Conner Back at the Helm : Cup Loser Is Sailing Off Long Beach This Week--His Destination: Australia

Dennis Conner has some advice for the Australian skipper who will defend the America’s Cup in 1987: Have something to fall back on, just in case.

“If he loses, there goes his career,” Conner said.

Conner, for example, is in the drapery business, which must have been a comfort to him as he sailed Liberty back to the harbor after losing to Australia II in the seventh and determining race off Newport, R.I., in 1983.

If, as are most other world-class sailors, he had been in the boating business, he couldn’t have counted on selling a life raft to a drowning man that day.

Would you have bought a used dinghy from the only American ever to lose the America’s Cup in 132 years? Drapes, maybe.

But Conner was surprised. Later he said that he received “literally thousands of letters from people all over the world,” and not one lowered the boom.

“All very upbeat,” Conner said. “Most people feel that we sailed real well and got beat by a faster boat.”

But the Aussie skipper who will one day surrender the cup will not get off so easily, Conner said.

“The person sailing the defending boat will have a tremendous amount of pressure on him, even more than I had last time. It’s a big thing to those people. You’ve seen the TV ads: ‘In case you’ve forgotten, Australia’s the home of the America’s Cup.’

“In America, sure, it’s a big thing in yachting, but until we lost, it hadn’t exactly been a household word.”

The victorious Australian skipper, John Bertrand, has retired from America’s Cup competition, which means that he will not have to face the threat of 20 or more challengers, including four from his own country.

“I think he’s quitting while he’s ahead,” Conner said. “It’s a no-win situation for him. If he comes back to win again they say ho-hum, and if he loses he’s no longer the national hero.

“It’s going to be far more than the loss of a cup. It’s more than national pride. You’re talking about severe economic consequences.”

The competition, trials and all, will run about four months, climaxing with the start of the defense Jan. 31, 1987. Conner said the Australians are investing about $700 million in new construction around Perth and Fremantle, the rustic waterfront suburb on the edge of Western Australia.

“They’re building condominiums, hotels, casinos, restaurants, highways,” Conner said. “If this thing’s only there for one year, I don’t see how they’re gonna get their money back.”

Maybe they could sell tickets for a national tour of the skipper’s public flogging. Conner was lucky. Soon after his defeat, the America’s Cup was shipped out and forgotten, and he was able to slip back quietly into his drapery plant on the west side of town next to the freeway. It’s Vera’s Draperies, custom drapery manufacturers. Up front, the proprietor does not flaunt what he calls his hobby. In his cramped inner offices, however, the walls are laden with sailing art and awards. There is a map of Western Australia, with a blowup of the Perth area.

Conner said: “Vera was my major competitor when I was doing work for Sears, so I bought her out in 1977.”

The business is not just something to keep him occupied.

“If you’re married and have a couple of kids that have to go to college, you have to be pretty serious about making a living,” Conner said.

“Obviously, I’m not living as well as I could if I were working the same amount of time at my business as I am at sailing, but it’s a matter of priorities.”

Conner hasn’t gotten rich sailing 12-meter boats in three America’s Cup defenses, successfully in ’74 and ’80.

Wait a minute, you say, what about the full-page Rolex watch advertisement in Sports Illustrated last month, showing Conner at the helm, not a hair out of place?

“Sails taut, a trim boat slices the punishing waves,” the copy reads. “A square-jawed man angles into the whipping wind. The sea has met its master. Dennis Conner is at the helm.”

Conner said: “I didn’t get paid for doing that. I just helped Rolex out because they’ve done a lot for the America’s Cup.”

Many others will be asked to do a lot more before the next one is sailed. Conner’s America’s Cup Challenge ’87 program, sponsored by the Sail America Foundation, probably will cost more than $12 million, so he spends much of his time raising funds.

“It’s going well,” he said. “We’re ahead of the pace we were in 1980 or ’83.”

There are more American campaigns than ever--eight altogether, with five or six appearing serious. Conner will meet two of his strongest American rivals--John Kolius of America II and Rod Davis of Eagle--in the Congressional Cup match racing series at Long Beach starting Wednesday. Ten skippers will compete in Catalina 38s.

Kolius and Davis are hustling funds for their own campaigns, but Conner said: “There’s a superior pot to draw from. With the Australians winning and the awareness that came with it from the American public, there’s a much broader base of support. Corporate America will be more involved than ever before.”

The Cadillac division of General Motors, for example, has thrown in with the America II campaign of the New York Yacht Club.

The slick, multicolor brochure for Conner’s America’s Cup Challenge, on the other hand, appeals strongly to patriotism.

“America has got to win the Cup back,” the brochure reads. “And we will. We’re defending the honor of the United States. Dennis and Sail America represent the people of the United States. He is going to win it back for each and every one of us, and make it the property of the United States of America.”

G’dye and tyke that, mytes!

Tom Whidden, the president of Sobstad Sails and Conner’s long-time tactician, said his skipper really isn’t trying to collect money by wrapping himself in the flag.

“A little bit of it is a hype,” Whidden said. “Now that we’ve lost, there’s probably less pressure on him. I think he wants to psych himself up.”

