Ok, then you probably do have your facts right - I thought they knew ahead of time what Fay's boat looked like.

What I don't think the American team should have done at that time is immediately go to court to contest the challenge and start all that mess and they really handled themselves poorly publicly. They screwed up and left themselves unprotected by not finding a challenger quickly after the last AC. [/quote]

The way Connor described it was that in meeting with Fay, right after the first court batttle (there were three), Fay announced the beam and water line length of the new monster yacht. Because of the yachts design with the large flair out the beam was astronomical in relation to the other dimensions. Conner was concerned that the only way that was possible was because NZ was building a cat. Keep in mind the design of NZ1 was futuristic if you will for the time. I will be the first to conceed that Conner did his fair share to screw things up by trying to use the DOG to his advantage. Fay tried to fight fire with fire by doing the same thing. Two wrongs don't make a right and the whole 88 cup became a fiasco, with the cup changing hands twice in a court room. My original point is that both Fay and Conner lost sight of the spirit of the DOG and made a mochary of the whole thing.