‘They are a delight to sail against,’ exuded Spud. ‘They never want to do too much work on deck in case they mess up their natty uniforms. And we know when they’re about to tack. They all take one last, final drag, and throw their cigarettes overboard.’
Despite funds of around five million pounds to draw on, the Royal Thames Yacht Club’s White Crusader and her entourage are still very poor relations compared to the New York Yacht Club and America II, the Royal Perth Yacht Club with the affluent Bond and Kookaburra syndicates, and the astoundingly successful Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron with the brilliant young skipper Chris Dickson and her Kiwis KZ-3, KZ-5, KZ-7. Where other crews might rest after sailing, the White Crusader team is often obliged to compensate for the relative paucity of back-up staff by helping out on shore afterwards, hauling sails and swabbing down decks. Sailing twelve-metre yachts is a round-the-clock operation, and I saw Phil blanch visibly as he heard of the British crew’s normal daily schedule: up at six; breakfast; weight training; jogging; heave the heavy sails on board; sail for three, four or five hours, often in that monstrously strong, yet for landlubbers wonderfully refreshing wind the locals call the Fremantle Doctor; haul the far heavier wet sails off the yacht; lay them out to dry; scrub down the deck and start doing odd jobs in the yard: perhaps a run; dinner; collapse. And all this, in the case of many of the crew, for nothing more than their board and keep, and the sheer joy of the sport. Perhaps Phil’s mind turned to certain putatively professional cricketers, pulling in five or even six-figure sums, and hysterical at the slightest suggestion of an extra net, ten minutes desultory fielding practice, or the very idea of belittling themselves sufficiently to make deus ex machina appearances in between Test state games. True sport, I’m sure, can only ever be amateur. Budgetary restrictions being what they are, the British challenge does not have available cash for expensive trendy extras. Sport psychologists count as such and so Cudmore and Spedding thought it only fair to lift a few ideas from the crews of their rivals.
‘And by the way, no sex,’ suggested Spud one morning, almost subliminally, in his early morning team talk; ‘absolutely no sex during the elimination rounds’.
The stunned silence was finally broken by one all-macho winch-grinder. If normal conjugal relations were to be banned, he threatened, then he, for one, would just have to take the matters into his own hands, behind the back of the sail shed.
We could have stayed all day with Spud, listening to tales of alcoholic admirals, outrageously rude commodores and unstoppable yachting bores.
My favourite Spud story is about the lord, who, having heard similes about a man of his station, duly proceeded to get as drunk as one. It was in the heyday of those majestic vessels, the J-boats, and His Lordship, in a fairly plastered condition, fell asleep below deck one evening, and awoke to find the ship once again at sea.
‘Would you care to take the helm, my lord?’ asked the captain, with due deference, when His Lordship emerged finally.
‘No thank you, Smithers,’ replied His Lordship blearily; ‘I never touch a thing before breakfast’.
Or perhaps the other tale, which Spud tells in his own inimitable fashion, about the Algernon Cleft-Palate-Smythe-type yachting bore, who collared the retired Admiral in the Royal Thames Yacht Club, and insisted on regaling him with the tedious minutiae of some competition he had once been involved in.
‘And it was probably the Wednesday, no there again it might have been the Thursday, because on the Wednesday it was the ebb tide and then on the Thursday we had the flow tide . . . no there again it was my wife’s sister’s birthday on the Tuesday, I remember because we took her out to Claridge’s, and the day after we had the flow tide . . . and there we were sailing to leeward . . . no there again we must have been sailing to weather . . . because I remember saying to old Buffy . . . I remember saying, “Buffy, old man, Buffy, there’s only one way to sail this boat, and that’s to weather” . . . and Buffy said to me . . .’
The epic non-drama dragged on for a further ten minutes, as the Admiral’s faraway look became progressively further and further. Finally, he had had enough.
‘Carruthers,’ he shouted, summoning one of the discreet and impeccably dressed, stony-faced flunkies whose mission it was to emerge magically from the Club’s gin and tonic mists whenever needed.
‘Carruthers, come over here like a good man, and listen to the rest of this fellow’s story for me.’
We left Spud and the British challenge to deal with the bent mast, and returned to Perth for Phil’s team meeting. Unfortunately, listening to Spud’s tales of sailing folklore, I had omitted to ask him the one question that had been preying most on my mind. What was actually meant by a twelve-metre yacht?
