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... — — — ... Posted: Tuesday July 30, 2002 5:54 PM
Dennis Conner's $5 million Stars & Stripes USA-77, America's best hope to win back the America's Cup from New Zealand next winter, was sailing in waters as calm as Bob Hope's bathtub when the rudder post broke. Next thing you knew, Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet were swimming down hallways. But that's not the delicious part. When it sank, Stars & Stripes USA-77 was on its way to pick up some sponsors for a corporate joy sail. Hey, fellas! How do you feel about submarine races? Conner, a four-time winner and two-time loser of the America's Cup, needs to raise about $40 million for his latest bid, and those millions come from corporations like Airgas, which specializes in capturing the toxic fumes emitted from Fox NFL Sunday. Actually, Airgas is a distributor of specialty gases, and as a major sponsor the company's honchos get a once-in-a-lifetime ride on an 80-foot America's Cup racing vessel. The big cheeses from Airgas were on a launch, with Conner, heading for the sailboat when they got the bad news. Sorry, the boat you helped buy just sank .. . but who wants some cool Stars & Stripes stickers? Conner handled the situation rather artfully. He wiped off his flopsweat and said, "You know, a lot of people can go on a sailboat ride, but it's not every day you can come to a sinking." So he took them out to the wreckage site to see not a boat but the top half of its 110-foot mast sticking out of the water like Opie's lost fishing pole. That must have been when it hit the suits that their corporate logo was painted proudly on a boat at the bottom of the sea. Look at it this way: You're now reaching the oft ignored sardine demographic! It took six hours to fish out the boat. At least Airgas chairman Peter McCausland didn't flip out. "Dennis has promised us credit for the time our logo was underwater," he said with a grin. No one knows for sure why the rudder post snapped as the yacht was sailing with the team's other new boat, Stars & Stripes USA-66. Said team president Bill Trenkle, "I don't want to tell you too much because I don't want to give away any secrets." (You especially don't want the competition to steal your snappable-rudder-post secrets.) Luckily, all 15 aboard Stars & Stripes USA-77 were rescued by other crew members in a support boat. Not only that, but because the sponsors were about to board, the yacht was in only a 55-foot-deep channel outside the Long Beach breakwater. Ninety-nine percent of the time, the team is practicing in San Pedro Channel, which is about 2,000 feet deep. Conner still plans to race USA-77 in the Challenger Selection Series. In fact, he was quoted on his website as saying, "Small setbacks like this.... " Whoa there, Denny! Small setbacks? How much hull epoxy have you been sniffing? Your boat sinking is a small setback? What was the Perfect Storm, a pelican burp? You wonder what his sales pitch will be the next time he goes, hat in hand, to sponsors. And we're almost positive we can keep it above water this time! The challenger eliminations begin on Oct. 1, but there has been such a bizarro run-up to the Cup, you wonder if anybody will be left to eliminate. OneWorld, the U.S. syndicate that counts Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen among its backers, has been accused by Team New Zealand of stealing the Kiwis' designs. (OneWorld claims it was inadvertent.) Italy's Prada team charged the Oracle Racing syndicate with spying from a barge. (Oracle denies it.) Both cases are being reviewed by an arbitration panel. The victorious captain from the 2000 Cup, New Zealand's Russell Coutts, sold himself to a Swiss team. (Hey, what says "ocean racing" more than Switzerland?) And the project manager of Sweden's team was just sentenced to eight months in the clink for tax evasion. So maybe the bottom of the ocean isn't as low as you can go, after all. We may never know who was responsible for what happened in the bowels of Stars & Stripes USA-77 that day, but it must have been a colossal screwup by a world-class knucklehead. Hey, wait a minute. Anyone seen Bud Selig lately? Issue date: August 5, 2002 Don't miss The Life of Reilly (Total/SPORTS ILLUSTRATED, $22.95) -- a best-of compilation of Rick Reilly's columns and features, with a foreword written by Charles Barkley, available at bookstores everywhere.
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