San Diego May Not Get to Defend Cup

FREMANTLE, Australia —  A director of the eliminated Eagle syndicate says if San Diego’s Dennis Conner wins back the America’s Cup, he’ll probably defend it in Hawaii.

John Griffith, director of marketing for the Newport Beach syndicate, said: “I believe Conner would sell it off to Hawaii.”

Conner, who tested his boats in Hawaii, is to start the best-of-seven challenger final series against New Zealand Jan. 13. The winner will meet the Australian defender starting Jan. 31.

Conner’s effort is sponsored by the San Diego Yacht Club, but Malin Burnham, president of the Sail America syndicate, said two weeks ago that if Conner won the Cup, it was possible a defense would be held elsewhere. He mentioned Hawaii, Santa Cruz, Calif., and Newport, R.I., as possibilities.

Apparently, under the agreement Conner and Burnham have with the SDYC, they can entertain bids from other locales to stage the Cup.

“At no time did Malin (Burnham) say to anybody that the Cup would be sailed in San Diego,” said Fred Frye, SDYC commodore. “That’s never been said by Sail America and that’s never been said by the San Diego Yacht Club. That’s never been said from Day 1, and I know that.”

Further, Frye said the SDYC has not been involved in fund raising for Sail America, which is an independent foundation.

A survey performed for Eagle by the Center for Economic Research at Chapman College in Orange concluded that a 1991 Cup defense would be worth $1 billion to the area, most of it related to tourism attracted by the event.

Conner’s Sail America syndicate applied a similar impact study to San Diego, but Burnham cited three major problems: lack of dock space for a fleet of 12-meters, inconsistent winds and a proliferation of seaweed off the coast.

Griffith mentioned the same factors as negatives to a San Diego defense, as did Frye.

“It would be wonderful,” Frye said, “if San Diego had the right kind of sailing conditions. There’d be no question.”

And proper dock facilities?

“The Port (Authority) would really have to want to do it,” Frye said. “They would really have to spend some heavy bucks on the pens to handle 24 boats. They built a whole new harbor in Fremantle--Challenger Harbor. They’ve spent a tremendous amount of bucks.”

But bucks cannot change the wind.

“We’d still have night and morning low clouds, winds westerly 8 to 10,” Frye said. “I just don’t know if we would have the kind of conditions for the exciting racing they’re having now.”

But concerns about dock space and wind conditions did not impress a member of the Greater San Diego Sports Assn., who asked that he not be named.

“Talk like that is selling us down the river,” he said. “This is a little bit of a shock. They go raising money in the community and then say they might not defend here because of the right kind of winds. I’ve heard so many talks about what it might mean to the community, but no one’s said anything about winds or docks.”

Frye said the process for selecting a site to defend the Cup is complicated. “We don’t, as a club, necessarily choose the venue where the Cup will be raced,” he said. “San Diego may or may not be the best place in the world to go for the Cup.”

Frye said he believed much of the commotion about financial impact was caused by the Orange County study that estimated a Cup defense would contribute $1 billion to the economy and a report from Australia that this year’s defense was adding $2.5 billion to the Perth/Fremantle economy.

Frye noted that the America’s Cup races were held in, first, the Long Island Sound and, later, Newport, R.I., when the defending club was the New York YC.

“I heard it said today, and it was not first-hand, that Dennis had offered it back to Newport,” Frye said, “but, really, it’s probably premature to speculate. It’s probably unwise to speculate until we have the Cup.”

Staff Writers Rich Roberts reported from Fremantle, Australia and Dave Distel from San Diego.