‘It’s odd,’ I mused to Phil. ‘I had always assumed it meant the length of the boat, but now I’ve just read that Bondy’s victorious Australia II measured 64’ 7”, which makes it twice as long as twelve metres.’
‘Really!’ exclaimed Phil impatiently, in that same please-don’t-ever-mention-the-subject-to-me-again voice with which he quashed my embryonic, ‘why-don’t-left-arm-round-the-wicket-bowlers-bowl-at-the-wicket-rather-than-round-it?’ interest in cricket. ‘How can you be so totally stupid? Everybody knows twelve-metres refers to the height of the mast . . .’
Therein lies the fundamental difference between Edmonds P. H. and Edmonds F. E. . . . Whereas I am occasionally bright enough to recognise that I don’t know things, Phil is invariably dumb enough to assume he always does. I eventually found the answer to my question from the veteran Perth sailmaker and celebrated round-the-world yachtsman Roily Tasker. Twelve-metre class yachts, it would appear, are required to comply with the Rating Rule and Measurement Instructions of the International Twelve-metre Class, issued by the authority of the International Yacht Racing Union, in March 1985. The Twelve-metre Class of yacht is based on a complicated quotient, the import of which only Einsteins, gigabyte computers, Mensa folk and Ben Lexcen intellects of life can fully comprehend. The formula of the equation, for those addicted to the new Fremantle variation of Billionaires’ Trivial Pursuit, is simply this:
R =
Rating (12 metres in this class).
L =
Length of the hull measured approximately 180 mm above the waterline. Corrections for girth are applied to this measurement.
d =
The chain girth deducted from the skin girth. The skin girth is measured on the surface of the hull from the deck to a point on the keel about midships. The chain girth (measured at the same place) is the length of line stretched taut from the deck to the same point on the keel.
F =
Freeboard, or height of the hull above waterline.
SA =
Sail area includes the mainsail and the fore triangle bounded by the mast, forestay and deck.
2.37 =
Mathematical constant.
Good! Now the semantic nebulosity of twelve-metre has been sorted out, we can all forget it. I merely adverted to the formula because it epitomises the complicated morass of rules, regulations, practices and traditions which govern the America’s Cup. Many syndicates even have rules experts in their camps to advise them on procedure. During the 1983 Cup, for example, the New York Yacht Club challenged the legitimacy of Australia II’s radical winged keel. The NYYC lost its appeal, and simultaneously with it waves of grass-roots sympathy – if we may mix the maritime with the pastoral. Since the New Zealanders in Freo are doing so remarkably well in the 1986–87 Louis Vuitton Cup (the award for the successful challenger who will subsequently meet the successful defender), there is currently more American hoo-ha about the Kiwis’ fibreglass twelves, the ‘plastic fantastics’ as they have been so appositely nicknamed. Stars and Stripes skipper Dennis Conner has all but called the use of fibreglass instead of aluminium cheating, and fellow Californian USA II skipper Tom Blackaller has been heard to utter similar, if less directly litigious, comments.
No one, as yet, has had the temeri
ty to lodge an official complaint. The New Zealanders have Lloyds, public sympathy, and a lot of brilliant sailing on their side.
Insufficient knowledge of the rules has also led to certain misunderstandings over sponsorship. There are four Australian syndicates fighting it out for the honour to defend the Cup: two Perth-based syndicates, the Bond syndicate (with its Australias), and the Kevin Parry-led Taskforce syndicate (with its Kookaburras), which is presently leading the field. There is also a South Australia syndicate and an Eastern Australia Defence syndicate, with its rhyming slang yacht Steak ’n’ Kidney, so christened to rhyme with Sydney. Over-enthusiastic donors in the latter two syndicates had not all realised, however, that no matter which Australian syndicate were to win the Cup, that delightfully redundant Garrard artefact would continue to remain bolted securely in place at the Royal Perth Yacht Club. The competition is not between countries or cities, but between individual yacht clubs, and the Australian syndicate which wins the right to defend the Cup, irrespective of whence it comes, will do so on behalf of the Royal Perth Yacht Club.
