America S Cup

On Saturday, the International America's Cup Class will make its competitive debut in the IACC World Championships to be sailed in the Pacific Ocean off San Diego.The championships, a prelude to the 28th America's Cup competition in 1992, has drawn a field of nine boats from six countries.The United States, Italy, France, Japan, New Zealand and Spain all have entries in the championships, which are a combination of fleet and match races.Spain, a first time entrant, will sail a New Zealand boat.

Last Monday, the defender and challenger committees for America's Cup '95 agreed to make a number of changes in how the Super Bowl of yacht racing is run."We believe this agreement signals the beginning of a new spirit of sportsmanship between the defender and challenger syndicates," America's Cup '95 chairman Frank Hope Jr. said in San Diego. "From a racing perspective, the agreement is designed to make the elimination series a fair test of sailing and design abilities."But the agreement also will eliminate or further regulate some of the side-show activities that have surrounded the Cup for a number of years -- espionage, closed boating compounds, bidding wars for top skippers and crews, etc.The agreement also recommends a centralized location (Commercial Basin)

J.J. Isler of San Diego, who won the all-women's Santa Maria Cup here in May, has qualified as a skipper in the Cadillac Columbus Cup match racing series that will be sailed here this fall.Isler will be the first female skipper in this competition.Other skippers scheduled to compete are:John Kostecki, Team USA. Kostecki is an Olympic silver medalist and a world champion in the J/24 class.Jim Brady, Team Chesapeake. Brady is the 1990 Rolex Yachtsman of the Year and a world champion in the J/24 class.

Many Americans this month have been viewing, for the first time, the cream of the sport that consumes most of the world -- soccer. Now it appears that sailors in the northeast will get a close look at its sailing equivalent in 1998. No, the America's Cup is not coming here. It's the Whitbread Round the World Race, which makes the America's Cup look like the oceanic carnival it really is.U.S. entries are rare in the Whitbread, which speeds 32,000 miles in six legs. The racers stopped in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., this year, the first time it touched the U.S. in 21 years.

Musician for a dayEver want to be a musician? Here's your chance. In recognition of National Arts and Humanities Month, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra will hold a free "Musical Open House" Saturday at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.Would-be musicians can learn to conduct the symphony, play an instrument, sing along with members of the BSO Chorus or join a musical petting zoo by trying out various instruments used by the orchestra.There...

ON AND OFF THE AIR:* Here's an interesting crossover at a time when the broadcast network share of viewers is threatened by cable competition.The ABC series' "Full House" arrives at its season finale tonight lTC at 8 on WJZ (Channel 13) with an episode in which cable's MTV network plays prominently.In the final part of a two-part sequence (which last week featured Beach Boys Mike Love and Bruce Johnson), rock star wannabe Jesse (John Stamos) is disappointed when his record deal collapses.

SAN DIEGO -- On the Embarcadero, near the foot of Broadway, next to the cruise ship terminal, a gunsmoke blue racing yacht has been placed in a cradle along the waterfront.The blue boat is Stars & Stripes, the 12-meter racer that native son Dennis Conner sailed in Australia when the United States and the San Diego Yacht Club won the America's Cup in 1987.The deep-bellied racer with the bulbous winged keel is a monument, a reminder of what might have been the finest moment for this city's yachtsmen.

There is video footage taken when oneAustralia cracked apart and sank during the America's Cup race in 1995. There are national awards presented yearly to top sailors at fancy banquets. There is even a machine that simulates the experience of sailing - without the user ever getting in the water. The sport of sailing has no shortage of drama, history or gadgetry, but until yesterday when Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. announced that a Sailing Hall of Fame would be established in Annapolis, the sport had no single place to tell its full story.

AUCKLAND, New Zealand -- Russell Coutts and Francesco de Angelis, New Zealand and Italian skippers in the America's Cup sailing competition, have the pride of their nations in their hands these days. But, with a 3-0 lead going into tomorrow's fourth race (tonight in Baltimore), Coutts clearly has the more secure grip. And, as each stands behind the wheel of a 75-foot racer here, he is backed by the support of millions of his countrymen and women. Already, both are national heroes: Coutts for outsailing veteran U.S. skipper Dennis Conner to win the Cup, 5-0, in San Diego in 1995, and giving Team New Zealand its commanding lead in the current Cup; De Angelis for getting the Italians, relative newcomers to sail match-racing, into the challenger's slot this year after winning his way past 10 crews -- five from the U.S. -- from six nations in a marathon, 202-match challengers series.

Young Australia, the crew with the youngest skipper and the oldest boat in the Louis Vuitton Cup, might be more of a force soon in the challengers' elimination series for the America's Cup.The Australian team from the Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron has made a deal to acquire oneAustralia from AmericaOne, Paul Cayard's challenge team from San Francisco.OneAustralia (AUS-31) was the only boat to beat Team New Zealand in the America's Cup trials off San Diego in 1995 and was generally accepted as that year's second-fastest boat among challenge and defense teams.