America's Cup: Swiss victory at sea full of holes

I see by the papers that the Swiss won the 32nd annual regatta of the America’s Cup yacht race! Pshaw, the event has more holes in it than a round of Swiss cheese.

I know the Swiss and they are not sailors on ocean-going yachts. But first, a little background so everyone, particularly this writer, will know what I’m talking about.

The headline, in big type, read: “Switzerland Rules the Waves Again.� What waves? The waves in the waters off Valencia, Spain!

Now for openers, does that sound like Swiss waves? No, because the rules are quite specific: The races “must be held in open sea.� And Switzerland, as anyone who read “Heidi� knows, is a landlocked country with lots of steep mountains and several pretty lakes, like Lake Geneva and Lake Thun, which could accommodate my Sunfish nicely, but hardly have enough room for an America’s Cup yacht to get underway.

Then there’s the rule that states: “Crew and the design team must be residents of the country they represent.� Crikey, here’s where the Swiss come a cropper. I haven’t been able to find out who designed the Swiss yacht this year, but the crew, the CREW! Not a Swiss-born sailor among them.

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 Ernesto Bertarelli, the owner of the Swiss boat Alinghi, is I assume a nice man (although I’ve never had the pleasure). He was born in Italy, received an MBA from Harvard, became a biotech millionaire and somewhere had time to move to Switzerland and call it his home.

 I wouldn’t feel so bad about this guy if he had made his millions, like other good Swiss burghers, designing a new watch, capturing the Emmenthal and Gruyère market or taking over the vast Nestle chocolate empire.

When his boat won this year’s race last week, he was quoted as saying: “Aside from the birth of my children, today is the best day of my life!â€�  Oh, how does he know? Does he plan to expire tomorrow?

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Let’s get back to Sr. Bartarelli’s alleged Swiss America’s Cup challenger.

You will recall that one of the important rules is that not only the designer but the crew must be residents of the country they represent.

Each racing team is made up of 80 to 100 people, but obviously the sailing crew has to be limited. For 100 people, you’d need one of Bill Gates’ or Malcolm Forbes’ yachts.

For the Alinghi, Bertarelli recruited six Kiwis, three Americans, two Italians and one each from Spain, Australia, Canada and Holland. Not a true, blue Swiss among them.

Perhaps they became temporary Swiss citizens for the race, but there’s something cheesy about that.

Nonetheless, the president of Switzerland, Micheline Calmy-Rey, sent a telegram to Sr. Bertarelli.The telegram read: “We Swiss find our way at sea, not just in the mountains.�

In the final race, the alleged Swiss boat beat the Kiwis (New Zealanders), who are mad as hell and aren’t going to take it anymore.

They’ve sent hate mails to the Swiss, and the New Zealanders have organized a group to jeer their compatriots as the enemy. What hurts the most is that six of the Kiwi sailors on the Alinghi sailed in the last America’s Cup race on the New Zealand contender.

All of which brings us back to the contention earlier in this angry tome that “I know the Swiss, etc. etc.

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Click on the rewind button and let’s go back to Fort Knox just as World War ll was winding down. I was a skinny —160 pound — Army man who was studying in the Armor School to be a radio operator in tanks.

One morning on the barrack’s bulletin board was a notice from the base’s evening school, called, naturally, the School of Hard Knox.

Among the courses offered was a refresher course in German. I had it in mind to somehow become assigned to Stars&Stripes, the Army newspaper in Europe, on the theory that we weren’t going to need tanks much longer.

So, after dinner I put on my clean, starched khaki uniform and wended my way to the school of  . . .  well, you get the point. I stood in line at the German desk and when I reached the captain, he looked me up and down and asked: “Soldier, do you speak German?â€�

A strange question. Did I look like I speak German. I replied: “Captain, I came to take the refresher course.�

He was now curt: “I asked you if you spoke German? Answer the question!�

I allowed as how I had studied it for three years in high school.

“Come closer,� he said, his voice now softened. I bent over. “We’re short of instructors.

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So I ended up teaching the course! Using the Army manuals I managed to keep one lesson ahead of the students, who included a 12-year-old girl and her mother, wife and daughter of a colonel. Not too long after, I actually was assigned to Stars & Stripes in Pfungstadt, Germany (that’s a helluva story for another day), and, during a 10-day leave, was taken by the Army to Switzerland as a guest of the country.

That’s where I learned that the Swiss are the world’s bankers, they make the best watches and mouth-watering chocolate, but don’t crew on ocean-going America’s Cup yachts.

As for my two prize students, I met them in a park in Luzerne on a Fourth of July holiday, with their father, the colonel. I saluted awkwardly as the girl asked me, “Wie geht es, Herr Laschever?�

Curmudgeon Barnett D. Laschever of Goshen for years sailed his Sunfish on Bantam Lake but didn’t race. He is co-author with Andi Marie Cantele of “Connecticut, An Explorer’s Guide,� now in its sixth edition.