This apparently came as something of a shock to certain Sydney hotshot punters, who had fancied the idea of the next series being battled out under the shadow of the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge. There seems a degree of poetic justice, however, in the fact that the Western Australian underdogs who wrested the Auld Mug from the New York Yacht Club, a club dominant for 132 years in the sport, should be allowed to cherish it while it still remains on Australian soil. Distressingly, though, looking at the Kiwis and the ravening Yanks, that may not be for very much longer.
The government of Western Australia, expecting vast profits from the tourist industry, has also ploughed millions of dollars into the Cup and its peripherals. Like Treasurer Paul Keating’s tax returns, however, the massive influx of tourists has failed to materialise. Neither does a sudden flood of twelve-metre aficionados seem likely to develop at this late stage to amortise capital investment. The press and syndicate circuses are already in situ, and locals fear that there could be even heavier losses if the Americans do not make it through to the finals. Nevertheless, there is no underestimating the groundswell of nationalism, even chauvinism, generated by winning at sport, be it never so exotic a sport as twelve-metre racing. Stickers, posters, advertisements, jingles, lapel badges, T-shirts, you name it, everything here in Perth proclaims, ‘G’day from WA’. Eileen, the wife of entrepreneur Alan Bond (who has probably done as much as any one man to put Western Australia on the map), is playing a protagonist’s role in this state promotion. It is tragic, however, that so few Eastern Australians, because of the vast distances involved, and the exorbitant price of internal flights compared to cheap, bucket shop international fares, ever even visit the place. It is such a pity! After Sydney, Perth must surely rate as the most beautiful of Australia’s state capitals. The Second Test in Perth stands out like a beacon in a rather gloomy early itinerary. If nothing else it means another trip to Freo, which is presently so full of sailors. And I am a nice girl.
It has become irritatingly necessary to go to WACA and watch some cricket. Being a Roman Catholic (although ever so slightly lapsed, due to theological difficulties in swallowing the encyclical De Humanae Vitae hook, line and ex cathedra sinker), I always feel obliged to do some penance after having some fun. Penance! Torquemada in the worst excesses of the Spanish Inquisition would never have inflicted this on the worst religious deviant. The cricket was worse than grotesquely bad, which can often prove acceptably amusing. It was just inadequately shambolic, which at best is intensely embarrassing. The Australian press corps was feeling mightily chuffed, and offering generous odds on England’s patently inexorable annihilation at the First Test in Brisbane. In Western Australia’s second innings England dropped at least seven dolly catches. I say ‘at least’ because there could have been plenty more and I may have missed some. My eye-surgeon brother, Brendan, currently devoting himself to being a little bannister on the stairway of life, researching into sickle-cell anaemia in Jamaica, discovered when I was out there, on England’s last disastrous tour, that I could hardly see. Not that there is anything I want to do to rectify this highly satisfactory state of affairs. I do not want to end up with vision so perfect that I am given incontrovertibly empirical evidence of something which I have vaguely suspected for some time now: that I have spent the last four or five years sleeping with a big, bald, fat man.
On the evidence of that day’s cricket, at least, Johnson of the Independent was perfectly right. England could not bat, they could not bowl and they could not field.
Watching as they dropped the seventh easy catch, people wondered seriously whether the England team was capable of catching the next morning’s plane to Brisbane.
4 / Brisbane: some cricket, at last
The flight from Perth to Brisbane, traversing the entire continent of Australia, involved about seven hours’ travelling, a three-hour time difference, and a stopover to change planes in Sydney. It was perhaps not entirely fortunate that those of our merry band who need their regular fix of tabloid twaddle raced off to buy the local evening paper. Oh, dear! It was the same phenomenon that reared its ugly head in Trinidad last year and caused so much trouble. Old guard British correspondents often erroneously assume that the copy they file back home to London will be read at breakfast time, forgotten by lunchtime, and consigned to the immortality it deserves, as people’s fish and chip wrappings, by teatime. How they underestimate the wonders of modern technology! Nowadays a piece written in Australia and filed to London may well be winging its way back within hours, boomerang style, to knock its originator on the head. In fairness, it must be granted, that this ‘talk back’ school of reporting often lifts chunks out of context, usually the most controversial and scurrilous chunks, and does a cut-and-paste job that is ideally designed to precipitate intercontinental aggro of mega proportions.
