Conner Takes a 3-1 Lead, and Kiwis Take a Lay Day

“We broke their backs.”

That’s the word according to Jon Wright, crew manager and mainsheet trimmer aboard Stars & Stripes. The San Diego boat won by 3 minutes 38 seconds--nearly half a mile--Saturday when New Zealand’s KZ7 started to come apart under the pressure of the America’s Cup trials and the fierce sailing conditions on Gage Roads.

The result left Dennis Conner’s camp leading, 3-1, in the challengers’ best-of-seven final. New Zealand requested and was granted a lay day today to put its boat and hopes back together. They will race again Monday, perhaps for the last time.

“They had a chance of getting even, and now they’re behind the eight-ball again,” said Wright, a veteran of four previous Cup campaigns. “If we had beaten them by just a few seconds, they’d think they still had a chance, but this. . . . “

This may have been the end of the dream for the Kiwis and their fervent supporters, who were so encouraged by their hard-earned victory a day earlier.

Although their countrymen kept those cards and letters coming by the thousands, neither that show of support nor images of Tangaroa (god of the sea) nor Maori war dances could slow Conner’s relentless pursuit of the Cup.

“Those Maori guys were out there on the breakwater when we went out today, trying to put a spell on us,” said Tom Whidden, the Stars & Stripes tactician. “Had their tongues out, doing a little chant.”

It must have backfired. Struggling in a steep chop and winds building from 24 to 28 knots, KZ7 went through a day of lost backstays, broken boom vangs and mast cranes and, finally, a mainsail that ripped wide open as the Kiwis crossed the finish line.

KZ7 bowman Erle Williams had to be hauled up the 90-foot mast twice and out around the end of the boom once to repair one problem after another.

“We spent most of the day fixing things and not making the boat go fast,” Williams said.

But KZ7 skipper Chris Dickson conceded that even if his operation had been as flawless as the day before, it probably wouldn’t have made any difference, the way Stars & Stripes frolicked through the rough sea and near-gale wind velocity, rising on the crests and plunging into the troughs.

“Everybody used to say the Kiwi boat went well through the slop, but I couldn’t see it,” Whidden said. “I thought we went well.

“Today was a nice sailing day. The only thing that makes this a rough sailing place is that the chop is so steep and short, you can’t get a rhythm with the waves.”

Whidden said Conner felt “queasy” Saturday, so he steered the off-wind legs.

“He drove upwind, as he always does,” Whidden said.

And, again, that’s where Stars & Stripes blew KZ7 away, gaining 3:19 of its final edge.

Even before their gear problems developed, the Kiwis took themselves out of the race with some surprisingly conservative tactics. Although they knew they had to get on top of Conner and sit on him to win, as they did Friday, they left the line alone to the right after a cautious luffing start and never tacked toward Stars & Stripes until they reached the lay line.

“He looked nervous,” Whidden said of Dickson. “Maybe they’re a little psyched out. There was even a time when we had a right (wind) shift, and I thought he could have crossed us.”

KZ7’s tactician, Brad Butterworth, said: “We were pretty happy with the speed we had. We thought when we came back to Stars & Stripes, we’d be bow to bow.”

Instead, they were two lengths behind, and Conner tacked right in front of them, fouling their wind and eventually driving them off into two extra tacks to fetch the first mark, which Conner rounded 31 seconds in front.

Said Whidden: “I said to Dennis with about a third of the first leg to run, ‘We’ve got ‘em.’ ”

But the Kiwis’ problems were only beginning.

On the downwind run, their boom vang (which holds the boom down to keep the sail flat) came apart, and the zipper in the luff of the mainsail parted.

Perhaps rattled by the problems, Dickson was late in calling for the spinnaker drop at the leeward mark, failed to trim in his mainsheet and executed what he called a disastrous “crash jibe.”

The boom, swinging full around from the force of the wind, tore out the backstay, broke the mast crane at the top of the spar, jamming it hard against the head of the sail, and shattered the electronic sensors on the stern, leaving the Kiwis to sail by the seats of their pants the rest of the day.

That’s when Williams went to work.

“Today was sort of interesting,” he said.

First, he had to be hauled up the mast to close the backup zipper on the main, then out the boom to bring the dangling backstay around the back of the mainsail.

“The next was after the race when we couldn’t get the mainsail down because the crane was damaged,” Williams said. “The only way to get it down was to haul somebody up to the spreaders and then (have them) climb from the hounds up past the diamond spreader and then up the two small wires.”

Dickson: “It probably took us 10 minutes to talk about how we were going to get it down the safest possible way. We finally decided there was no safe way.”

Williams: “Nobody else volunteered, so I went up again.”

With the mast whipping violently, they hauled Williams up most of the way, but he had to climb the last 20 feet to the top, hand over hand, unsecured by a safety line. There he used a pocket knife to hack through a foot of 3/8-inch-thick kevlar to free the sail.

Was Williams complaining?

Only about the result.

“Today was disappointing,” he said, “because we never had a chance to compete.”

Dickson: “We were worried that the top of the rig was going to come down. I’m happy that we still have 11 crewmen and made it back to the dock. There were times when we didn’t think we’d get that far.”

Through 46 races, several in conditions as fierce as Saturday’s, Stars & Stripes has had none of the major gear failures experienced by most of the other boats. The faulty spinnaker halyard shackle that cost Friday’s race was a fluke that could have happened any time.

“That’s been our biggest thing going,” navigator Peter Isler said, “the anti-breakdown program.”

The boat, hardened by testing and tuning in the wild Molokai Channel of Hawaii, is checked thoroughly every night, and between series, key parts are X-rayed or magnafluxed for signs of stress.

His men, Conner doesn’t worry about.

America’s Cup Notes

Kookaburra III again sailed to an easy win, by 2:06, over Australia IV, which has real problems, to take a 3-0 lead in the defender trials. Australia IV bowman Damian Fewster, a veteran of the ’83 Cup victory on Australia II, suffered a concussion and cuts at the reach mark when the spinnaker pole, prepared for a jibe, came unclipped from the sail and fell on his head. The boat broached, but skipper Colin Beashel quickly brought it under control. Kookaburra III flew a protest flag before the start but didn’t file a charge after winning. . . . The defender rivals also will have a lay day today, requested by Australia IV. They, too, will resume racing Monday.