In end, OneWorld winds up windless

The wind — and the wins — just kept slipping through their fingers.

It happened yesterday, when Seattle's OneWorld Challenge nailed the start and charged ahead of archrival Oracle, looking like they had finally put the pieces together for a semifinal win in the race for the America's Cup — before disaster struck.

And in a greater sense, it happened throughout this regatta, as the spiffy blue boats with a white bird on the bow and an environmental mission in mind blew away the competition early on, then faded, inexplicably, into the New Zealand summer sunset.

For the crew of OneWorld, yesterday's coup de grace by Oracle — a 1-minute, 4-second victory capping a 4-0 series sweep — was a soul-killer: The kind of defeat you don't forget in this lifetime, or any other.

Especially coming as it did, once more, at the hands of an unpredictable wind shift that left Seattle crewmen beating their heads in sheer frustration.

Midway through a race that OneWorld had started flawlessly and lead around the first three marks, the boats headed downwind for the second time. Oracle, desperate for a favorable puff to get back in the race, swung wide left. Consensus at the time was that the other side of the course was stronger. So rather than covering tightly, OneWorld, skippered by Aussie veteran Peter Gilmour, let Oracle go.

Again.

Disaster ensued — Oracle got the miracle breeze it was looking for, and rode it all the way to a healthy lead at the bottom mark.

Again.

Alas, it happened to a Seattle-based skipper already under the microscope by some parts of the sailing fraternity. If all the world's armchair yacht skippers are to be believed, five-time Cup veteran Gilmour has thrown away the match-racing playbook in favor of a more free-wheeling, we-read-the-shifts-better-than-you do gambler's persona.

In recent weeks, it has universally failed to bring home the goods. Call it bad luck, stubborn stupidity, or whatever you choose, but give the man this: Gilmour was every bit the gambler when this regatta started. He stuck with his guns.

As he has said on many occasions, when it works, you're a genius. When it doesn't, and the wind goes the other way, you're an idiot. Unfortunately, the last wind OneWorld will see in this event went the other — and Oracle, its own short-lived design-data scandal fizzling into submission, is riding it into the next round.

Yesterday's race was a microcosm of OneWorld's once-promising America's Cup campaign. In the beginning, the team could do no wrong, guessing every wind shift right and beating everyone in sight for an 8-0 record in the opening round robin.

Ominous cracks in the carbon-fiber armor appeared in the second round robin, where the field got faster and OneWorld crew's got sloppier; the Seattle team slipped to 5-3.

Reality struck hard in the quarterfinals, where Larry Ellison's Oracle boat got itself — and its fragile pecking order behind the wheel — straightened out just in time to shellac OneWorld, then sailing in USA-65. It was the beginning of the end for the group flying the Seattle Yacht Club burgee.

Next came the true ugliness, as the team founded by Craig McCaw to take the high road in Cup affairs was dragged, mid-regatta, into the courtroom to fend off more slime slung by ex-employee Sean Reeves — aided and abetted by the team's next two opponents, Prada and Team Dennis Conner. In the end, both foes were beaten on the water, but major damage was inflicted off it: OneWorld carried a permanent, one-race penalty into later rounds.

It's impossible to guess just how much of a psychological burden that became on the crew; how much it might have flavored the on-water decisions of Gilmour, talented Aussie helmsman (and likely future Cup star) James Spithill, and Seattle sailing veteran Charlie McKee — the team's collective afterguard.

It's easier to acknowledge how little — thankfully — the penalty wound up affecting the results on the water. If there is any justice in this America's Cup, it is this: In the end, OneWorld wasn't foiled by lawyers or beaten by the dread penalty. They simply were out-designed and out-sailed — beaten by what they considered to be their own strengths.

The Laurie Davidson-designed USA-67 and USA-65, as promised, came out of the box faster than any boat in the water. But both the boats and their designers would prove far less adept at designing on the fly to match speed gains of their opponents. By the time it ended, Oracle's USA-76 was slightly, but appreciably, faster — upwind and down. Did OneWorld show too much, too fast?

The team's perfect record in the early rounds was nice. But it'll be a fading memory by the time Switzerland's Alinghi — which is widely believed to have speed tricks still in its quiver — likely puts Oracle to the sword and sails against Team NZ in the America's Cup final.

OneWorld's future, meanwhile, is about as predictable as a mid-afternoon breeze off Rangitoto Island. McCaw wasn't making any hasty decisions yesterday — other than giving his team a week to enjoy the holidays on Kiwi beaches. Big decisions are expected by the time they return.

Few people could blame the newly cash-strapped McCaw, now also dealing with the untimely death of a brother, for bowing out of this "gentleman's game." Some hope lingers that relatively well-heeled co-owner Paul Allen might be talked into another run — especially if the Cup is won by Alinghi and the next defense moves to Europe, where Allen likes to work, play and park his yachts.

It's an open question. But for OneWorld, this America's Cup is a closed book. The blue boats took the start gun in 34 races and crossed the finish line first 21 times — all too few of them in races that really counted.

Years from now, the team will reminisce over what was by all accounts a noble campaign. They'll be commended for keeping cool heads even as the boiling water rose around their necks. Perhaps they'll take pride in knowing they awoke a slumbering passion in the Northwest sailing world.

But that wasn't on this group's Christmas-shopping list for Auckland.

From the start, OneWorld lived for, and by, that sweet spinnaker-filling breeze that came from nowhere and, like magic, turned their free-ranging gambles into sailing prophecies. Yesterday and well into the future, they'll be dying by it.

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