The Cup Turneth Over

Time was when yachting seemed the last preserve of the gentleman athlete. All that changed in the 1980s, as the sport bred enough litigious excess to make Horatio Hornblower reach for the Dramamine. The latest episode in the salty soap opera better known as the America's Cup series came last week, when a New York Supreme Court justice stripped the San Diego Yacht Club of the sport's most coveted prize.

The controversy began sailing toward the court in 1983, when, for the first time since the competition started in 1851, America lost the America's Cup to a high-tech upstart from Australia. Four years later blustery Dennis Conner, losing skipper in the duel with Australia, regained the trophy in a rousing victory Down Under. But Conner offended losing New Zealand when he accused its crew of cheating by racing in a fiber-glass boat.

Michael Fay, head of the New Zealand team, decided to strike back. Citing a provision in the deed of gift, which sets out guidelines for the competition, he challenged the U.S. to a one-on-one rematch. San Diego had not planned on a defense until 1991. But Justice Carmen Ciparick of the New York Supreme Court, which oversees the deed, upheld New Zealand's rogue challenge.

Complicating matters further, Fay decided to race the U.S. in a 132-ft. monohull, instead of a 12-meter (65-ft.) boat like those used since 1958. With time running out, Conner and his team knew they could not design a sufficiently speedy monohull vessel of their own. So Conner opted for a smaller, swifter, multihulled catamaran. Justice Ciparick decided to wait to see the outcome of the race before ruling on the legitimacy of the U.S. entry.

As expected, the U.S. catamaran blew New Zealand's monohull out of the water in September 1988. Fay then filed suit, charging that the U.S. had violated the deed of gift's requirements for a "fair match." Enter the New York Yacht Club -- the Cup's custodian for the first 132 years of its existence -- which filed an affidavit supporting New Zealand's charge.

Last week Ciparick ruled that Conner's catamaran had created a "gross mismatch." The decision gave the America's Cup to New Zealand, which will host the next competition in 1991, and torpedoed San Diego's hopes for a $1.2 billion bonanza during the six-month competition. Conner, ironically, was in New Zealand last week filming a commercial for a new board game called Cup Fever. "I'm a sailor," he declared. "It offends me to see attorneys debating America's Cups in the courts. The Cup should be fought on the water." Amen.