Winged-keel heroes

THE race that broke the New York Yacht Club's grip on the America's Cup 25 years ago could easily have gone the other way.

ON September 26, 1983, John Longley was standing next to Australia II's mast. The only crew member of all four of Alan Bond's challenges for the America's Cup, Longley was feeling depressed. This was the last and deciding race for a cup the US had won and held since 1851. Challengers had won only 10 races of the 79 sailed. Five of those had been won by Australian boats, three of them by the boat Longley was sailing on that afternoon.

"We were just getting hammered ... we were two minutes behind," Longley recalls. "(Rival skipper) Dennis Conner had pulled the old three-card trick. He had lightened the boat up by taking off everything he thought he didn't need. He only carried two spinnakers, which was a big gamble."

Australia II, skippered by Melbourne's John Bertrand, had come back from being 3-1 down to even the score.

In a makeshift studio of NBC television affiliate WJAR, Seven Network journalist Paul Marshall and Australian sailor Iain Murray had joined the US commentary team to broadcast this last race live into Australia. At 25, Murray was already a sailing legend. He had won his first world title in 18-foot skiffs at 19, then won five more in succession. Earlier in the year he had skippered an Australian 12m hopeful.

"Iain had just walked off the set to get a cup of coffee. As the yachts turned the mark and put up their spinnakers for the run down, I looked across and there was Iain with his hands outstretched, bringing them gradually together. Somehow he knew we were catching them," Marshall says.

This would have been news to Longley. "I started to feel a bit better as soon as we put the chute (spinnaker) up," Longley says. But Australia II from the Royal Perth Yacht Club was still 57 seconds behind the New York Yacht Club's Liberty.

"They always had better names than us: Liberty, Courageous, Intrepid, Freedom. They always had better-looking boats than us. Their crew always had straighter teeth than us and they had better women hanging off them," Longley recalls. "Before 1983, coming to Newport for the summer was awe inspiring. We always felt like we had crashed a high-class party that we shouldn't have been invited to."

Americans have always wanted royalty. In Newport, Rhode Island, residents believed they were American royalty. As late as 1983, Newport parents would send their daughters to Europe in search of a husband with a title.

Wealthy families such as the Vanderbilts and the Astors built summer "cottages" there. Cornelius Vanderbilt II's cottage, the Breakers, had four floors and 70 rooms, 33 for the servants. John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Bouvier were married in Newport's St Mary's Church in September 1953.

The New York Yacht Club has always had two bases: West 44th Street, New York, and Newport. On August 22, 1851, the club's 101-foot schooner America defeated the pride of British racing. While some wags suggested America had a secret propeller, thus setting the stage for a deep suspicion of the club's ethics for the next 132 years, the old silver ewer remained bolted to its plinth in its own spacious room.

There has always been a strong connection between Australia and Newport. Some historians believe the remains of Captain James Cook's Endeavour are buried in Newport harbour, while at the start of Australia's first campaign for the America's Cup in 1962, then president Kennedy told an official dinner: "In the 1790s, American ships, mostly from Rhode Island, began to call regularly at New South Wales. Their cargoes, I regret to say, consisted mainly of gin and rum, and the effect was to set back the athletic development, until the recent great temperance movement in Australia, for many years."

Kennedy went on to remind guests that in 1801 governor Philip Gidley King told the American minister Rufus King to warn the Rhode Island merchants not to try to market their rum in Australia. "I need hardly say that the Rhode Island merchants continued to do their compassionate best to quench this thirst which was felt so strongly in Australia. However, Australia became committed to physical fitness and it has been disastrous for the rest of us," Kennedy said.

Australia's first challenge, in 1962, was by publisher Frank Packer. When asked why he did it, he said: "Alcohol and delusions of power." While Packer's Gretel took one race off the American Weatherly, the inexperienced challenge went down 4-1.

Eight years later the team of Bond and Bob Miller (later to change his name to Ben Lexcen) challenged in Southern Cross. Bondy was always a great promoter and even more an eternal optimist. One investment banker later described him as man "who could walk a tightrope between the Empire State building and the World Trade Centre and not realise you could fall".

Bond wouldn't give up, in 1977 with Australia; in 1980, again with Australia, with a secret bendy mast; and in 1983 in the Lexcen-designed Australia II with another secret. Although Australia went down in 1980, they did win a race. The Americans protested and won, but Bond and his top team now knew the Yanks and their skipper Conner were not invincible. "When we beat them in that race in 1980 we knew they were just yachties in a boat," Longley says.

