dennis is he was always forward-looking and that appealed to me from when I first met him. I think being in the sailmaking business
really hard right to the end and did quite a clever thing, re-moding our boat for the last race. And we moded it perfectly for the wind that was forecast, it was just that we fell off a cliff at 8kt and below. Libertywas really suspect below 8kt; we could hold on in a breeze and be competitive between 11 and 13kt, then less competitive between 8 and 11kt. But below 8kt we were a dog. SH:How hard was it beating Australia II? TW: It was hard. If you look at the races, the first one we won on a match race move when we forced them into a really hard manoeuvre and they broke their steering, the second race they had a mainsail that was falling down and so they had to tie that off, and so the first two races things were going our way. Then the third race was called off due to the time limit expir- ing and they were way ahead, five minutes or so, and when that was re-sailed they beat us by around three minutes fifteen. Then race 4 we sailed brilliantly, cross-
ing them on port tack in a match race start. Blue, I don’t want to tell you what the analogy for that is – but it’s not good. And
then we did everything we could do to hold them back and win that race, because it wasn’t windy, if I recall it was 10-11kt. In race 5 we had our jumper problems
and broke things which turned the tide. Then the sixth race we beat them at the start again and we raced them up the course but they got a huge shift when they were behind us and they beat us by a couple of minutes… and just sailed away. Then that seventh race on 26 September
was really light and you know the story there. It was a great race… Walter Cronkite called it the race of the century. SH: A lot of hype… but the Australians definitely had to climb a psychological hill to beat you at home. TW: Sure, and I think it was a popular victory, even in the US; people were maybe disappointed but I don’t think there was great remorse from the Americans. I think everyone understood it was a momentous win, and that the tide had turned. Sud- denly the public awareness of the sport just went through the roof. And so it wasn’t an unpopular outcome like, say, losing to the
made me a little introspective about the big picture back then; OK, for sure I didn’t like being the first tactician to lose the America’s Cup for the USA, but I didn’t look at it as if life as I knew it was over, I looked at it as maybe an opportunity. So I just went back to work – and I had a life already, with Betsy and my family – but a lot of the younger guys in the team didn’t have that, they had to start again with whatever was next. To Dennis’s credit he certainly didn’t like being the first skipper to lose the Cup but, yes, he was pretty good on the way in – he said we’d find a way to make this into something good. SH:When did Dennis make a solid plan to campaign in Fremantle? TW: Well, I am not sure what we knew early on. We knew the Cup was going to Australia and Warren Jones would go home and hit the ground running, and so Dennis went off and figured out how we were going to get it back. So for sure Dennis also didn’t consider it life over… it was life ahead. Remember that 24 chal- lenges were issued to the Royal Perth Yacht Club so there was a lot going on. But Dennis and I had got closer and closer over a couple of Cup campaigns, and so it was pretty obvious we would be doing 1987 together. He was very loyal to me and I was extremely loyal to him. I didn’t even consider doing something else. He went to the New York Yacht Club
and said he was interested in campaigning, but they said they had their own plan. Then they said they would love to have Dennis come and compete for the chance to become their challenger… That was a big disappointment to all of us to be treated like that. And I think fairly short- sighted of them…
SEAHORSE 53
GILLES-MARTIN RAGET
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