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Tuesday, March 7, 1995
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Hard winds,waves damaging to boats in America's Cup
The Associated Press
SAN DIEGO — After 144 years, the unthinkable finally happened in an America's Cup race.
The yacht oneAustralia broke in two in heavy wind and fierce Pacific Ocean waves on Sunday and sank within two minutes. All 17 crew members were rescued.
"This team that we have is a red-hot racing team, and we're conditioned for the ups as well as the downs," skipper John Bertrand said after the worst accident in America's Cup history. "You don't practice abandoning the ship so that it can go to the bottom of the ocean."
The $3 million oneAustralia, launched in January, was sailing its ninth race.
The Australians will continue in the trials in their older boat, which sailed in the first two round-robins of the challenger trials.
Australian yacht sinks during race
"We (Australians) are known for
"We heard a loud crack, just like a cannon going off," said Bertrand, who thought the rigging was coming down. "And then the boat appeared to start to fold like a sheet of cardboard through the center, and (there was) this sickening sound as the boat was breaking apart."
"Half the team was in the water still, being picked up by the chase boats, when the top of the mast was disappearing into the ocean," he said. "It's unbelievable."
"We told everyone to take off their boots and get the hell out of there," Bertrand said.
"It was a terrible look to see a lot of foul-weather gear floating on top of the surface and a few oneAustralia hats, and nothing else," Bertrand said.
Bertrand said there was concern when an initial head count came up one short.
Also Sunday, France 3 dismasted and a Stars & Stripes crewman was left dangling upside down from the running backstay, 65 feet off the deck, after losing his grip while descending from making a repair.
This is the second America's Cup contested in the International America's Cup Class yachts. To best handle San Diego's usually light, shifty winds, the yachts are built as light as possible and put under extremely heavy loads.
Besides the foul-weather gear, only a sail bag and a piece of debris floated on the surface.
"And therefore when one sails them in the maximum conditions ... then they're fully stressed out," Bertrand said. "We're still unclear exactly how this boat broke up, and why."
OneAustralia officials said they would not be ready to sail today's scheduled race against France 3. All foreign syndicates except the French agreed to reschedule the race to Thursday. The international jury was to make a decision this morning.
Should the jury refuse to reschede the race, France would need to just sail the race course alone to pick up five points.
The crew abandoned ship as the 75-foot hull folded in on itself, and chase boats from both teams raced in. New Zealand's chase boat picked
"The seas were difficult for this type of boat," he said.
Bertrand said one Australia, Team New Zealand and France 3 advised the race committee that the conditions were unfit for racing.
The crew had just completed a tack on starboard and was trimming the sails when the gumleaf green hull, made of carbon fiber, buckled about five feet aft of the mast.
The surreal drama began halfway through the 18.55-mile race, with oneAustralia trailing Team New Zealand on the windward third leg, through a squall, a brief, violent windstorm.
Race official Pat Healy said the conditions did not exceed predetermined parameters.
our bush fires and floods. We come from very strong stock," said Bertrand, who became the first foreign skipper to win the America's Cup in a dramatic upset of Dennis Conner in 1983.
"We have to focus our energy into our first boat and go on without equipment and win the America's Cup," he said.
In the only race that was completed, Sydney 95 beat Nippon by 1 minute, 22 seconds. The race jury rejected Nippon's protest that the race shouldn't have been sailed in such conditions.
up 10 crew members, including Bertrand and helmsman Rod Davis
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