I’M  not an “author” in the traditional sense – perhaps I’m better called a “curator.”

After almost 5,000 hours of research over more than four years, America’s Cup Compendium presents a collected body of data on the races, sponsoring clubs, yachts, and athletes between 1848 and 2024.

This collection represents information and the stories that comprise 176 years of the history of the quest for America’s Cup – the yachts and yachtsmen and women, the owners and the sponsors, the races and the results, and the trophies and their backgrounds, assembled from over 230 published AC works, 110 half-hulls and hundreds of pieces of related America’s Cup art in my collection, coverage from the New York Times and NewspaperArchive, research of collections at the Herreshoff Museum Library, the Collections Research Center at Mystic Seaport Museum, The New York Yacht Club Library, Newport’s Redwood Library, the new Edward W. Kane & James Gubelmann Library at the International Yacht Restoration School (IYRS), dozens of interviews and numerous other sources.

America’s Cup Compendium is a collaboration with my friend and noted America’s Cup historian and writer Jack Griffin, who shared his extensive ongoing research library and must recognize the late Philip Crowther, Jr., archivist of the former Museum of Yachting in Newport, who amassed an incredible 145-volume 77,000-item scrapbook of America’s Cup articles from 1930 to 2000.

I am an avid collector of half-hull and many full-hull models of yacht Racing, reference books, and artwork related to Sailing Race.  Seeing a need to better organize my collection, I undertook a cataloging process.  Starting to see just what I had led me to look further into the backgrounds of these yachts and how they won America’s Cup.

While the facts and figures of America’s Cup final races between the current cupholder and chosen international challenger are the culmination of the battles and as such, are more readily available, I could not find the detailed results in any one location for all 36 Defenses.  The information on the fascinating selection processes was even more painfully scattered.  Many of the “facts” that were presented were either incorrect (either grossly or a little), were based on out-of-date material, or were missing.  Some of the tales merely repeated prior errors and, like the kid’s game of “telephone,” just got more and more incorrect as time went on.

Thus, I undertook the America’s Cup Compendium (americascupcompendium.com).

First and foremost, Compendium is a reference work.  The information in America’s Cup Compendium The Races has been formatted to uniformly and accurately present the logistics (venue, date, start time, participants, mark rounding and elapsed timing, margin and winner) data, to the extent known, on the more than 3,397 of the races conducted including the Herbert Pell Cup, Citizen’s Cup, Louis Vuitton Challenger Cups, and the Prada Cups, and of course, the races for America’s Cup.  For 2024, the Puig Cup will be incorporated when available.

America’s Cup Compendium The Yachts provides side-by-side comparisons of the defense, challenge, and contending yachts for each of the 36 campaigns.  This information includes detailed data on each yacht, its provenance, and its crew members, both Sailing Race and supporting, to the extent available.

As the racing yachts’ configuration can change up to the appointed measurement time for the race, yacht measurements shown are the most likely dimensions at the time of the vessel’s win or those at the time closest to that boat’s elimination from the event.

America’s Cup Compendium is a 16-volume electronic on-line “flip book” which includes clickable background links to hundreds of original newspaper articles, other World Wide Web sites, and to hundreds of hours of more recent YouTube coverage of the specific races, and interaction between the The Races and the The Yachts chapters.

Because newly-located data continues to appear, any missing bits of information are supplemented as this on-line version is continually updated with the intention to compile and present the most complete, robust, widely searchable database of the history of America’s Cup racing, as a tool for future writers and researchers.

America’s Cup Compendium includes over 8,671 entries on more than 5,022 yachtsmen and women, consisting of detailed personnel lists including sailing crews, team support personnel, owner-syndicate members, race committees, and juries, including brief biographies on many.  In the only historical recitations in the book, I discuss The Cup and The Deed while correcting the little-reported actual history of the £100 Cup from its origin to the present day.

These chapters include the painstakingly researched Cup engravings, lend detailed insight and background to the many other trophies at stake during the run-ups to America’s Cup’s Match races, provide complete transcripts of the three versions of the Deed of Gift and an analysis of what occurred and why, and include copies of the actual New York Supreme Court and Court of Appeals opinions which affect the administration of The Cup to date.  The Deed includes the full text of each of the various clubs’ Resolutions pertaining to the legal interpretations of the terms and conditions of America’s Cup.

In April 2023, I was fortunate to travel to the Cup’s current home in New Zealand to obtain detailed unrestricted photographs of America’s Cup.  This resulted in the opportunity to document and present the exact current engravings on the Cup.

The two-volume section entitled “The Rules” looks at how the Racing “Conditions” – the agreed-to rules for the Regattas, and their companion “Sailing Instructions” evolved from one paragraph (in 1871) to over 30 pages (in 2021).  This book also includes the full calculation formulas and processes for each of the yacht Rating Rules that have been used over the years.  Later years include each of the agreed protocols and the AC Yacht Design criteria for each type of racer.

It is expected with this much data from so many sources that slip-ups or omissions are inevitable.  Should you, kind reader, find such an issue, please bring it to my attention and I will do my utmost to see that it is addressed.

Please enjoy America’s Cup Compendium!

With valued contributions from Jack Griffin, an America’s Cup historian and modern chronicler. He serves on the Selection Committee of the America’s Cup Hall of Fame and is the International Liaison for the Herreshoff Marine Museum, home of the America’s Cup Hall of Fame.

Griffin’s book Turning the Tide – How Oracle Team USA Defended the America’s Cup tells the definitive story of the 2013 America’s Cup competition in San Francisco.

He writes a monthly column for Seahorse Magazine on the America’s Cup and is the editor of a well-respected website, CupExperience.com.

Based in Switzerland, Griffin holds a degree in electrical engineering from Princeton University and is fluent in English, French, and German.

Karolina Stefanski, Ph.D., is a leading art historian specializing in silver. Her dissertation explored the influence of the French Empire Style in Silver from Berlin, Warsaw, and Vienna, 1797-1848. She is an author for both lifestyle publications and academic journals.

Dr. Stefanski is the Yachting and Silver Ambassador for Robbe & Berking, one of the world’s leading silversmiths. Robbe & Berking is also active in yachting and Yacht Racing through Robbe & Berking Classics, a leading boatyard in northern Europe specializing in the restoration of 12-metre and other classic yachts.

She holds a master’s degree from the Institute national d’histoire de l’art (INHA, Paris-Sorbonne) and a Ph.D. from the Technical University of Berlin. She is fluent in German, English, French and Polish.