Captain Gerard "Jerry" Farrell is the commanding officer, Naval Station Annapolis, and director, Naval Academy Sailing.

The outcome of the Battle of Hauraki Gulf is not yet decided. The opposing fleets have been preparing since 1995, and they clashed at sea for the first time in October. The victor will be decided by early March. The fleets are evenly matched in size. Victory will go to the side with the greater technological edge, soundest financial backing, finest tactical skills, and best teamwork--and perhaps just a measure of good luck. This is the pinnacle of sailboat racing.

Maritime supremacy will be the focus of the first major international sports event in the millennium year 2000. New Zealand will defend its right to retain the oldest trophy in competitive sports, the America's Cup. When Team New Zealand puts to sea on 19 February, it will sail one-on-one against the winner from among 11 teams representing seven nations seeking to challenge for the Cup. The United States has five teams, or syndicates, entered in the Louis Vuitton Cup Challenger Races. The challenger series began in October 1999. It will end with the final race on 25 January 2000 deciding which country faces the Kiwis.

In 1851, the yacht America, under the auspices of the New York Yacht Club, sailed to England to participate in the first great international trade exposition and joined 14 other yachts in a challenge race. Queen Victoria, watching from the Royal Yacht, was dismayed to see America soundly defeat the fastest boats England could put to sea. The prize was the Hundred Guinea Cup--called so for its cost--later renamed America's Cup. The Cup remained in the hands of the New York Yacht Club for 132 years and 24 matches before Dennis Conner, sailing Liberty, lost to Australia II in the summer of 1983. The United States successfully challenged for the Cup in 1987 with Dennis Conner as skipper in Stars & Stripes defeating the Aussies in Kookaburra II. Two matches and eight years later, Team New Zealand swept five straight races off San Diego in 1995 to take the Cup back "down under."

The history of the America's Cup competition is the story of the quest for technological superiority, teamwork, and good business sense as well as the story of many of the greatest names in the sport of sailing. Beginning with the first race in 1851, the series is as much business venture and technology competition as it is a sporting event. The first U.S. syndicate was composed of businessmen seeking the best way to showcase Yankee commercial products overseas. They designed and built the schooner America to be the last word in American shipbuilding. The history of naval architecture as it applies to sail craft is reflected in the America's Cup. Hull and keel designs are exhaustively researched and tested using space-age materials, computer-aided design, and some of the finest engineering test facilities in the world. The New York Yacht Club/Young America syndicate, for example, paid to use the Naval Sea Systems Command's David Taylor Model Basin in Carderock, Md., for testing of 1/3-scale models in the facility's 3,000-foot towing basin.

In 1851, the schooner America measured just less than 102 feet in overall length and carried 5,263 square feet of sail on two masts and a single jib. Her contract price was $30,000. In contrast, the contenders for America's Cup 2000 must meet the International America's Cup Class (IACC) design standards introduced in 1992. These technologically advanced carbon-fiber hulls are 78 feet overall with over 7,800 square feet of sail area. They are sailed by a crew of 16. Syndicates competing for the 30th America's Cup have budgeted from $10 million to $50 million. The five U.S. challengers have combined budgets totaling more than $125 million! Corporate sponsorship is the wind in the sails of the modern America's Cup.

Dennis Conner, skipper of San Diego's Cortez Racing Association Team Dennis Conner, is sailing in his seventh America's Cup series. He has won four and lost two. Australian Challenge's 20-year-old James Spithill is the youngest ever America's Cup skipper. The teams are a "Who's Who" in yacht racing today. Russell Couts, skipper and helmsman for defender Team New Zealand, won the 1995 America's Cup and has won three Match Racing World Championships. Paul Cayard is the winner of the 1997­1998 Whitbread around-the-world race and 1998 Rolex Yachtsman of the Year. Cayard skippers for San Francisco's St. Francis Yacht Club AmericaOne syndicate. Ed Baird, skipper of the New York Yacht Club's Young America, is the only American to have won the World Championship of Match Race Sailing (1995) and was the 1995 Rolex Yachtsman of the Year. National loyalties can become confused in pursuit of America's Cup victory. Baird coached the successful challenge of Team New Zealand in 1995.

Other U.S. syndicates are the San Francisco Yacht Club's America True and Abracadabra 2000 sponsored by Honolulu's Waikiki Yacht Club. In addition to Australia and the United States, nations vying for the right to challenge New Zealand are Switzerland, France, Japan, Italy, and Spain.

U.S. syndicates in particular are using the excitement of the Cup to encourage greater enthusiasm for learning among youth. Young America, for example, has established the Young America Education Program to motivate young people to explore a wide range of educational topics from engineering and physics to fitness and the environment. Links to lesson plans for grades K-12 are available on-line at www.youngamerica.org.

The contest for the America's Cup has all the elements inherent in seapower--economic viability, complicated logistics, technological superiority, intelligence gathering, strategic and tactical acumen. At the finish line, though, the outcome will be decided largely by the intangible components of the boat--the crew and its character under duress. As New York Yacht Club Commodore and Challenger of Record George M. Isdale Jr. puts it, "Victory will go to the team that wants it the most."

Racing enthusiasts can participate in the Cup through a virtual race program available online at www.americascup.org. This website has links to all the syndicates, race results, and more.

 
The America's Cup and the U.S. Navy

 

Ensign Ryan McCrillis of Key West, Fla., a 1998 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, represents the latest chapter in a long association among the U.S. Navy, the Naval Academy, the New York Yacht Club, and the America's Cup. As captain of the Academy's Offshore Sailing Team, McCrillis won both the Kennedy Cup and the McMillan Cup. Granted a two-year deferment of his active-duty service obligation to sail with Young America, McCrillis will report to Pensacola, Fla., for flight training after he attempts to bring home the Cup to the United States.

When the schooner America sailed in her second America's Cup match in 1870, she was owned by the U.S. Navy. It is the first recorded sailing race involving an Academy boat and crew, but the tradition continues to the present day. Sail training at the Naval Academy remains part of the core professional training curriculum. The inshore and offshore racing teams boast the largest coeducational varsity sports squad at the school. Every entering "plebe" learns how to sail during his/her first summer at the Academy. All midshipmen have an opportunity to hone their sailing skills during three-week offshore summer training cruises in Navy 44-foot sloops. Recreational sailing in the Academy's fleet of over 200 sail craft also is available.

Retired Rear Adm. Robert W. McNitt, author of the definitive illustrated history, Sailing at the U.S. Naval Academy, notes "A beautiful model of the America, with fittings made of wood taken from the original boat, is proudly displayed in the Robert Crown Center, headquarters of the sailing program, in Annapolis. It is there to remind future generations of midshipmen that sail training at the Naval Academy, competition at the highest level of international racing, and superb service at sea follow one from the other. This has been, and will always be, the unique heritage of the Naval Academy and the U.S. Navy as long as sailors go down to the sea in ships." Learn more about the Naval Academy Sailing Program online at www.usna.edu/SailingTeam/.

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