Auld Mug on troubled water

The America's Cup has long discarded the aim stated in its founding document, for "friendly competition between foreign countries". WARREN GAMBLE examines the depths it has plumbed.

A century-and-a-half of creative rule making and bending, obsessive secrecy, snooping and spying make the latest murky chapter of the America's Cup seem like business as usual.

From the cup's first race, it has been dogged by accusations of unfair sailing. But seasoned cup observers say the new claims and counter-claims of alleged peddling of design secrets could leave a new low-tide mark.

American courts are to decide whether former Team New Zealand and OneWorld Challenge adviser Sean Reeves tried to sell $6 million of design and technical plans to rivals, as the Seattle-based OneWorld alleges.

Affidavits from three other syndicates claim he did. Reeves, an Auckland lawyer specialising in America's Cup protocol, has denied the charges, and countersued for defamation. He alleges that former Team New Zealand and Prada staff took sensitive design and technical information with them to rival syndicates.

If any of the claims are proven, yachting's biggest prize could be forever tarnished.

In the fierce technological war of America's Cup design, Team New Zealand clearly had the edge on its rivals when NZL60 romped home two years ago. While knowledge of its 2000 design secrets would now be outdated, it would give rivals an invaluable jump-start in campaigns where time is the biggest enemy.

For its part, Team New Zealand is saying little. It does not want to be dragged into a distracting legal dispute in the run-up to its second and most daunting cup defence. But it has warned that it will prosecute anyone found to have taken its secrets in breach of lifelong confidentiality agreements.

Privately, the New Zealanders are incensed at the thought that former staff might not only have been lured away by big overseas pay cheques, but also took information they were not entitled to.

And that is a key issue in the whole messy affair. If you are a designer who moves on, what can you take with you?

The answer: Basically anything in your head, memories being beyond the reach of even America's Cup syndicates. Anything else, computer files, plans, photographs, scale models, equipment, is a breach of the America's Cup protocol.

It is also most likely a breach of your employment contract. OneWorld's civil suit alleges Reeves broke the confidentiality and separation agreements signed when he joined and left the syndicate. It is understood one of those agreements specifies a $300,000 penalty for each breach.

A United States District Court ruling on the suit is unlikely to be heard before the cup is decided on the Hauraki Gulf next February.

But in the meantime the cup's own disputes body, the arbitration panel, has been brought in. One World has gone to the panel, made up of international lawyers and retired judges, to rule on self-confessed "mistakes" Reeves has highlighted.

They included former Team New Zealand designer Laurie Davidson holding measurement certificates for the successful black boats in 2000 and an album of photographs showing New Zealand models during tank testing.

Reeves also alleged Davidson's $3.5 million design package for OneWorld was derived from his Team New Zealand work.

OneWorld and an angry Davidson this week decided to strike back. The designer said he had been given the measurement certificates at OneWorld by Reeves himself. They lay unnoticed in a drawer and were not used in his new designs.

Davidson said he had brought the photo album in to OneWorld after cleaning out his office. He had been taking it back to Team New Zealand he called into the nearby OneWorld base, leaving it on a table for 20 minutes, when Reeves saw it.

Davidson, who holds a copyright on the black boats, said he did not need to steal any designs because he could reproduce his Team New Zealand line drawings from memory, to within centimetres. He believed his new designs were an improvement on his Team New Zealand work.

OneWorld has effectively gone to the arbitration panel with its hands up, admitting that the presence of the album and measurement plans were minor breaches of the protocol.

Team New Zealand has appointed two panel members, retired High Court judge David Tompkins and current judge Master John Faire, two European lawyers were selected by Italian challenger of record Prada and a fifth was selected by the other four, retired Sydney High Court judge Michael Foster.

They have the power to rule on the Cup Protocol, an off-the-water rules document drawn up between Team New Zealand and Prada even before the last cup match finished. They can also throw a syndicate out of the cup for a serious protocol breach.

Ironically, Sean Reeves, as rules adviser to Team New Zealand in the last campaign, had a big hand in drawing up the protocol for this America's Cup.

The Cup Protocol was designed to put an end to some of the often bizarre controversies generated by interpretations of the competition's founding document, the Deed of Gift.

Drawn up in 1887 by George L. Schuyler, the sole survivor of the schooner America, which won the Cup from a British fleet off the Isle of Wight in 1851, the deed donated the now-famous silver ewer to the New York Yacht Club with its "friendly competition" aim.

Given that America's win in the inaugural race included a controversial dodgy shortcut, and an unfounded suspicion that it had used a propeller, it was always an optimistic mission statement.

It took another 132 years, the longest winning streak in sports, before Australia II took the cup Down Under.

After Dennis Conner wrested the cup back to America in 1987, the lack of an immediate challenger and a Cup Protocol allowed New Zealand's Michael Fay to lodge his notorious big boat challenge under the old provisions of the deed of gift.

The fiasco that followed on and off the water brought the introduction of an immediate challenger of record and a Cup Protocol. In essence, it is a modern-day agreement stemming from the Deed of Gift's clause that the terms of a challenge can be made "by mutual consent".

Over the years the protocol has been amended to tighten rules over reconnaissance (spying), nationality and design information, enshrine the new America's Cup class and bring in the two-boat and limited sails rules.

It also provides for the mandatory public unveiling of challengers' and defenders' yachts before racing.

Until now, clandestine snoopings added to the cup's intrigue, as syndicates went to the very edge of the rules. But accusations of deliberately stealing information are a far blacker stain.

A senior cup insider said the difference this time was the shiploads of money being spent on the campaigns.

"It's all about money, it's being thrown around, and for some it appears to be too much temptation."

Full coverage: Louis Vuitton Cup and America's Cup

Schedule

America's Cup winners since 1851


Team New Zealand news

Who's in, who's out


Challengers news

Challengers profiles


Other news related to the America's Cup

Other yachting news

Peter Blake, 1948-2001

nzherald.co.nz/marine

nzherald.co.nz/travel/nz

nzherald.co.nz coastal weather and tides