KEEL-HAULED

I am in shock. We cheated to win the America’s Cup. To quote the famous World Series baseball line ‘Say it ain’t so, Joe’. Can it be true that back in 1983 we ended 132 years of the New York Yacht Club’s winning streak with the revolutionary winged keel of Australia II?  But we cheated to do it?
It seems it is true. That Alan Bond’s grubby business tactics and crooked behaviour even permeated the supposedly gentlemanly word of yachting and he even paid a Dutch naval architect $25,000 hush money to keep quiet about the deception.

‘Say it ain’t so Joe’. I loved the America’s Cup. Covered all the losing ones from 1967 in Newport, Rhode Island. Suffered with Jim Hardy and Frank Packer when the New York Yacht Club bent the rules to suit themselves. That was when Sir Frank said complaining to the New York Yacht Club about yachting protests was like complaining to your mother-in-law about your wife. I even wrote a novel about an America’s cup race.

The cheating allegation comes down to this. Competing boats must be designed by residents or citizens of the country they represent. Ben Lexcen, formerly known as Bob Miller, was a brilliant Australian boat designer.

According to Bond and Sir James Hardy and skipper John Bertrand, Lexcen conceived and designed the revolutionary winged keel which was shrouded until after the final victorious race. Although Bertrand now says ‘success has many fathers’.  The vital tank tests on the keel were done in The Netherlands.

Dutch naval architect Peter van Oossanen says Lexcen had a flair for design but wasn’t a scientist. His contribution was only five to ten per cent. He was not even in The Netherlands for the “Eureka moment’. The breakthrough.

The real inventors were van Oossanen, his Dutch team and Dutch aerodynamicist Joop Slooff.

That would make the keel a Dutch design and would have disqualified  Australia II from competition.

Lexcen, the publicly professed genius inventor, was made a Member of the Order of Australia, had a car named after him and, eventually, honoured in the New York Yacht Club America’s Cup Hall of Fame.

It is true the Americans were notorious for changing the rules to protect their hold on The Auld Mug and they succeeded for more than 130 years.

But to be told we cheated to beat them just knocks the wind out of your spinnaker.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Footnote: On my 3AW program both America’s Cup veteran, Sir James Hardy and Australia II skipper, John Bertrand, strongly defended Lexcen. They said he was the designer. It was his idea, his baby. Australia II’s Project Manager, John Longley, dug out a telex that van Oossenan  sent to his bosses at the NSMB ( Netherlands Ship Model Basin)  after the New York Yacht Club queried whether he (van Oossenan) had helped to design Australia II.

It read: ‘ .. NSMB acted in a testing capacity and did not participate in the design. From our own conclusion it follows that in our opinion Mr.Lexcen is the sole designer of Australia II. An opinion we have openly expressed…’

Thursday, October 15, 2009

© Copyright Derryn Hinch 2009