A member of the 1983 America’s Cup winning crew has visited Skerries Sailing Club to follow a lead on a rare team flag that went missing when Australia II won the Auld Mug.
According to ABC News, the ‘boxing kangaroo’ flag was thought to have been secreted away from a support boat, the Black Swan, amid the celebrations in Newport, USA for John Bertrand and crew’s victory — and the United States’ first loss in the America’s Cup to that date.
The search for the missing flag picked up steam after a native of Bunbury, south of Perth and Fremantle in Western Australia, spotted the framed flag while at a wedding reception in Skerries SC.
Grayden Thompson recalled a speech given in Bunbury in 1983 by the Black Swan’s Newton Roberts in which the late deckhand lamented the loss of the flag — and subsequently learned of the local legend of its provenance.
Alas the ‘boxing kangaroo’ that Skerries has hosted since the 1980s is not the missing banner that’s flummoxed Australia’s sailing community for decades.
This was confirmed when Ken Judge, starboard trimmer on Australia II, travelled to the north Co Dublin sailing club to inspect the flag.
But it has sparked a mystery of its own, as its markings don’t match those of other commercially produced flags of the time — and it may even originate from the America’s Cup defence off Fremantle in 1987.
ABC News has more on the story HERE — and it’s also been covered by ABC Radio Darwin.
This story was updated to add a link to the radio segment.
