Two years and nine months after New Zealand banker Michael Fay stole a march on 21 other America's Cup syndicates with his challenge to the San Diego Yacht Club to meet him in a 90-foot waterline boat, the cup itself was returned to San Diego and the club began preparing for a 1992 cup match in its home waters.

For a while it seemed that the America's Cup might be headed for the Mercury Bay Boating Club in Auckland, New Zealand. Fay had filed suit in 1988, following the America's Cup defeat of his K boat by San Diego, claiming that San Diego had violated the Deed of Gift governing America's Cup racing with its use of the two-hulled catamaran Stars & Stripes, skippered by Dennis Conner. After a ruling against Fay in September 1989 by an appellate panel in New York State Supreme Court, Fay took his case to the state's Court of Appeals, which decided in April 1990 that San Diego's defense had been a valid one.

By late in the year, the San Diego Yacht Club had accepted challenges for 1992 from 12 syndicates: two each from Australia and Japan and one each from Britain, France, Italy, New Zealand, Spain, Sweden, the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia. It would be the first America's Cup venture for Japan, Spain, the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia.

In June the America's Cup Organizing Committee licensed four San Diego-based syndicates to compete for the cup defense in 1992: Beach Boys USA, headed by California real estate executive David Lowry; Team Dennis Conner; Triumph America, headed by Larry Klein, the Etchells 22 and J-24 world champion; and Isler Sailing International, headed by Peter Isler, Conner's former navigator. Isler withdrew in August, however, saying he lacked sufficient financing. In October, William Koch, a businessman from Palm Beach, Fla., and Osterville, Mass., announced he was forming a group to enter the defense trials; he planned to merge two existing teams: the Yankee Syndicate of Cleveland and Triumph America, from San Diego. Conner's syndicate jumped to an early lead over the other U.S. syndicates in the battle for corporate sponsorships, and his was the first to get a boat under construction.

The next America's Cup match was to be sailed in a new class of boats, 10 feet longer than the 12-meter yachts that were the standard from 1958 to 1987. The new boats will also be lighter, carry more sail area, and hold a crew of 16, 5 more than in the past. The new course will emphasize downwind sailing, forcing the crews to make rapid sail changes under pressure.

Collaboration, a 45-foot sloop owned by Oliver Grin of Grand Rapids, Mich., won the Henry B. DuPont Memorial Trophy for the best overall performance in the preliminary Onion Patch Series, which included the ocean race from Newport, R.I., to Bermuda. One hundred thirty-six yachts in seven classes took part in the biennial Newport-Bermuda race, a fixture on the East Coast yachting calendar since 1948. Boomerang, an 81-foot sloop skippered by George Coumantaros of New York City, was first to finish, and Karyatis, a 70-footer skippered by Daniel J. Sullivan of Darien, Conn., was the top boat in the IMS cruising division. The overall winner was Denali, a 44-foot cat-ketch skippered by Lawrence Huntington of New York City.

French sailors Jean Maurel and Michael Desjoyaux won the two-handed transatlantic race from Plymouth, England, to Newport, R.I., in their 60-foot trimarin, Elf Aquitaine, finishing with an elapsed time of 10 days, 23 hours, 15 minutes. Their closest pursuers, Michael Birch, a Canadian living in France, and French national Didier Mundetuguy, finished 4 hours, 9 minutes later. The first monohull in the race was the 60-foot South African entry, Allied Bank, sailed by John Martin and his brother Ian. Americans took top honors in three of the five classes. Zafu, skippered by Bill Gilmore of Littleton, N.H., and with Derek Durling as crew, won in Class 3; American Challenge, sailed by San Franciscans David Scully and Mark Rudiger, triumphed in Class 4; and Dogbolter, a modified production boat sailed by Ed Sisk and David Barnaby of Newport, R.I., was the winner in Class 5.

Another French sailor, Titouan Lamazou, won a single-handed nonstop round-the-world race starting from Les Sables-d'Olonne, France. Lamazou and his 60-foot sloop Ecureuil d'Aquitaine completed the course in 109 days, 8 hours, 49 minutes, shaving 16 days off the previous record for a nonstop passage.

New Zealand's Chris Dickson became the top international match-racing skipper by winning the Congressional Cup, in a series sailed from the Long Beach, Calif., Yacht Club. Dickson defeated former U.S. Olympic sailor Robbie Haines of Newport Beach, Calif.

Jody Swanson of Eggertsville, N.Y., and Cory Sertl of Rochester, N.Y., shared the U.S. women's double-handed championship with Judy Lugar and Morag McLean of Halifax, Nova Scotia, in a series sailed at Marblehead, Mass. The single-handed competition at the same site in European dinghies resulted in a tie between Nancy Haberland of Westerly, R.I., and Pam Pennell of Coconut Grove, Fla.

Scott Elting, David Thomas, Carter Perrin, and Sam Pyne, representing the Houston Yacht Club, edged skipper Meg Gaillard and her American Yacht Club crew from Rye, N.Y., by a quarter of a point to take the Sears Cup in national junior team competition at the Newport Harbor Yacht Club in Balboa, Calif. Bill Hardesty and Paul Ware of the Mission Bay Yacht Club in San Diego easily captured the junior double-handed title for the Bemis Trophy at the same site, and Californian David Houser, of the Coronado Yacht Club, won the junior single-handed championship for the Smythe Trophy.

The University of California-Irvine earned the Intercollegiate Yacht Racing Association's dinghy championship, beating runner-up Old Dominion University of Norfolk, Va., by 12 points in a series sailed on the Charles River Basin in Boston. Tufts, Navy, and New York Maritime rounded out the top five in the standings. In women's competition, Tufts dethroned Brown University, with Old Dominion, Navy, and California-Irvine taking the next three places. Old Dominion came back to win the team-racing championship with a 10-1 record, with Tufts, California-Irvine, and Brown earning the next three positions.

The United States won two divisions at the International Yacht Racing Union's world youth championships at Muiden, the Netherlands, in July. Ethan Passant of Albuquerque, N.M., won in men's sailboards. Giselle Camet of San Diego, the U.S. Women's Junior Sailing Championship winner in 1987, 1988, and 1989, took the women's single-handed title. At the Goodwill Games in Seattle, Jody Swanson and Cory Sertl teamed for a gold medal in women's 470s.