A Consuming Passion - An Unofficial History of the America's Cup

How often in your lifetime do you get so many people virtually looking up at you and shouting and calling your name and saying 'thank you', when in fact we should have been saying 'thank you' to them...

– America's Cup campaign executive Warren Jones on being overwhelmed at celebrations in Fremantle, after Australia II won in 1983

He delivered us the tool; Ben Lexcen delivered us the tool.

– America's Cup campaign executive Warren Jones on Australian yacht designer Ben Lexcen's winged keel concept

When his yacht, Australia II, brought home the America’s Cup in 1983, 200,000 people lined the streets of Perth. Overcome, Bob Hawke, the Prime Minister, declared on television: “Any employer who sacks a worker for not coming in today is a bum!”

– Obituary for Australian Alan Bond, The Telegraph (United Kingdom), 5 June 2015

Textbooks inhibit people to a certain extent, and Benny was uninhibited. He was like Jonathan Livingston Seagull; he just flew around the sky in his mind.

– America's Cup executive Warren Jones on pioneering yacht designer Ben Lexcen

I finished up, of course, achieving the record of having lost more America's Cup races than anybody in history. I'm not sure that's a very good record to have but we won some races...I honestly thought that if we kept going back we could finally learn the trick of the America's Cup, which is persistence and preparation.

– America's Cup winning skipper James Hardy

...Alan jumped on board. I mean you couldn't imagine 11 or 12 guys more down ... We hadn't even hit the dock from losing the 1980 cup, and Bondy was off — not a negative thought in his brain...

– Former crewman John Longley on "irrepressible" America's Cup backer Alan Bond

...once we moved off the water of course it became a nightmare, in the sense that we were there for a sailing race, and we ended up in a sort of head to head ding dong fighting it out in PR sort of terms .. and ultimately in a court....

– America's Cup campaign backer Michael Fay on his 1988 legal challenge over what type of boat could compete, and when