Randy Smyth Helping Sail America Design Catamaran for America’s Cup

Randy Smyth, the United States’ foremost multihull sailor, has been helping Sail America design a catamaran to meet New Zealand’s challenge for the America’s Cup this year.

“It will definitely be built,” Smyth said Thursday. Smyth, of Huntington Beach, won a silver medal in the 1984 Olympics sailing a Tornado catamaran.

No design plans have been revealed by Sail America, which will manage the defense for the San Diego Yacht Club. However, John Marshall, who heads the design team, indicated recently that two boats might be built--a proven-type monohull and a radical craft or catamaran.

New Zealand merchant banker Michael Fay insists that San Diego must sail in a boat similar to the monohull with a 90-foot waterline that he had to declare when he issued the controversial challenge last July. San Diego counters that the Deed of Gift that governs Cup competition implies the defender can sail any kind of boat, as long as it falls within the limits of 44 and 90 feet at the waterline.

In normal conditions, a catamaran is basically faster than a monohull, a fact that might ensure San Diego of retaining the Cup and following through with its original plans to stage a defense in conventional 12-meters in 1991.