But does Conner want to win back the America’s Cup for himself or the country?

“I think I’d be less than honest to say it’s not partly personal recognition, but by and large Dennis is a fairly patriotic guy. I think he’s doing it for the U.S,” Whidden said.

Conner, fixing his sea-green eyes on a reporter, said: “I’m not personally responsible. I have a lot of help. But I certainly feel the cup belongs to the American people as a whole, as opposed to a private yacht club, including our (San Diego) yacht club or the New York Yacht Club.

“I was involved in losing it and I’d like to win it back for some degree of personal satisfaction. It’s also important to win it back from a national standpoint to continue to build our national pride and spirit and to reaffirm our national superiority.

“I take it as a slap in the face that some Dutch were able to design a better boat than Americans.”

Before ‘83, the America’s Cup was as much a money-spending contest as it was a sailing competition. The most expensive sails and equipment always seemed to come out on top, and you know who had them.

Alan Bond, the power behind Australia II, negated that with a quantum leap into advanced technology. Now any syndicate that lacks a NASA aerospace expert and hydrodynamic genius on its research and development team is going to be left high and dry.

Conner pointed out that much of Australia II’s technology--most important, the celebrated winged keel--came from outside the country.

“The boat was actually designed in Holland, with (Australian designer) Ben Lexcen over there,” Conner said.

So why didn’t an American think of it first?

“No one thought it was legal,” Conner said. “That’s what the controversy was all about.”

There also was a question of whether the Australians had violated America’s Cup rules by using foreign input in their effort.

Whidden said: “The Australians had nothing to lose. Why not try something that was pretty exotic--a wild idea? And they wouldn’t have gotten away with it if they hadn’t lost so long, and the public sentiment was with the underdog.”

Conner added: “They managed to contrive a concept and make it work. There’s no point in crying about it now. It’s up to us to show what we’re made of here in America to go down there and get it back, and use the same things that built America: leadership, drive, pride, Yankee ingenuity. The same things that made our country are gonna be required to go down there and win it back.”

With that inspiration, Conner’s first new boat--he’ll build two or three--is scheduled to be started this spring and launched in early fall in time to be shipped to Perth for test sailing Down Under during the summer. Two other syndicates--America II and Italy’s Costa Smeralda effort--have already tried the rough and windy waters, but Conner said he isn’t behind.

“I’ve been sailing 12-meters for 11 years,” he said. “I can’t see how just having a 12-meter in the water could help our program much. It might even be a distraction at this point.”

Tom Blackaller, one of Conner’s old adversaries, agrees.

“I personally don’t think that that’s any advantage at all,” Blackaller said. “The issue at hand is whether the designers can come up with a faster boat. Just being down there sailing around, I don’t know how that’s gonna prove very much.”

But that’s about all Conner and Blackaller agree on. Blackaller is working with the St. Francis Yacht Club syndicate, which claims an advantage in that conditions on San Francisco Bay are similar to those off Fremantle.

Conner scoffed: “It’s nothing like it. They’re kidding themselves. San Francisco Bay is relatively a very small chop and smooth compared to the Indian Ocean, (where there is) a chop on top of the swell. There’s no similarity other than the (wind) velocity.”

Conner and Blackaller still disagree on the merits of test-sailing against rival syndicates. Blackaller, who sailed Defender in ‘83, thinks all of the Americans should cooperate in design development and partly blamed Conner’s defeat on his isolated approach.

Conner said: “I thought that was in our best interest to win.”

And he hasn’t changed his mind, although Blackaller said the offer is still open.

“Have he and I discussed it?” Blackaller said. “No, not really. We’re not real friendly. We’re not what you’d call good friends.”

Conner said: “I’d have to see who wanted to cooperate with me and what they would add to my program vs. what I would add to their program. I thought the competition we had (against his own trial boats) last time was better than what we would have had from Blackaller, and I think I was right, because Defender would have slowed everybody down. Our crew would have had a tendency to become overconfident rather than continue to work hard.”

Blackaller said he hopes to sail against the Eagle syndicate from Newport Harbor YC before leaving the U.S., but Conner said his new boat will be shipped directly to Australia next fall.

“We have no plans ever to sail a 12-meter here,” Conner said. “If he (Blackaller) wants to sail against us, he’ll have to be at Perth.”

It was Whidden who took a phone call for Conner after that last race in ’83.

“Dennis, hurry up,” Whidden said. “The President’s on the phone. He wants to tell you you screwed up.”

Yacht racing people understood the joke. They knew Conner did well to carry the Australians to seven races with a slower boat--and, in fact, to lead until the last mark.

“We sailed almost a perfect race,” Whidden said. “Our judgment calls were sound. We don’t feel bad about ourselves.”

Conner isn’t haunted by the memory. He doesn’t wake up screaming as Aussie II sweeps by again on the downwind leg. He never second-guessed his tactics.

“No. We sailed a terrific race, a great race, just to be ahead. They just sailed right through our lee. What could I do? They gained an average of a minute and 17 seconds on the runs (throughout the series), and we only had a 57-second lead. We knew we were in trouble before we went around the mark.”

And once the Aussies sailed by, he knew he wouldn’t see them again until 1987.