Relief as much as jubilation with the Cup safely on its way back home. During the Cup Match Kookaburra managed just one cross against Stars & Stripes but Conner himself endlessly counselled caution. When far ahead in Race 2 the US crew were already playing it safe, Whidden being overheard telling his skipper ‘We must have dropped the chute at least half a mile before that mark, Dennis!!!’
phone call, which involved myself, Ed du Moulin and Dennis, and we said, ‘Hey, we don’t have the money but we have got to do this…’ To Moulin’s credit he stood up and said he would help us get the money – without him it would have been tough. SH: And the final design? TW: We already had the boat in mind. John Marshall had an idea, shortening the waterline 1ft or so, still a larger boat than many of the competitors, but in retrospect the Australians went for too small a boat. So I think we were good to stay at the large end of the fleet. SH:Who were you wary of before the event? TW: The New Zealanders onboard Kiwi Magic KZ-7. We lost to them twice, even with S&S ’87. SH: And who were the best teams… and who had the best boat? TW: KZ-7 was the best all-round boat. It was scary… Dennis and I later raced it in the 12 Metre North Americans and we both said if we had that boat back then – wow! The best team, there were many, but they were held back by their equipment, their total package. I have to say the Aus- tralians were really good, the Kookaburra crews were really good, plus the Kiwis were up there. I had a lot of respect too for Tom Blackaller’s team but they were maybe not quite as structured as some teams. But the two Aussie teams and the Kiwis were damned good. Of course we were pretty good too! We
had four or five guys still from the Liberty team and that headsail change after we
58 SEAHORSE
blew one out against the Kiwis showed that. It was a slick move in those conditions. SH:What was the background to ‘that’ press conference line from Dennis on KZ-7? TW: I think it was just before the Louis Vuitton final. Dennis and I drove together in the car every day, we were on our way to the boat and I said, ‘Hey Dennis, you know the Kiwis are pretty good and we cannot take them too lightly, but they are quite young and I think if we found a way to get under their skin it could work well for us.’ Well, Dennis usually had a quick answer
to everything I said, but that time he didn’t answer me, he just kept staring ahead in the car. And so I said, ‘You heard me, right?’ And he said, ‘Yep’. And we didn’t talk about it again. I really meant what I said. Anyway, we headed out training that
day, then the next day was the press con- ference and we were sitting near each other… and I could sense Dennis was up to something. And all of a sudden he said, ‘Why would you build a fibreglass boat unless you wanted to cheat?’ He just blurted it out, it wasn’t a sched-
uled plan or anything… well, maybe. Then the next day when we raced against Chris Dickson we were staring at them and it broke the ice for our team. Talk about psy- chological warfare… that comment really upset them, particularly Dickson. He was so young then, in his mid-20s. SH:How confident were you against Iain Murray and Kookaburra? TW: We had quite a bit of confidence in our boat and our team at that point. We had some idea of their speed and we also
knew they were going to be more manoeu- vrable than us. We also knew from a match racing point of view they were quite strong, with Peter Gilmour involved, and so we talked a lot about not falling for their game but playing our game – and our game was straightline stuff. If we could get to the left corner – which we always liked when the Fremantle Doctor had come in – and started to leeward of them, we could probably tack in front as we were confi- dent we were a bit quicker. Of course the reason was Syd Fischer’s
Steak & Kidney had tuned with us and we knew how they fared against Kookaburra. Bottom line was that if we got into a match racing game or tacking duel with Iain Murray we would be suspect, so our goal was basically to run away from the line. Typically we would come into the pre-
start and just gybe away, which drove them crazy! Then, with about three minutes to go, we would come back and they would either pick a spot behind us or in front of us – we made them choose. We always felt that if we could get an even start we would beat them on boat speed. So we did that. But the first race was in
really light airs! We started in 11kt or something and we knew they would be good in that. But we saw a bit more breeze on the left side of the course and so I told Dennis we had to start on the left side, which we did and they started up on our hip. Sure enough there was more breeze so we tacked and weren’t sure we were cross- ing but we had to head over and they tacked to leeward of us; and that was it,
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