Panning for stories in New Zealand

“In a country as rich in sailing tradition and nautical stories as New Zealand, if one pans the stream of local lore long enough, a true gold nugget will turn up”. Capt. Scott

It was the year 1987 and Dennis Conner had just reclaimed the Americas Cup in the blustery waters off of Perth, Australia. He returned home to a hero’s welcome in southern California and at the prestigious San Diego Yacht Club. Under the sunny skies and a warm breeze off the bay, the club, the town, and really the whole country celebrated the Cup’s return with parades, parties, and speeches. No one saw or could have foretold the storm clouds on the sailing horizon…

My story starts 28 years later during the Southern Hemisphere’s autumn of 2015, as we were sailing our 47 foot yacht ‘Celestial’ down the Coromandel peninsula. I remembered that on my Bucket List was visiting Mercury Bay and the formerly obscure Mercury Bay Boating Club. I had followed the crazy twists and turns of the Americas Cup yacht races for the last 40 years and knew some of the amazing story of MBBC. After mooring in Whitianga, I heard, first hand, the rest of the story. I’m going to call it The Mouse that Roared, however in this real life story the mouse expected to win!

After an Easter concert I was introduced to Toby Morcom and his wife Diana. He had been the commodore of MBBC at the time of the America’s Cup challenge. I told them that we had sailed from America and stopped at Mercury Bay to find out more about the strangest Cup challenge of them all. They were happy to talk and graciously invited us to lunch at their house the next day. We had a great lunch and as we sat looking out over the bay he started from the beginning. It seemed Sir Michael Fay, the chairman of the NZ syndicate for the Australia Challenge that Dennis Conner won, now was determined to challenge and win the Cup for NZ. Going over the deed of gift with his solicitor they saw no reason why they could not challenge in a really big boat in order to have a design head start and side step all the 12 meter challenger races. Sir Michael wanted total secrecy as he sprang the trap on SDYC leaving them with too little time to match the huge rocket ship he was having Bruce Farr design.

Here is where it gets fun. Sir Michael called his friend Toby at the little-known, tiny Mercury Bay Boating Club and asked him to challenge the mighty SDYC to the greatest duel of them all. Toby told me that he had never been so shocked in his life, and for anyone to truly understand the audacity of pitting a tiny but active boating club against the Californian juggernaut you just had to be there. Sir Michael was not trying to create a David and Goliath yacht club contest; he did it in order to get the ultimate level of secrecy and surprise. “Well,” said Toby, “I talked to the committee made up of local farmer/sailors like myself, and being the cheeky kiwis that they were, they said lets do it.” Now to put this in perspective, the MBBC’s office was an old ford Zephyr that Carol Moyes, another member, would drive to the site of a club race with the flags, buoys, horns, timers, to start the race from her car on the beach.

The sum total of the clubs assets was a small patrol boat, two optimist sailing dinghies, and a few race course buoys. So in July 1987, while at a dinner engagement with the SDYC commodore Fred Frye, Michael Fay stunned San Diego and the whole world with a Deed of Gift challenge. Yes, the little MBBC mouse truly did roar. Toby shook his head as he told me, “to say that the SDYC was upset would be a gross understatement.” They rushed into court to stop the challenge but a NY judge ruled in favor of MBBC.

Commodore Toby was thrown into the world spotlight of international yacht racing. His wife Diana christened and named the fastest monohull sailing yacht in the world ‘New Zealand’. (main picture, more pics in gallery)

She even got a turn at the helm of the scary big KZ1. Toby had to quickly design a logo for the club burgee as the whole world asked where in the heck is Mercury Bay?

“All that was a long time ago”, he sighed as everyone knows San Diego mounted a cowardly defense in a catamaran and it took 3 more court battles to finally keep the Auld Mug. “We were treated badly and snubbed by a number of SDYC club members and not even allowed in the club except for one private lunch”. In particular, Dennis Conner, who is a great sailor, was very patronizing to those he felt superior to. On only one occasion did he even speak to the Morcoms and it was a sarcastic quip about the loss; “I bet that was good for you”. Oh well, all is forgiven and as Diana explained so well as they watched Stars and Stripes cross the line, not one spectator cheered, it was dead silence, but when KZ1 crossed far behind for the last time, the American crowd erupted in a massive cheer in a true show of sportsmanship!

“Hey Toby, where were you planning to put the Cup when you won?” “I thought I would put it in my wool shed”! “What about security”? “Well I haven’t lost any wool yet….”

Well done, my feisty kiwi friend, well done.Capt. Scott