News Around the World
‘It’s a difficult problem when you have a boat like Stars & Stripes that won’t play the match race game,’ said Kookaburra III skipper Iain Murray midway through the 1987 America’s Cup Match. For the ’87 Cup the Australian hosts increased the number of legs by two while leaving the course length the same, so most teams looked at the increased number and frequency of corners and developed the path of agility successfully employed in Newport with Ben Lexcen’s Australia II. But encouraged by his brilliant technical director John Marshall, Conner went in the opposite direction, steadily developing his growing 12 Metre fleet towards a longer, heavier design, slower on the turn but faster once up to speed; Stars & Stripes 87 was even built using longitudinal rather than traditional lateral framing for increased fore-and-aft rigidity to ensure a straighter headstay upwind. So now with a perceived straightline advantage over the defender, Conner’s afterguard took every precaution to avoid any pre-start circling. Kookaburra would repeatedly try to harry and engage their rival; here typically (left) Conner was on another timed run into the pin while simply ignoring their efforts. From start to finish the 1987 Stars & Stripes programme was about winning the war and not the battles. But there were some scary moments along the way
& Stripes came dead last! It was such an extreme 12 Metre. Unfortunately in Fremantle in 1987 we were also a bit nice strategically – we didn’t really ever play the lay days to wait for a better weather window for our boat. We were very proud Australians, proud warriors, we will go out and race… SH: Well, on that first Cup race it was light and not conclusive for either team. IM: That’s right. It was light but they did really well in that race. They went to the left and got a shift and we were just on the outside of that shift. We had hoped we would take distance out of them down- wind as the course was skewed a bit… but we never did. That was concerning! SH: Race two the next day was much windier, in the mid-20kt and above. Peter Gilmour won the start by three seconds but then Stars & Stripes led at the first mark by 12 seconds… IM: When it was windy we had nothing on them, upwind or down. Their high-prismatic boat had less wave drag, and even though it was a bit heavier it was effectively a lot longer than Kookaburra III. SH: Did they race with that ribbed skin material on their hull? IM: They did – they used it all the way through. It was an interesting one and reflected just how much research Dennis threw at this campaign; it was judged to be legal but honestly I don’t think it was an issue. It might have had a slight enhancing effect on laminar flow along the hull surface, but at the end of the day they just had a bigger boat with a higher prismatic! That boat loved the breeze and ultimately had a higher top speed; and in Fremantle there was plenty of wind for it to do its thing. SH: Then race three on the Monday was moderate, with a close start, which was when Dennis ducked your stern. He was pretty impressive, wasn’t he… IM: Sure. As soon as they could get Stars & Stripes leaned over, heeling to around 24°, they were just gone… SH: Then Conner called for a lay day, which meant they were pretty settled. And on the final race on the Wednesday Pete Gilmour gave it about as much as he could at the start without getting penalised.
22 SEAHORSE
IM: But once again to no avail. They started to leeward and off they went… SH:But these were three-hour races, so anything was still possible in those breezy conditions. IM:We were out there and jostling for a penalty, and we had shown we were very effective with those aggressive, combative tactics against all of the other defenders, but Dennis and Tom Whidden were cool and very experienced, and took it in their stride to survive that engagement… and then off they went. SH: After that final race you spoke to Dennis and Tom… IM: A little, but it was tough. I think it’s fair to say that I had a more open and honest relationship with Tom Whidden than with Dennis; I don’t know why, but that’s just how it was, although time has made the friendship with Dennis a little more enduring! SH: It was an amazing regatta and you were up against a pretty formidable opponent. Conner said this wasn’t the beginning of a dream for him but the end of a nightmare… IM: Yes, we were up against it. We were a bunch of young guys having a go, with a massive target to beat Alan Bond’s defence team. And so it was a really big thing for us, and that meant we hadn’t had enough focus and weren’t really prepared for the might and strength of the Conner machine. SH: How were the guys onboard when you came in after that last race – broken? IM:Mate, they were broken the first day really… Then on the second day we were beaten by over a minute when we thought we had a chance, and we could see where this was all heading. Basically we realised we were defenceless really… Blue Robinson
FRANCE Adieu, l’ami Jean-François de Prémorel died on 14 July at the age of 63. He leaves in his wake waves of orphans who rubbed shoulders with him during his professional life devoted to shipbuilding and sailing regattas. Beyond his professional passion which he exercised with rare talent, the man possessed great human qualities earning him the sympathy and admiration of all, as attested by numerous moving tributes received since his passing. Hundreds of his friends from the racing community and many representatives of the Jeanneau yard where he worked for so long travelled to his family home in Truscat on the edge of the Gulf of Morbihan in Brittany to pay their respects in person to Prémorel’s family. After graduating from the School of Political Science, Jean-
François left for the USA, not to improve his international politics but to join the great Walter Greene at his shipyard on the east coast where so many of the most famous early ocean racing multihulls were born. We are in 1980, two years after the first Route du Rhum and the historic victory of Mike Birch aboard his little yellow dragonfly in front of Michel Malinovski’s big monohull.
AJAX/ALAMY
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