Rod Davis
Cup truth
The America’s Cup, its Deed of Gift and Protocols have always been a mystery for those who are not lawyers. Heck, even the lawyers don’t agree on many of the points. Thus we often (always?) end up debating this mystery in yacht clubs, pubs… and court houses. With this in mind, I thought it would be a good
time to give you a simplified crash course on how the relationship of the challenger and defender of the America’s Cup is supposed to work. For clarity, we will only work with recent America’s Cups, say the last two decades or so. I am obliged to tell you the wording of George Schuyler, one of
the original owners of the yacht America (and winner of the Cup in 1851) and author of the America’s Cup Deed of Gift: ‘The Cup will be held in trust as a “challenge trophy” to promote friendly competition among nations, with the Deed of Gift being the primary instrument governing the rules to make a valid challenge for the America’s Cup and the rules of conduct of the races.’ All this happened in the late 1800s. Not that any of this helps
you understand how it all works, friendly competition or not. So let’s boil it down to basics. The America’s Cup is a challenge cup. That means you can chal-
lenge the holder of it to a race and he has to accept. Let’s say I won and hold the America’s Cup. If you want to challenge me to race for it you can, and I have to accept your challenge if you are the first one. I can’t simply pick and choose from a bunch of challengers. Simple, right? With that challenge you nominate your boat’s
36 SEAHORSE
dimensions, or we agree to work out which boats we should sail. We also agree to work out how many races, what the course should be like, and/or a challenger series if we want more than one challenger. Really we are 50/50 partners in the next Cup. We (as in you the challenger and me the defender) can do just about anything we agree on for the next Cup. If you and I can’t agree on which boats we are going to race, how
long the race course is or the number of races to be sailed, then the Deed of Gift of the America’s Cup steps in. Call it the default answer. Quickly: 90ft waterline max; three races (two windward- leeward and one triangle); 20-mile legs. Yes, 20 miles each leg! Since you as the challenger of record and me as the defender don’t want to end up with the default answers, we’ll work like hell to avoid that. Besides, we have already agreed… but I’ll get to that later. Alas, the America’s Cup has ended up in the default answer
twice recently. What we call a DoG challenge. Deed of Gift challenge. Both cases (the 1988 K-boat challenge in San Diego and the 2010 trimaran challenge in Valencia) were ambush challenges. The truth is the defenders were playing silly buggers too, so it all went to the lowest common denominator: a Deed of Gift America’s Cup. As previously mentioned, as defender I have to accept the very
first valid challenge for the next Cup. But in modern times I have already chosen who that challenger is (for this column, you) well before I won the last Cup. Two reasons: 1) Since I have to accept the very first challenge you and I are locked away on a secret boat on the race course. Immediately after my boat crosses the finish line you will present me with an envelope containing your challenge. The reason it’s a secret location is because I don’t want anyone
MAX RANCHI
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