Word: skippers
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...meter yacht, took yet another start from the Aussies. Midway up the first leg, however, the Americans' 8-sec. lead turned into a deficit of three or four lengths as Australia II streaked upwind on a starboard tack and Liberty went to port. After the first crossover, Aussie Skipper John Bertrand committed the cardinal sin of leaving his opponent uncovered. Liberty Helmsman Dennis Conner took the left side of the course for his own and by the first mark had opened a 29-sec. lead. It looked to many as if he had the race in his sail...
...dead air. With sails almost slack, Liberty jibed back, but the Aussie superboat picked up two shifts of friendly wind and rounded the fifth mark with a 21-sec. lead. Conner battled desperately to recover on the last, upwind leg, going through 47 grueling tacks. Said the American skipper: "We kept the pressure on them, but there was no point on that last weather leg that we thought their victory was in jeopardy...
...Matilda and waving Aussie flags passed legions of local patriots God-blessing America and brandishing the Stars and Stripes. Despite a few ugly incidents, there was remarkably little ill will among the crowd of 10,000 on the Newport waterfront. As Australia II was guided back into her slip, Skipper Bertrand, Backer Bond and Designer Ben Lexcen led a round of hip-hip-hoorays for Conner and his men. "There will never be another like it," mused Halsey Herreshoff, Liberty's navigator. "It was the essence of sport in that one race...
...Next day, at Marble House, former summer home ("cottage," in local parlance) of Harold Vanderbilt, himself an America's Cup legend, the unlovely pitcher was presented to its new owners and started the 11,620-mile trip to Perth. But first Liberty Syndicate Head Edward du Moulin gave Skipper Bertrand Liberty's dark blue burgee. Then N.Y.Y.C. Commodore Robert Stone presented Bond with "the bolt that's kept the Cup in place for 132 years." And Lexcen, who once told a reporter that he would like to steamroller the Cup and turn it into the "America...
...Americans called another day off, and both crews rested on Sunday. Meanwhile, in anticipation of light air, which has generally favored his opponent, Conner sent Liberty to a Narragansett Bay dockyard for adjustments of the ballast in its bottom. The Australians would just as soon have heavy weather. Skipper Bertrand, who took a master's degree in ocean engineering at M.I.T., recalls that he once took his boat out in a "cyclone just to see what she'd do." Says he: "It was blowing 45 or 50 knots. We couldn't even get the deck...