Mercury Bay Notice of Challenge and Custom House Registry

America's Cup 1988

An issue of contention in the current America's Cup challenge involves objections raised by the Defender, Société Nautique de Genève (SNG) represented by Alinghi, about Golden Gate YC's Notice of Challenge and their Custom House Registry.

Alinghi accuses the challenger of refusing to provide required information, provoking Alinghi to seek a legal appeal.  See Alinghi Press Release regarding appeal

Golden Gate YC and BMW Oracle dispute that the information Alinghi seeks is required at this time under the Deed.  See GGYC Background Statement

Update, May 6, 2008: The two parties exchanged letters regarding the Custom House Registry issue, still taking the positions declared previously.  See the following posted at the GGYC web site, all in pdf format:
Letter to GGYC (April 28)   Letter to SNG   Brief GGYC Public Statement

Updated May 4, 2009:  Alinghi reportedly filed a motion in the New York Supreme Court on May 1, 2009, to disqualify Golden Gate YC as challenger, with Alinghi citing that the Custom House Registry has not yet been submitted to the Defender.

Mercury Bay Documents:

The 1887 Deed of Gift requires that a challenger "...give ten months' notice in writing naming the days for the proposed races..." at the time the challenge is filed.  The Deed of Gift also requires certain information to be included in the Notice of Challenge and that registry information to be sent to the Defender.

Deed Excerpt:
"Accompanying the ten months' notice of challenge, there must be sent the name of the owner and a certificate of the name, rig and following dimensions of the challenging vessel, namely, length on load water line; beam at load water line and extreme beam; and draught of water; which dimensions shall not be exceeded; and a custom-house registry of the vessel must also be sent as soon as possible."

Following the 1887 Deed of Gift, races for the America's Cup from 1887 until 2007 were sailed under mutual consent between Defender and Challenger with the exception of the 1988 challenge from New Zealand's Mercury Bay Boating Club.  Since that club was held to be a valid challenger by the New York State Supreme Court, it may be of interest to examine the challenge documents that Mercury Bay provided under the Deed:

Notice of Challenge:
Mercury Bay's Notice of Challenge was dated July 15th, 1987, and proposed race dates of June 1st, 3rd, and 7th, 1988 for the defense.  The Certificate accompanying the Challenge provides details of the Deed-required information. 
Read the Mercury Bay BC Notice of Challenge (pdf)

Custom-House Registry:
Races were eventually scheduled for September 7th and 9th, 1988.  Transmittal of Mercury Bay's custom-house registry was dated June 8, 1988, while the yacht measurement and other paperwork carried earlier dates going back as far as February and April of 1988.  The cover letter accompanying the registry noted that the yacht and the original registry certificate were already in San Diego as of the transmittal.
See Mercury Bay's Custom-House Registry (pdf)

What is a Custom-House Registry?
A custom-house registry is a record of ownership and other information about a vessel.  Note that in this case the rating in tonnage is a representation of "dunnage", or cargo-carrying capacity, and correlates with the volume of the vessel.  This is not the displacement of the vessel, the weight of the volume of water that is displaced by it when afloat, which is more typically cited in vessel data for racing yachts.

Historically the registry was meant to help confirm the nationality of the vessel, and in conjunction with the implied cargo capacity, allow calculation of customs duties and other fees.  Aside from calculating dunnage, the identifying information for the vessel also helped protect against attempts to disguise the origins of a ship, whether illicitly by her owners or in cases of theft or hijacking.

The practice of issuing and maintaining a Custom-House Registry, along with the role of the Custom House in registering ships, was abandoned by the late 1960s in the United States.  The most similar documentation available from the US Coast Guard today is a Certificate of Documentation, which can also be used as the basis for foreign registry (see USCG National Vessel Documentation Center).  Depending on a complicated combination of factors, the vessel may be measured in different ways and the data required for the certificate may vary as well.  In some situations the owner may elect different forms of measurement, some very simplified, others detailed.  In short, there is plenty of room for interpretation as to what comprises the modern day equivalent of a Custom-House Registry, in addition to the obvious  dispute between the parties regarding what "as soon as possible" might mean.

Alinghi might be expected to argue that the Deed of Gift requirement is that the registry be obtained as soon as possible in order that it can then be sent, while Golden Gate YC likely interprets the requirement to mean that the registry be sent as soon as possible after it has been obtained. 

Complicating the situation is the aspect that an America's Cup Challenger is by nature a yacht undergoing intense technical development, the demands of which may direct changes that would affect the measurements contained in a Custom-House Registry, were one to exist, and that ongoing technological development in preparation for the racing could require that a new Registry or Registries be issued.  Obtaining a Custom-House Registry, it can be argued, would freeze many of the significant development options for the challenging yacht at the time that measurement is performed. 

Considering that under the Deed of Gift that the challenging vessel's basic parameters have to be submitted at the time Notice of Challenge is filed, it is not clear that the requirement of Custom-House Registry information is intended to provide the defender with significant additional information about the challenger or whether it is instead intended to help confirm that the as-built measurements of the challenging vessel are correctly represented in the Notice of Challenge.