In 2010, the name was USA 17 and in 2013 just 17.

Back in mid-March, Oracle Team USA were asked: “Why is Oracle’s America’s Cup Class boat named 17?” Is 17 a lucky number?

The Oracle answer was: “There is a story there, but we’ll be telling it on our channels closer to the event.”

Here’s the story ...

“We’re not particularly superstitious.” Oracle Team USA say now, “but let’s just agree that it certainly hasn’t been unlucky!”

So why 17?

Oracle say that 17 has been the name or number of the team’s America’s Cup boats dating back to 2010 when the giant trimaran the team raced got its first America’s Cup win.

In 2013, the team defended the America’s Cup in its AC72 foiling catamaran. Again, the engraving on the America’s Cup trophy indicated a win for USA 17. And when Oracle Team USA takes to the water to defend the Cup, it will do so in a boat with a 17 on the side of both hulls.

So again, why 17? Is it a lucky number?

For the past two editions of the America’s Cup, 17 has been the number of the winning boat. In both instances the odds were against Oracle.

Hold on, the “17” story doesn’t end there.

The reason dates back even farther, all the way to 1998, when Oracle founder Larry Ellison raced in the Sydney to Hobart race on his maxi yacht, Sayonara. This 1998 edition of the 628-mile classic was a bare-knuckle, killer race. A storm pounded the fleet, rocking it with hurricane-force winds and rolling it with towering seas. Only 44 of 115 boats that started finished. Six sailors died.

Sayonara was the first boat to finish. Oracle’s Ellison felt the impact of this do-or-die experience. In fact, it was a chief reason why he shifted his sailing attention from offshore racing to the ultimate event in sailing — the America’s Cup.

Ten years after the 1998 race, he was interviewed by an Australian newspaper and recalled: “It was a life-changing experience ... We knew there were boats sinking when we got in, we knew people were in trouble still out there in the midst of it and we were enormously grateful having made it.”

As fate would have it, the boat that delivered Ellison and his crew through that storm, Sayonara, carried the number US-17 on her mainsail. Is 17 a lucky number? What day is today? June 17, 2017.