As the Bay Flushes
By Neil Farrell

A relic of the Cold War sailed into Morro Bay Harbor recently, standing out with a 90-foot mast, with a bright red paint job and flying the infamous Communist Hammer and Sickle.
The “Age of Russia,” a 75-foot sailboat built by the former-Soviet Union to race in the 1992 America’s Cup, sits tied up at the Morro Bay Marine on North Embarcadero. Her owner brought it up from Southern California and pulled into port for a rest, according to a source at the marina. He’s since been called up to Alaska for a work emergency and plans to leave the boat here for a couple of months.
Fans of boating lore might take interest in Age of Russia’s colorful and rather infamous history. According to articles from the LA Times, Age of Russia’s story starts with an attempt by the Yacht Club of St. Petersburg, one of the oldest sailing clubs in the world, to be Russia’s first entry in the prestigious yachting races.
An organization, Red Star 92 Syndicate, was formed to manage the effort and was the officially recognized entrant into the Louis Vuitton Cup challenger trials that year.
The first boat was aluminum and used to practice around St. Petersburg. A second boat of carbon-fiber was completed so late it would have to be loaded on a military cargo plane and flown to San Diego.
The club didn’t have the money for that, but then out of nowhere, another syndicate of Russians tried to enter a different boat, the “Wek Rossii” (Age of Russia), owned by the Age of Russia Syndicate.
She was built at the Russian Space Center near St. Petersburg, where the first satellite, Sputnik, was assembled and had been flown to San Diego along with a crew. With all the military installations in San Diego, the U.S. Government initially would not allow it to sail in San Diego Bay, apparently suspected of being a spy vessel, but eventually they got the OK from the Coast Guard to sail outside the bay.
So the official entrant, Red Star 92, didn’t have a boat, but this other, suspicious syndicate did, leaving a conundrum for the San Diego Yacht Club, which hosted the America’s Cup. The Age of Russia Syndicate tried to mix the crews but that didn’t work and the Russians’ attempts to sail, sank.
With no money, the Syndicate lost the boat to a bank and she sat in dry dock. In late December 1992, she was in dry dock in Mission Bay when she was almost scrapped and hauled to a landfill for non-payment.
The hull, no sails, was offered for sale for a mere $25,000, as the yard sought to recoup some of the $100,000 owed. Otherwise, they were ready to fill her with cement and sink it, which would have been the first time she touched seawater.
Instead, Age of Russia finally was saved — with an interior that looks about as comfortable as a 1700s-era slave ship. She tasted saltwater in 2000 after being reclassified for another possible Russian attempt at the America’s Cup. That attempt also sank and she started doing sailing tours along with America II, a 65-foot 1987 America’s Cup racer. That ended with a 2006 sale to the current owner.
And now she sits in Morro Bay with an old “For Sale” sign still in the window, asking price of $149,000.
The Age of Russia, while never getting the chance to show the might of Mother Russia, indeed failing as miserably as the Communist USSR ultimately failed, cuts a striking profile in the water, and is another of the unusual and interesting vessels that occasionally visits, as the bay flushes…