Partygoers get good look at controversial keel

Press, 12 September 1983, Page 23

Partygoers get good look at controversial keel

NZPA-Reuter Newport, Rhode Island A sleepy Narragansett Bay backwater buzzed alive on Friday night when a party for 500 coincided with the hauling ashore of Australia 11. It was not the kind of reception that the Australian campaigners had hoped for when they lifted the yacht for its pre-America’s Cup inspection. For one thing, the keel had to be kept hidden. There was also the serious business of its official inspection, the first before the eyes of the New York Yacht Club.

However, the Australians entered into the spirit of things, even allowing the skipper who will defend the Cup in the opening race tomorrow, Dennis Conner, to drive the lifting crane to the water’s edge above Australia 11.

“I suggested that I’d be happy to move the boat if he drove the crane off the

pier,” the syndicate’s executive director, Warren Jones, said. “But he declined.” The event was held 40km from , Newport at Cove Haven marina, which is on a small inlet only accessible to 12-metre yachts at high tide.

It may be far from the Newport scene, but the marina’s pride in its association with the giant sloops is evident in a list of 12-metre registration numbers along the sides of its truck.

On Saturday night, the marina held a party for the Cup syndicates in a tall shed decorated inside with huge spinnakers. Resting in one corner was the maverick hull of the Sydney campaigner Advance, which is now up for sale. As Australia II was lifted with a green tarpaulin circling the hull, party revellers came to watch.

Security guards invited anyone who was too close to

move on, but when the Cup challenger disappeared inside the shed, Johan Valentijn, designer of the defending yacht Liberty, was in there too, and was greeted warmly by Australia II project manager, John Longley. Mr Valentijn was having his first look at his opponent’s winged keel on behalf of the N.Y.Y.C., who was allowed to have one observer at the inspection. He came out impressed. “It’s a pretty wild and radical type of keel,” he said. “The concept is not new but the way they’ve executed it is certainly new,” he said. Countering popular rumour — and the belief of the N.Y.Y.C. - Mr Valentijn said there was no bulb at the front of the keel.

“The wings are pretty big though.” Australia II passed “very smoothly” through the first part of its inspection by the official Cup measurer, Mark Vinbury.