A huge white ghost cut swiftly through the gentle seas off San Diego. It was the 132-ft.-long America's Cup challenger New Zealand, the largest boat to vie for the Auld Mug in five decades. A mile away, the smoke-blue catamaran Stars & Stripes, the first twin-hulled vessel to sail for the Cup, hauled closer to the wind and suddenly accelerated like an Indy speedster. The two craft -- as different, in the words of New Zealand's skipper, David Barnes, as "chalk and cheese" -- were practicing for this week's best-of-three-races face-off. And for a change, they were practicing on the water instead of in the headlines or the courts.
Indeed, this 27th contest for the 8.4-lb. bottomless silver jug culminates a 14-month war of words, wits and writs. Both on and off the water, the meeting is sure to go down as one of the oddest and most acrimonious in the Cup's 137- year history, one that may drastically alter the future course of the event. For one thing, most experts view the contest as a glaring mismatch. Yachting wisdom holds that catamarans are faster than monohulls under most conditions. No wonder both competitors, for very different reasons, appeared to agree on which was the likely winner. "Our chances are better than one in a hundred," said Auckland Banker Michael Fay, 39, who built and campaigns New Zealand, "but not much."
Strangely, too, both sides seemed to be looking ahead not so much to the contest as beyond it. The American defenders -- Skipper Dennis Conner; the San Diego Yacht Club, which holds the Cup; and Sail America, a private corporation that manages the event for the club -- were intent on eliminating what they saw as an irritating upstart challenge so that they could get back to planning a traditional Cup defense for 1991, a several-month-long multinational regatta that may be worth more than $1 billion to San Diego in tourist revenues. Fay, on the other hand, appeared to view this week's race merely as a curtain raiser for a court action that he will mount if he loses.
This state of affairs is the result of some gale-force legal tacking. After Conner won the Cup from Australia in Fremantle in February 1987, S.D.Y.C. did not make the customary announcement of a future regatta. Normally, such events are held at approximately four-year intervals. They are open to multiple challengers -- there were 13 in Fremantle -- who race for the right to face the defender. Through the years, the design has been limited by gentlemen's agreement to so-called 12-meter sloops -- a complicated equation involving length, girth and sail area that works out to boats measuring about 45 ft. at the waterline. As S.D.Y.C. and Sail America bickered over details, Fay, whose Cup entry narrowly lost to Conner at Fremantle, seized the initiative. He interpreted the simple, two-page 1857 Cup rules, known as the deed of gift, to say that he could challenge S.D.Y.C. to a one-on-one contest to be held within ten months, and he maintained that he was entitled to name his own weapon. He went to the max: New Zealand is the largest vessel allowed, 90 ft. at the waterline.