The London Evening Standard’s cricket correspondent, John Thicknesse, had apparently filed a piece on the Somerset County Cricket Club’s ritual bloodletting. The Somerset Committee, for a variety of reasons (many of which will probably never be fully comprehended unless or until captain Peter Roebuck releases his own deeply disturbing chronicle of events), decided to dispense with the services of West Indians Viv Richards and Joel Garner, and to enlist the services of New Zealander Martin Crowe instead. Far be it from me, a mere woman, to involve myself in the purely cricketing rationale of this move. Indisputably, Viv Richards is one of the world’s finest batsmen, and Joel Garner still a splendid fast bowler. The fact remains, nevertheless, that despite the presence of these two West Indians and Ian Botham, the Somerset team has been doing very poorly. There is talk that the triumvirate of superstars was a clique within the dressing room, and an influence in many ways deleterious to young, suggestible county players. Lest I start involving Heinemann in yet another mammoth legal battle however, suffice it to say that one fact remains beyond the shadow of a doubt. Superstars who may well perform miracles to packed crowds in the international arena are not necessarily as liable to give their all on a wet Sunday afternoon playing Glamorgan at Swansea. I rest my case, and await with interest the evidence of my learned Cambridge legal colleague, Mr Roebuck.
Botham, upon hearing of his two mates’ dismissal, immediately tendered his resignation to boot. This was perceived by many of the public to be a loyal and generous course of action. Considering that the Somerset Committee had stood by Botham while he was suspended for nearly an entire seasonfor drugs offences, it is perhaps difficult to decide where primary loyalty should lie. Whatever the merits of the case, supporters’ groupings were quickly mustered on both sides, and the resultant civil war made the Yorkshire County Cricket Club/Boycott issue look like a High Commission cocktail party. The internecine strife has become so ugly that in a press conference here in Australia Botham has warned Roebuck (who will be arriving in Brisbane to cover the tour for The Sunday Times of London, and The Sydney Morning Herald) that he would be saf
er staying at home. Phil says that kind of totally unveiled threat is all ‘piss in the wind’ (I’ve noticed, incidentally how the level of Phil’s concepts, conversation and metaphors plummets when he has spent more than two weeks in the egregious intellectual company of a touring team), but I am not so sure. Peter would probably, in any event, be well advised to give Botham a very wide berth. Since childhood I have always been physically frightened of people whose bodyweight in kilos is numerically higher than their IQ.
In his piece Thicknesse had branded Botham a boorish bully, which is about as original an observation as roses are red, violets are blue, sugar is sweet and Mike Gatting likes cheese and pickle sandwiches. It was, if I am not much mistaken, virtually the same expression used by the Mail’s brilliant roving, award-winning correspondent Ian Wooldridge, and by Phil’s biographer and The Times correspondent Simon Barnes in Trinidad last year, and the consequent eruptions were not dissimilar. On this occasion it was not Botham’s ghostwriter from the Sun who showed him the ex libris Thicknesse snippets. For it often seems that some reporters deliberately goad the mercurial Beefy into doing things, saying things, and overreacting to things in order to provide good tabloid copy. This time it must have been some other either deliberately malevolent or inadvertently thoughtless cog in the cricketing circus wheel. Botham duly exploded into a suitably Olympian rage, only the calming influence of managerial proximity preventing Thicknesse’s comments from becoming self-fulfilling prophecy. Botham turned to two of the England team’s younger acquisitions, and told them, although not perhaps in so felicitously turned a phrase, that they would rue the day should he ever catch either of them talking to Thicknesse.
The fact that the pair of them spend their travelling time with their Walkmans clapped uncommunicatively on their heads, the one of them obliged to down innumerable tinnies of Fosters in an effort to dispel his fear of flying, and the other unlikely to recognise Thicknesse even if he were to walk around clad in nothing but plastic laminated copies of The Evening Standard, rendered the Botham dictate somewhat superfluous. Nevertheless, certain members of Botham’s vicariously aggrieved cohorts went so far as to suggest that captain Mike Gatting should be enjoined to stop playing cards with said sacrilegious correspondent. Neither must anyone have a drink with him in the bar . . . or share their sandwiches with him . . . or play him at conkers . . . or let him look at their hamster . . .
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