As an AFL fan and someone who once had the potential to be an AFL player, new skipper Bertrand insisted the crew use a sports psychologist, Carlton's Laurie Hayden.

"(Team boss) Warren Jones and I thought it was a wank ... but we stopped being in awe of them," Longley says.

The day before the last race the crew went for their usual training run.

This time they ran in the opposite direction, spooking some of the traditionally superstitious sailors. Bertrand led them to the Americans' crew house.

"We were fitter and harder than an AFL team and certainly a lot fitter than the Americans. We could see them over the fence doing limp-wristed sit-ups and star jumps. Bertrand said: 'Jump the fence, pick your opposite number and drop them.' There was no yelling or screaming; we just dropped them hard and kept running."

For the first time the Australian America's Cup challengers were proud to be the men from Down Under; the Men at Work song booming out from the slips every day said itall.

Do you come from a land down under?
Where women glow and men plunder?
Can't you hear, can't you hear the thunder?
You better run, you better take cover.

For the first time the Australians had the psychological advantage. Lexcen's winged keel hidden beneath a shroud drove the defenders mad. They used scuba divers, formal protests and the media to try to get Bond to lift his green canvas skirts.

"They didn't have any gaps," Murray says. "They had the whole combination right. Australia II was designed for light airs, it had extremely good stability, the crew was well trained, they had a mast and boom and sails that were ahead of the game, and a boat that was impeccably built by Fremantle local Steve Ward. They did nearly end up beating themselves with breakages, but when we needed to sail well we did. When Dennis Conner needed to sail well he didn't."

Turning the mark for the spinnaker run, Conner went to the right-hand side of the course. Traditionally in Newport the right-hand side was where the most breeze was, but earlier Bertrand had found more pressure on the left-hand side.

"Liberty's spinnaker looked too big. Ya (Phil Smidmore) said: 'Look, John (Bertrand), there's some pressure over to the left.' Bertrand said: 'Thanks, Ya, keep your eyes out of the boat, otherwise we could lose this thing,"' Longley says.

"Halfway down the track Dennis gybed across and we wiggled out in front."

Australia II turned at the final mark for home 21 seconds ahead.

"When I looked over at them I could see they were gone. I turned to Brian Richardson and said: 'They're f..ked. At the same time Dennis Conner said to his crew: 'Anyone got any ideas?"'

Australia II crossed in front of the race committee boat, Black Knight, 41 seconds ahead of Liberty.

On national radio, Australians were told: "Stand up, Australia, and give these boys a cheer. Australia II has done it ... they have won the America's Cup.' On the Nine Network, newly elected prime minister Bob Hawke said that this was the "finest moment in all Australian sports history".

"I'm drowned in champagne. I just want to say to Bondy, to Jones, to Bertrand, the crew and not forgetting that marvellous Australian Ben Lexcen ... that there's not many occasions when an Australian prime minster can speak for all Australians but I don't think there's been a greater moment of pride for Australia in what you've done."

As one newspaper headline said: "The biggest thing since peace in 1945". Bond syndicate boss and the brains behind the cup win, Jones, said: "All I can say is 'mate'. That is the very finest Australian saying. And all the summer it's been 'check' to the New York Yacht Club, to the British, to Dennis, or whatever it was. We were playing chess with them. Check, check, check, check. And today we say 'mate'!"

Fast forward 20 years to the AFL grand final. The crew of Australia II is driven around the MCG in front of a crowd of 80,000. After the Brisbane Lions beat the Collingwood Magpies, the crew heads for a Melbourne restaurant they've booked for thenight. For the first time, they hold a debriefing of the 1983 win.

Longley has obtained a computer printout of the race from the Western Australian Maritime Museum.

"I got six pieces of butcher's paper and drew the actual track and actually used the computer telemetry to see what really happened throughout the whole race," Longley says.

"What happens in Newport is you get a light sea breeze. Nine out of 10 times, right works for you. Dennis Conner started to sail away and, instead of covering us like you do in a normal match race, he went right and let us go. We had a better light-air spinnaker and a better light-air boat.

"If it had have been a normal light-air day in Newport, Dennis would have won."

John Connolly covered the 1983 America's Cup for The Australian Financial Review. He now writes a weekly column on cars for The Weekend Australian.