Word: keele
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...beginning with a spectacular success at what has always been the heart of the American game: building yachts that are technologically superior to those of all their challengers. Measuring 64 ft. 7 in. from its snub-nosed bow to its raked-back stern, Australia II has the most radical keel ever to hang from the bottom of a 12-meter-yacht*. Though the Aussies ostentatiously drape a shroud over the keel when the boat is hauled out after each day's sail-psych is everything in the America's Cup competition-just about all of Newport knows what...
With Australia II on its way to an impressive 37-4 won-lost record, Halsey Herreshoff, navigator of the leading American boat, Liberty, drafted a complaint, claiming that the keel was illegal and that the Australians should be penalized, disqualified or forced to change its configuration. Otherwise, wrote Herreshoff in his memo to New York Yacht Club officials, Australia II "will likely win the America's Cup." No foreign boat has ever done that in the 132-year history of the races, and some of the challengers quickly charged that the N.Y.Y.C. was doing its best to make sure...
Supported by Herreshoff's argument that the Aussie keel fins give the boat added draft, or depth, upwind, thus making it a 12.5-meter or 12.8-meter yacht in those conditions, the N.Y.Y.C. asked the Measurement (TM) Committee to reconsider its earlier O.K. Last week the I.Y.R.U. officials responded with a unanimous no. But that did not end the matter...
Robert McCullough, chairman of the N.Y.Y.C. America's Cup Committee, next asked the I.Y.R.U.'S Keel Boat Committee, the final arbiter on such technical questions, to examine the keel. "In our country," observed Australia II Executive Director Warren Jones, "we take the referee's ruling and go on with the game. Why don't the Americans do the same...
While the keel affair simmered, a second dispute, potentially more embarrassing to the N.Y.Y.C. mandarins, rocked Newport. Race officials, it seemed, had allowed...