Cup Briefs: Screening teens

Sixty teenage sailors were vying to be America's Cup stars on Sydney Harbour yesterday. Cup veteran Syd Fischer is recruiting 20 young yachties aged between 16 and 22 for his Young Australia campaign to join 19-year-old skipper James Spithill. A short-list of contenders will sail next week on AUS29, the 1995 cup yacht revamped for this cup regatta, to be relaunched on Monday. The Aussies are now negotiating for a small base somewhere in the Auckland cup village.

Young Americans

New York's new cup boats won't see the sea until they reach New Zealand in a month's time. USA53, the first of Young America's yachts, will be shipped to Auckland next week, while USA58, still in the shed, will be a fortnight behind. While the boats are in transit, the campaign will be trying to rustle up more money with a $US250-a-ticket fundraising ball in Newport, Rhode Island.

Valuable exposure

She hasn't got the hourglass curves, but Hawaii's new America's Cup boat has won a cameo role on American surf-soap Baywatch. Abracadabra 2000 will star in an episode of the bronzed-and-bikini-clad TV show to be shot in Hawaii next week. Boat skipper John Kolius reckons the exposure the boat will get in one episode of the programme - which apparently titillates 400 million viewers a week - will equal the impact from 600 hours of worldwide TV coverage during the cup.