Yachting: Billionaire gets wealth of memories for $1

By Suzanne McFadden

Billionaire Bill Koch has paid $1 to buy back his America's Cup winner America3 and rescue it from an Auckland carpark.

The boat that won the 1992 Cup has been sitting in the back yard of a service station in the Viaduct Harbour for the past six months.

Prada got the boat in a package deal when they bought America3's assets in 1996, but used only Kanza and '95 yacht Mighty Mary as training boats.

So Koch, the Kansas billionaire who led the America3 charge, did a deal with Prada head Patrizio Bertelli to take his boat home to the United States and turn it into a museum.

"Actually I don't think I've handed the dollar over yet, but I've signed the contract," Koch said in Auckland yesterday.

The white boat is now on its way to Cape Cod, in Massachussets, where Koch has a marina.

"She will be put in dry dock fully rigged, as if she is about to go out to sea," he said. "I'll build a walkway over the top so people can see what these boats are all about."

Of the four new Cup boats Koch built for '92, two are already museum exhibits. Defiant is part of the Herreshoff Museum in Newport; Jayhawk was gifted to Koch's hometown of Wichita.

In the meantime, KZ7, New Zealand's first America's Cup boat, took to the sea yesterday - its first sail in New Zealand waters since it went to Europe two years ago.

Its original skipper, Chris Dickson, was at the helm, with his four-month-old daughter Grace next to him.

KZ7 will sail in Monday's Auckland Anniversary Day regatta with a patched-together crew of some of New Zealand's best Cup sailors - Dickson, Prada coach Mike Spanhake and America True afterguardsmen John Cutler and Kelvin Harrap.

NZL20, the Kiwi boat of 1992, is about to be rebuilt and shipped to San Francisco to become a floating billboard.

But no plans have been made for NZL32, New Zealand's now retired Cup winner.