Route to a Successful America’s Cup Challenge Becoming Shrouded in Cloak of Secrecy, Security

ESCONDIDO — The cloak-and-dagger trail to the 1987 America’s Cup leads through this quiet inland town, across the tracks and down an industrial side street to a plain metal warehouse.

Dennis Conner’s Sail America syndicate and John Kolius’ America II have been there. Rod Davis’ Eagle group and the Canadians’ True North are coming.

Offshore Technology Corp. houses the largest commercial hydrodynamic testing facility on the continent, a computer-flanked tank 48 by 298 feet--almost as long as a football field and a third as wide.

Said Frank DeBord, the Offshore’s president: “We can’t show you any testing. We can’t show you any models. We can show you the tank.”

Almost everything OTC does is secret, from testing the stability of offshore drilling platforms to the efficiency of America’s Cup yachts. Wave and current actions are simulated, with data fed into computers.

OTC has been in business since 1969 but started testing sailboats only last year. The models are to one-third scale, or more than 20 feet in length. When they aren’t being tested, they are kept under wraps.

Rod Edwards, chief executive officer for OTC’s parent Arctec group, said: “When one syndicate is testing, we try to store the other models outside the area. We have to be careful.”

One exception is a model of the obsolete 12-meter Freedom that Conner used in defend the cup in 1980. Its mockup was used as a base for testing the new designs.

Conner said security has become a part of every serious America’s Cup campaign. Remember the dramatic unveiling of Australia II’s winged keel after its victory in ‘83?

“Sailing’s just a small portion of it now,” Conner said. “The guy that has the faster boat is gonna have a big edge.”

To protect his edge, Conner has hired a security officer from Convair-General Dynamics to watch over his program, but he doubts that it’s air-tight.

“We have a plan,” Conner said. “The designers don’t talk about the ideas by name. They have numbers. But they (rivals) get the design during construction, or after the boat’s done . . . hire a guy to take some pictures, or go to the bar. You know they’re going to get it, the Americans give so much information away, just in publications or in conversation.

“Even if you had a good idea, you could never build it now, because they’d steal it. You want to build it as late as you can to preclude anyone from copying it before the trials and as early as you can to still get all the wrinkles out of it.”

Conner said it is hardly any secret that every contender will have a winged keel.

“I would think so. America II tried a boat over there without wings and changed to a keel with wings and went a little faster. You can’t keep any secrets.”