In the summer of 1983, in the months leading up to the 25th America’s Cup competition in Newport, Rhode Island, a storm of controversy gathered over the challenging Australian and defending New York Yacht Club syndicates.
At that time, the rules governing the Cup required that each yacht be designed by citizens of the country it represented. The principal designer of Australia II, the eventual winner, was indeed a ‘national’—Ben Lexcen. Much of the development work on that boat, however, was performed at … Details