Either way, Challenge for America's Cup means trial

Espionage. Pilfered high-tech data. Missing laptops. Double agents. And a handful of sailboat playboys with entirely too much time on their hands.

Face it: The quest for the America's Cup, mired once again its customary home — a litigious swamp — is one Halle Berry appearance short of a James Bond flick.

The hero/villain in this tale is none other than Seattle's OneWorld Challenge — ironically, founded by local entrepreneur Craig McCaw in an attempt to show that the America's Cup could be won without resorting to all sorts of name-calling, lawyering and general skullduggery.

It's all pretty obtuse, and in the end, has no real bearing on anything even close to important. Like that's ever stopped us before. While you sailing fans have been scarfing turkey, we've been digesting reams of affidavits. Which makes us as well-qualified as anyone to offer you the following highly opinionated guide to the great Sailing Witch Trials, now underway in Auckland, New Zealand.

Q: What's the main charge, and what happens if OneWorld is found guilty?

A: Two syndicates, Team Dennis Conner and Italy's Prada, have accused OneWorld of entering the Cup chase two years ago while illegally possessing boat-design secrets — mostly from Team New Zealand, with a bit of sail data from Prada. If OneWorld is found guilty, it is subject to banishment from the event, which is half over.

Q: Hasn't all this been heard before?

A: Much of it, yes.

At the root of Conner's charges is information supplied by Kiwi lawyer Sean Reeves, a former Team NZ legal adviser hired by McCaw in 2000 to help assemble top talent for a Seattle-based syndicate. Reeves, who recruited a handful of top Kiwi sailors as well as Kiwi design guru Laurie Davidson, was fired a year later. Soon thereafter, he was caught attempting to hawk OneWorld and Team NZ design information to competing syndicates.

During OneWorld's subsequent lawsuit against Reeves — which the syndicate won on summary judgment — Reeves attempted to explain his own red-handedness by suggesting the real sticky fingers belonged to OneWorld design team members, including the highly respected Davidson.

OneWorld made a "self-

submission" to the America's Cup arbitration panel, the quasi-legal body in charge of disputes. OneWorld acknowledged that some of its members, in joining the syndicate, possessed a handful of design materials from their former jobs. They insisted the materials were not used in development of their own boats. The panel agreed, assessing OneWorld a penalty point (one loss) in the regatta's opening round robins.

Team NZ reportedly wanted action on what it saw as violations well beyond the OneWorld submission. But the Kiwis couldn't attract much interest from other syndicates — many of which, not coincidentally, possessed some degree of other teams' "secrets" themselves, because of inter-Cup employee hopping. The matter was dropped and considered over until Conner's group came upon "new evidence" — the same week Stars & Stripes was being bounced out of the regatta by OneWorld.

Q: What's the supposed new evidence?

A: From what has leaked out, it appears to be based primarily on two lengthy affidavits supplied by Reeves. An e-mail from a OneWorld design consultant who used the word "copying" to describe the syndicate's replication of Team NZ fittings is also a breathless topic.

Q: How credible is Reeves?

A: Let's put it this way: The list of lack-of-character references for Reeves is the only thing in Auckland as long as Paul Allen's yacht. He's the Southern Hemisphere poster boy for disgruntled ex-employees.

Q: Why would he be out to get OneWorld?

A: Reeves was being paid $480,000 a year by OneWorld at the onset of his employment, OneWorld Chief Executive Officer Gary Wright revealed in a submission to the arbitration panel. Reeves quickly decided that his monthly salary, paid to a Hong Kong bank account, was insufficient: He sought a new contract that paid him $50,000 a month, building to $60,000 a month — $720,000 a year — in the final year of the campaign.

His salary demands came in the midst of a OneWorld financial crisis, when McCaw's stock plummeted and the campaign was in jeopardy of shutting down. Wright says Reeves was fired soon after he inexplicably locked all employees out of OneWorld's Auckland offices — where design materials were discovered missing when they returned.

Result: Instead of riding the McCaw/Allen gravy boat into retirement, Reeves now owes OneWorld more than a half-million dollars for court costs resulting from the Seattle lawsuit. Any sour grapes likely to be clinging from those vines?

Q: Didn't people from Team Dennis Conner's group side with OneWorld in its lawsuit against Reeves?

A: Yes. One of the people Reeves approached with his design-secrets sales pitch was Bill Trenkle, Conner's current operations manager, who testified in an affidavit that Reeves engaged him in a desperate attempt to peddle Team NZ and OneWorld design information. An aghast Trenkle declined.

"He held a fair amount of malice towards OneWorld," Trenkle stated in an affidavit, adding, "I could not imagine in my wildest dreams that anyone, no matter how disgruntled they were about being fired, would offer this kind of information."

OneWorld's Wright says Trenkle later told him and others in an e-mail after the trial: "Let's hope the America's Cup is rid of (Reeves) forever and that we never have to endure such an unbelievable violation of all moral and ethical codes of conduct."

Apparently he forgot to copy the message to his boss, Conner, who now brings recycled Reeves rantings as evidence that OneWorld breached Cup rules.

Q: Bottom line: Did OneWorld's designs look like copies of Team NZ's 2000 boats?

A: Davidson himself will testify that the notion is laughable: He left Team NZ specifically because they resisted design innovations to make boats faster than those 2000 yachts, he says. Why would he want to replicate them in Seattle?

He's backed up by a third-party expert: Davidson's initial design package — alleged by Reeves to contain an exact copy of NZL-60 — were examined in August by respected Seattle naval architect Robert Perry, who compared them to drawings submitted by Team NZ.

Perry examined Davidson's eight hull drawings, concluding that only one bore any resemblance to the NZ boat. Even that one was "very different " from NZL-60, with most dimensions "markedly different."

Perry, initially hired by Reeves' defense attorneys, now is a witness for OneWorld. In an affidavit filed last week, he concludes that "there is no question in my mind that in the world of AC boat design the differences were dramatic and greatly significant."

Q: Who is the final arbiter?

A: The matter has been submitted to both quasi-legal bodies that govern America's Cup disputes. The arbitration panel, set up to keep this kind of syndicate nyah-nyahing out of courts, is a five-member body — two Kiwis, two Europeans and an Aussie — appointed by Team NZ and Prada, as the Cup holder and challenger of record. The international jury is a three-member body designed to handle racing disputes and other matters. The arbitration panel will hear Conner's case this weekend, with a decision likely tomorrow night or Monday. The international jury will offer its two cents following that announcement.

Q: If OneWorld is tossed, what happens to the event?

A: Potential chaos. Half the racing in the Louis Vuitton Cup challenger series is complete, with five of nine teams already sent packing. The semifinals, pitting Oracle against Switzerland's Alinghi and OneWorld against Prada, are set to begin tomorrow.

But the results from the recent quarterfinals repechage, in which OneWorld spanked Conner's Stars & Stripes, have now been officially listed as "provisional" by the race committee, pending the outcome of the kangaroo court hearing.

If OneWorld gets tossed, the body doing the tossing also is responsible for figuring out how to clean up the mess. How they do that is anyone's guess.

And if the complaint is dismissed? Then racing resumes.

Remember racing? That's what they're there for. Providing, of course, there's time between hearings.

Ron C. Judd: 206-464-8280 or rjudd@seattletimes.com. For more columns, visit www.seattletimes.com/columnists.