If the audience matters, send a fleet to chase the Cup

I've been doing my duty. I've been watching the Louis Vuitton America's Cup elimination races on television religiously. It's my job to do this, of course. But beyond that, I want to do it because I love sailboat racing. I dabble at it myself. I understand the nuances of racing strategy and tactics. I'm fascinated by the skills of the tacticians and navigators on the Cup boats. I love the boats for their elegant design and for the potential thrills they bring to the race course by being so big, fast, overpowered, hard to control and tough on crews.

I've watched all of this night after night, and I have to confess ... I am bored stiff. I would say I am bored to tears, but my eyes glazed over months ago. I'd probably be getting therapy if it weren't for the Food Network. At least I can escape the tedium on the Hauraki Gulf for a few minutes by flicking over to Wolfgang Puck. America's Cup TV commentator P.J. Montgomery is an entertaining guy, but he's stuck with talking about America's Cup racing. Puck gets to talk about more exciting stuff, like a porcini mushroom risotto.

Sailboat racing has never been great spectator fare, but why is America's Cup racing so often so exceedingly dull, even for a fan like me? It's the match racing. These two-boat races aren't mano a mano, they're yawn a yawn. The boat with the advantage at the start usually wins. The boat ahead on the first crossing almost always wins. It is so rare for one boat to pass another that when it happens it can be the dramatic highlight of a month of racing. Watching a match race, even one between exciting boats sailed by the world's best sailors seen up close with excellent TV coverage, is often like watching a two-unit parade.

In fairness, there have been exciting America's Cup match races. Paul Cayard's duel with Francesco de Angelis in the 2000 challenger finals was as thrilling a confrontation as you will see in sports, a mix of nervy tactics, bold boat-handling and raw aggression, punctuated by shouted warnings and exploding spinnakers as the boats closed within inches of each other time and again. If the skippers had been gladiators instead of yachtsmen, there would have been blood on the water. One of the reasons it is so vividly remembered is that it was so unusual. Nothing like it has been seen in the dozens of races since then, including the anticlimactic America's Cup match series between Team New Zealand and Prada. If America's Cup races were fleet races, such drama would be commonplace.

I'm certainly not the first to suggest dropping the match race format. Still, the idea is regarded as sacrilege in some quarters. To purists, match racing is the ultimate expression of yacht racing skill. Some who take the America's Cup seriously enough to pore over the arcane details of its history believe the Deed of Gift mandates match racing and that to turn a fleet of boats loose to sail for the Cup would betray a hallowed tradition.

I suppose the zen of match racing can be seductive. The match race start has been called the nautical equivalent of bull-fighting's moment of truth (which goes to show that even match racing devotees admit the race is often over when it starts). No doubt there's a science to it. Or maybe it's an art, since it revolves around a carefully choreographed pas de deux that features a lot of circling. If this appears to be happening in slow motion, it's because a good part of the starting period is spent with the boats motionless or going backward.

The ensuing 18.5-nautical mile parade around the course is usually such a sedative, stress-free exercise that you have to wonder whether it isn't a waste of the prodigious sailing talent assembled for the America's Cup. At a cost that rivals the gross national products of some third world countries, these sailors are showcased in the most formidable course racing boats ever designed. But because of the dynamics-or lack of them-of match racing, they drive them around the course as though they were their father's Oldsmobiles.

Now imagine harnessing all of that talent and boat power to chase the America's Cup in a fleet. Think of nine or 10 of these 80-foot, 55,000-pound machines powered by 3,800 square feet of carbon sail hitting the starting line together. Forget circling and sailing backwards. This would be a rugby scrum on water that would put the skill and nerve of elite sailors to a sterner test than a match start and a lot more fun to watch.

Getting up and down the course would be a high-anxiety trial marked by hair-raising crossings and ducks, lee bow tacks and slam dunks, a battle fought in disturbed air and on crowded laylines where no lead would be safe. The two boat-length circle around marks would be a war zone.

Fleet racing would be better competition and better entertainment, but would it be legal?

The America's Cup Deed of Gift has been parsed aplenty, and has proven to be so elastic it allowed a bizarre meeting of a catamaran and a 133-foot monohull in 1988. It calls for matches between yacht clubs, but the first America's Cup race under the deed was a fleet race, one English schooner racing against a fleet of 17 American boats. And let's not forget that the race that started it all in 1851, won by the Cup's namesake, was a fleet race.

The choice, of course, is not up to the America's Cup audience, but to the keepers of the America's Cup protocol. There is no sign fleet racing is even being thought about, but that might change if the question of whom the Cup is meant for would be asked and answered. If it is only for competing syndicates or individuals seeking the ultimate sailing bragging right, match racing is fine if it pleases them. But if it is meant to be embraced by the larger world of sailors and would-be sailors, the one change that would instantly animate America's Cup racing should be made. Sponsors, which are avidly sought even by some of the billionaire-funded campaigns, might want to weigh in on this. That Viagra logo on the boom of Stars & Stripes isn't going to sell much product, however robust the boat's performance, if it's seen only by an audience of yawners.