1995 black magic
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Black Magic ‖ Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron syndicate: Team New Zealand syndicate head: Peter Blake designers: Peterson, Davidson, Alan-Williams,
Schnackenberg (coordinator) builders: McMullen & Wing helmsman: Russell Coutts
Young America ‖ San Diego Yacht Club one of 3 boats from different syndicates syndicate: Team Dennis Conner syndicate head: Dennis Conner
designers: Bruce Nelson and team builders: Goetz helmsmen: Paul Cayard and Dennis Conner
defeats
young america
fter his winning 1992 campaign Bill Koch had openly admitted that one of his support boats, Quzzini, had fired low-level lasers at the other competitors in order to calculate their performances. The old days of watching for bubbles in the dock were obviously past and spying had gone too far, so in 1995 syndicates unanimously agreed to allow their yachts to drop their skirts and to blatantly flash their bottoms. That was not all that the yachts were to show off, for thanks to the previous rule change which allowed syndicates to advertise during racing, by 1995 hulls had become so tattooed with graffiti that yachting purists shuddered. But those who had objected to the change from 12 Metres to International America’s Cup Class boats had already had to eat humble pie. Bill Koch, who in 1992 had spent some $70m to secure 134 ounces of silver mug, had never gained much of a race advantage and his margin of victory in the final reckoning against the Italian challenger averaged just 50.6 seconds, making it, as had been ‘planned’ for the new class of boats, the closest America’s Cup final of all time! The reason that this ‘planning’ now went wrong was entirely due to two black torpedoes fired, late in 1994, at the guts of the American Defenders from the direction of New Zealand. The success of New Zealand’s opening salvo was due to the IACC rule which allowed designers to experiment, without a rating penalty, on reducing beam below an upper limit of 18ft (5.5m). Doug Peterson, who had played a large part in the design of Bill Koch’s slimline 1992 winner America3, had had a lifetime’s experience of the capricious winds and often confused waters off San Diego, and he knew that, unlike the fuller body of Stars & Stripes favoured by the old campaigner Dennis Conner and later to be butchered without mercy, a narrower hull with a lower drag ratio held considerable advantages. In this he demonstrated that computers, although more than capable of simplifying the designer’s work, were not so hot at reading the complex forces generated by such fickle winds and weather. Surprisingly, no other designer moved as far as Peterson in the same direction. One of seven challengers from five nations, ‘Team New Zealand’ had set out to prove that money was not everything. Operating on a conservative budget (in America’s Cup terms) of just US$15m, it soon became apparent, as they started carving up the opposition, that it was not just the speed of their yachts that gave them an advantage, but also
years of match racing experience and determined preparation. Sir Michael Fay, the New Zealander behind the country’s three previous attempts, put it nicely: ‘They didn’t get the yacht off the shelf, you know; it was a fine team effort.’ Needless to say, he made no mention of his own valiant efforts that had laid the keel. A second ‘Win New Zealand’ team had entered a yacht NZL–39 designed by Bruce Farr and sailed by Chris Dickson. Together with the Spanish Rioja de Espana, the two Japanese Nippons, the French France 2 & 3, again skippered by Marc Pajot, and two Australian syndicates fielding oneAustralia and Sydney 95, it had all the ingredients of an exciting elimination series. But so dominant were Team New Zealand with their chosen yacht Black Magic (in 1870 the schooner Magic won the first America’s Cup to be held in the USA) that the 1995 Louis Vuitton Cup will otherwise be remembered only for a shipwreck! OneAustralia had, it seemed, been built, much as the Cup winner Reliance had been built in 1903, to extreme specifications. The 20-knot conditions on that March day had been too much for her and John Bertrand, who had skippered Australia II when she won the epic Cup battle of 1983, could only watch, accompanied by the rest of the world on television, as his yacht sank vertically below the briny, like a stone. The defender trials were memorable for quite a different reason—the first ever women’s crew to take part in the America’s Cup. Nearly 1000 American ladies had applied to Bill Koch for the job, ranging from sailors to weightlifters; but was it any more than a media stunt unworthy of such a noble competition? In early April a sudden-death sail-off between Koch’s second boat Mighty Mary and Stars & Stripes was well won by the women’s team, plus one male ‘tactician’, not knowing that a deal was being hammered out on shore to keep the wily Dennis Conner, plagued by a slower boat, in the defenders’ finals. ‘We felt out of the loop,’ stated a lady crew member. Perhaps they were never in it. On 1 May, in an attempt to fend off the threatening New Zealanders with the strongest possible war machine, Conner, who had narrowly won the final race, made an unprecedented move: substitutions being denied to challengers, he chartered Young America, of the three defending finalists the yacht most likely to succeed. Five days later, with no time to learn her tricks, he was to receive his first trouncing.
The second race was even more disastrous, Black Magic winning by over four minutes—the greatest margin since James Ashbury’s Livonia was beaten by the defender Columbia in 1871. While Conner and his helmsman Paul Cayard prepared to walk the plank, Peter Blake, the doyen of New Zealand yachting and the man behind the 1995 challenge, donned his lucky red socks. This led to over 300,000 pairs being sold to his ecstatic countrymen, and half the proceeds went straight to their dock in San Diego. Then, as a giant pair were hoisted on the government building in Wellington, a horse named ‘America’s Cup’ ran at Ellerslie, Auckland, wearing red socks—the last chance, perhaps, for the Americans to lay off their bets! On 15 May Black Magic crossed the line for her fifth consecutive victory to take the America’s Cup by storm and thus become only the second boat to grab it from the might of the United States in the Cup’s 144-year history. In five months on the water she had lost just one race. Black Magic and Young America tacking to windward in a series where every leg saw New Zealand having a winning moment.
By 1995 hulls had become tattooed with graffiti
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