Knives in the Water (Cont.)

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Outside Magaine November 2002

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Knives in the Water (Cont.)


	Kiwi Russell Coutts jumped ship from Team New Zealand to sail for the Swiss. (Jeff Reidel)

THIS YEAR'S COMPETITION is already rife with sideshows. In July, Prada initiated proceedings to haul Oracle BMW into a New Zealand court, charging that the position of Oracle's barge—and its then-tinted windows—allowed covert surveillance into Prada's boatyard. In another confrontation, last December Team New Zealand hustled over to the Alinghi compound and demanded to be given the film taken by a visiting family member of an Alinghi crewman. Why? The snapshots were allegedly taken from an angle that showed a Team New Zealand boat passing in the background. By last summer, the America's Cup Arbitration Panel—created by the challengers and the defender to resolve their spats out of court—had received no fewer than 18 formal complaints. It refused to issue any rulings until August, when the notoriously litigious syndicates finally promised not to sue in a real court if they didn't like the panel's verdict.

Making the race even more byzantine, the mountain of deeds, protocols, class rules, and legal interpretations that govern the America's Cup has swollen to more than 150 single-spaced pages, and is often so nebulous that the syndicates employ full-time "rules advisers" to translate their meaning. In this year's most serious flap, Team New Zealand hounded OneWorld for months, accusing it of illegally possessing design data brought by a Kiwi designer who had switched teams. The fracas was settled in August when OneWorld was assessed a one-point penalty, which will be deducted from its score after the two initial round-robins of the challenger series end on November 1. OneWorld, which admitted the breach but argued that it was insignificant, was probably just thankful not to be thrown out of the race.

While the lawyers and advisers battle it out behind closed doors, the sailors—most of whom know each other from the pro sailing circuit—try to keep things light.



	High-tech tack: computers aboard Sweden's Victory Challenge reveal perfect wind angle speed. (Jeff Reidel)

An unspoken rule prevents them from asking anything even remotely probing when they bump into each other at the popular Portside Brasserie on Syndicate Row. But that doesn't stop them from having a little fun when they notice something interesting going on next door.

"We were putting a mast in a boat and got a call from Team New Zealand asking, 'Are you sure you're doing that right?' " says John Barnitt, 41, a grinder for the Alinghi team. The tease was payback for an incident earlier in the year, when the Kiwis, thought to be testing a radical new bow rudder design, waited until after sundown every night to lift their boats from the water. "Of course, we stuck around and gave them shit," explains Barnitt.

As it is, almost nothing can happen in Viaduct Harbor without the other teams noticing. From a public pier located just 100 feet across a narrow channel from the compounds, I was able to watch every morning as the boats were trundled out of the sheds and launched for the day's racing or training. Still, the teams take elaborate precautions to protect whatever secrets they can. Every evening, most boats are draped with skirts to hide their keels and hull shapes as they are craned from the water back into the boat sheds, where any modifications can take place in secret.

Trying to get a glimpse behind the veil can become an addicting hobby. One night I arrange to meet Cheryl Cliffe, a 56-year-old senior lecturer at the University of Auckland, at the Loaded Hog, a waterside pub decorated with quarter-scale models of past America's Cup boats. Cliffe says she was never really into sailing until the America's Cup came to town, but she's become one of the most prolific agents for a Web forum called the Spy Network, accessible via www.2003ac.com. There, she shares descriptions of bow shapes and whatever hull characteristics she can glimpse when a skirt slips.

"It's only a boat race," she tells me, slightly embarrassed by her obsession. "But it's also a lot of fun."

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