America's Cup: Oracle, Alinghi are stealing the show — allegedly

OK, we admit it.

The brain trust behind Seattle's OneWorld Challenge really was guilty of malfeasance in the boat-design process. Or at least negligence.

As it turns out, the entire time OneWorld stood before the Supreme High Kangaroo Court of the America's Cup, denying charges that it had built its boats with old, pilfered technology, at least two competitors reportedly were outfitting their boats with new, pilfered technology.

America's Cup Lesson 1 (borrowed from the juvenile delinquent's manual): If you're going to be busted for stealing, you might as well steal the really good stuff.

That's what Switzerland's Alinghi, Larry Ellison's Oracle and Team New Zealand apparently have been doing to each other during all those long weather cancellations in Auckland: pilfering, scheming and modifying.

The picture came into focus early this week, when Team NZ's long-protected "revolutionary" hull designs finally leaked out — a secret so secretive that Alinghi and Oracle reportedly already have copied it. Or Team NZ copied it from them. Or they all came upon the same inspired rule-avoidance brilliance at the same precise moment. Whatever.

The secret reportedly revolves around an appendage. An appendage — not unlike a barnacle or an annoying in-law at holiday time — is a protrusion semi-permanently affixed to a boat's hull, although not part of the hull itself.

The rumor-mill consensus is that design gurus from Team NZ, poring over the design rule for America's Cup-class yachts, noted a limit on the number of "moving appendages" (two), but absolutely no limitations on nonmoving appendages.

This opened up all sorts of exciting new design potential. Conceivably, under this interpretation, you could affix a wide range of "nonmoving" objects — from bulbs to hydrofoils to former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger — to the bottom of your boat, and still pass inspection!

The Kiwi Appendage (copyright 2002, Team New Zealand/Larry Ellison/Nation of Switzerland) is believed to be a second hull section, molded around the original hull section, at the rear of the boat. This is said to "lengthen the waterline" of the hull, making the boat go faster — primarily because the yacht spends its life fleeing black spy helicopters flown by Ellison henchmen fresh from an espionage coup in Bill Gates' recycling bins.

The debate rages as to whether this clever circumvention of the design rules is sheer genius, or outright cheating — violating the spirit, if not the letter, of the design rule meant to create hulls that look like, well, hulls. Either way, it joins a long list of ingenious inventions from the charming island nation, including the kiwi fruit, the famous "Millennium Rig" and, quite possibly, wool.

Alinghi skipper Russell Coutts, the infamous Kiwi defector, now says the false-bottom trick was mulled by Alinghi a couple years ago, when Team NZ designers also were considering it. Alinghi shelved the promising idea, figuring that not even the most rum-addled ACC-class design inspector would fail to notice a Buick-sized appendage clinging to the hindquarters of a hull like a baby marsupial.

Wrong, defector boy!

The event's chief inspector reportedly issued a ruling a couple of months ago declaring appendages legal.

Predictable result: appendage proliferation. Alinghi has dragged its falsies out of the design closet, and Oracle has moved with equal speed to — how do they refer to this in the cutthroat software world? — acquire the same technology. Both syndicates are said to be testing said appendages on their alternate boats, neither of which has yet raced on Hauraki Gulf.

That's as close as those appendages will get to the action if Team NZ gets its way. The formerly above-the-fray Kiwis now look like frightened kittens: They've begun silly legal wrangling aimed at preventing Oracle or Alinghi from using their backup boats in February's America's Cup.

Coutts already has replied, in tradition-steeped Kiwi sailing speak: Nyah, nyah: An appendage is portable. We can put one on our first boat, our second boat, someone else's third boat, or a gravy boat. Choose your poison.

The unflappable Coutts, waiting to face the winner of the Oracle/OneWorld repechage in the challenger-series finals, insists the Swiss Army boat has not raced with an appendage to date. But they've been so fast, you begin to wonder whether they don't have an inflatable Barney booster down there somewhere.

OneWorld, meanwhile, is forced to tool its way into the do-or-die repechage rematch with Ellison's Oracle crew with nary a false hull in its arsenal — a rather rich irony, considering it's the lone boat in Auckland penalized for techno-pilfering.

Nobody really expects Ellison to deploy his own appendage in the OneWorld match, which begins today. But stranger things have happened on Planet Larry.

We know this: If he does, Oracle would be guilty of piling on of the highest order. Ellison, who fancies himself a Cup-class sailor, doesn't need an appendage for his boats; he is an appendage.

Somebody wake the kangaroo court: Clearly, nobody should ever be allowed on Hauraki Gulf with both a false bottom and false skipper.

Ron C. Judd: 206-464-8280 or at rjudd@seattletimes.com.