AMERICA’S CUP : Koch Wants It, so Koch Gets It

SAN DIEGO —  Cube elation.

The basin off the San Diego Yacht Club is aswirl, fizzing like an Alka-Seltzer, as the true-blue crew of America 3goes winning-dipping in the water, playful as dolphins, the wetter the better. On a sunny day in May during America’s 500th anniversary party, the city of San Diego has turned itself into one big wet T-shirt contest.

Horns are tooting and hoses are spewing. As most of the 150 personnel from his America 3 payroll take a Saturday bath, our newest Captain America, the millionaire William Ingraham (Bill) Koch of Wichita, Kan., Palm Beach, Fla., and points beyond, does his best to pry loose the cork of a champagne bottle the size of a bowling pin.

Art Price, 29, a former Atlanta Falcon football player and a grinder aboard America 3, watches with amusement. You would think that a man whose last name is pronounced “Coke” would know how to open a bottle.

“Need any help there?” Price offers.

But you know Bill Koch. He likes to do things himself.

He twists and he twists. For a man whose personal cellars are stocked with plenty of Chateau Lafite Rothschild and other vintage wines up to 130 years old, there are few bottles more precious to him than this one. This is the one that officially christens him as king of the sea, as Earth’s new Neptune--if he can just get this damned cork off. After another minute or two, the Wichita wine man is still on the wine.

“Wait. I got it. I got it,” Koch says, and suddenly ka-pop, there it goes, and the spritz just keeps on comin’.

America’s Cup runneth over.

Bill Koch is persistent; if you give him anything, you have to give him that. The man usually gets what he wants, no matter what it takes, no matter how much it drains him. Koch plays to win and plays no favorites, whether it means slapping a lawsuit on his twin brother and his 80-year-old mother over the use of company funds (as he once did) or spending an obscene $64 million out of his own pocket to win a boat race (as he has now done).

Well, it’s his show, his dough. Perhaps when someone is “one of the wealthiest men in America,” as Koch has freely acknowledged, it stands to reason that he has more time than interest, more interest than principle, more funds than fun. Prince Charles plays polo. Prince Albert of Monaco rides bobsleds. Paul Newman races automobiles. Everybody needs a hobby.

Maybe Bill Koch remembers the fun he didn’t have when his father dragged him along on African safari or to the Arctic Circle on a polar-bear hunt. Maybe he rues the day his parents sent him off to military school to learn some discipline. Or maybe he got a reminder to get more pleasure out of life on that day in February 1991 when his twin, David, escaped unscathed from a 737 jet that crashed on a runway at LAX.

It was not long afterward that Bill began to invite David to come along for a sail, to let bygones be bygones, even though in years past his brother’s main contribution to the America’s Cup had been the donation of funds to the campaigns of Dennis Conner.

There was a time when winning at all costs meant everything to Koch; when to prevail in a legal dispute with his family he was willing to hire a private detective (which he once did) to pick through the company’s garbage. Later he took much the same attitude toward sailing, until one day Bill had an epiphany, realizing that he would rather sail with people he enjoyed than merely with people he admired. It came to him in a flash, like St. Elmo’s fire.

And it is why he is gushing like wine.

“Having the best boat is how you win a race,” he says. “Having good friends aboard is how you enjoy it.”

The sight of his crew, at play in the bay, is one that will forever linger, just as Bill Koch will not soon forget the sights of Buddy Melges and himself four-handing the wheel across the finish line, of Jerry Kirby ascending to the top of the mast like a lumberjack up a pine, of Dave Dellenbaugh road-hogging to deny an impatient adversary the fast lane, of Peter Fennelly hooked like a fish by a jib sheet and later bravely laughing off something that wasn’t so funny, of John Hufnagel and Larry Mialik and Rick Brent and Rock Ferrigno proving that sailing is, indeed, a game of winches.

Nor will he forget the sights of Wally Henry and Josh Belsky expertly keeping halyards and other control lines in order around the mast, of Stu Argo and Mike Toppa and Andreas Josenhans giving him a crew with all the trimmings, of Peter Craig pulling the sails as confidently as though they were (pun intended) Venetian blinds, of John Spence becoming the most admired sewer worker since Art Carney and of By Baldridge navigating with a laser rangefinder that Chris Columbus sure as hell could have used when he set sail for America.

This was the crew of America 3on a sunny day in May, under blue skies in San Diego, where America stayed the course.