The two helmsmen, Jim Hardy of the Southern Cross and Dennis Conner, who handled strictly the starts on Courageous--relinquishing the command to sailmaker Ted Hood the rest of the way--attempted a seemingly fruitless game of staying on the other's tail in order to force the opponent up over the line early.

But as the starting gun sounded, both boats were over early and the Cross took longer to return and restart. The challenger could never catch up and Courageous just kept increasing the lead on the hapless Australians. After the novelty of watching the graceful boats wore off, the race became rather boring. The voice of Hoyt began to lose some of its enthusiasm. "...And the Southern Cross is putting up the same old white bag..." he reported blandly as the Aussies set their white spinmaker after rounding the weather mark well behind the defender.

The final margin was 5:27, and everyone knew that the Cross was destined for the already lengthy list of unsuccessful challengers.

Newport Shipyard was quiet around 4 p.m. the afternoon of Race Four. Two miles offshore, however, Courageous had just successfully defended the America's Cup by the whopping margin of 7:19 in the final battle of the series. The radios on shore were the only clue to the jubilation on the water, as Hoyt bubbled over about the victorious American crew popping champagne on the deck as they waited for the Southern Cross to finish.

Slowly people began filtering in to the docks where the two boats would eventually tie up, hoping for a close glimpse of the post-series celebration. Some were members of the successful syndicate, or small-time contributors to the effort who wanted to get in on the celebrating they knew would come as soon as the Courageous was towed in to the shipyard.

"Well, you took it in four straight," one interested onlooker exclaimed to a syndicate contributer who was wearing the green pants and green pin, with the winning yacht's number 26 emblazoned in gold.

"Yeah," he replied somewhat calmly, "and we took it and shoved it right up Alan Bond's ass where it belongs."

The crowd grew, and the wait on the dock seemed endless. But after an hour and a half, the parade of spectators and Coast Guard craft shooting 50-foot geysers of water into the air, came into sight at the mouth of the harbor. Every horn and cannon in the harbor went off in a deafening display of jubilation as the Courageous was towed to its berth with the whole crew guzzling champagne on the decks--except one hand hanging precariously from the spreaders by his knees.

Shoving and Singing

The singing and the shoving of people into the water went on for several hours by dockside but the loudspeakers stopped after "Yankee Doodle Dandy" and then "Waltzing Matilda." Even the vanquished crew of the Cross joined the hysteria. Alan Bond, who sank nearly $9 million into the fruitless campaign, put on a show for the crowd, jumping into the water nearly on top of his boat's designer Bob Miller.

But for all the celebration, it was a dull series, a letdown after a close elimination series between American hopeful Intrepid and the eventual winner, number 26. It was a disappointment after the pre-race buildup that the Southern Cross was given.

Like Redford's "Gatsby," Bond too bombed in Newport this summer.