Conner Ready to Lower Boom on Kookaburra

Dennis Conner was humble.

“I’m just the quarterback,” he said. “It’s the 10 guys in front of me that win.”

Conner was gracious.

“KZ7 pushed us all the way. I have tremendous respect for Chris (Dickson) and his crew. Good on you, Chris.”

Conner was appreciative of the way the Yacht Club Costa Smeralda ran the challenger trials.

“A lot of trauma was involved in ‘glassgate’ that we’ll never appreciate. They set a new standard in yacht racing.”

Conner was funny.

When New Zealand syndicate chairman Michael Fay said that he had jumped onto KZ7 after Monday’s race to steer it home for the final time, Conner said: “I thought you were gaining.”

Conner, it seems, can be whatever he needs to be, especially, when it counts, the best 12-meter sailor in the world.

Never mind that earlier, to the Kiwis, Conner may have seemed arrogant by picking himself to sweep them away after obliquely accusing them of cheating with a fiberglass boat, and that he worried the amiable Italians of Costa Smeralda considerably with the uproar over the issue.

Conner likes to say: “When the racing starts, the bull stops.”

Given all of his character flaws and personality quirks, the man knows how to play the America’s Cup game, on and off the water, keeping everyone so far off balance that they never know what hit them until he’s sailing off into the sunset.

Dickson, 25, finally figured it out, after Conner, 44, finished him off by winning four of their five races in the challenger finals, Monday’s by 1 minute 29 seconds despite completely blowing away a headsail.

“Thirteen years (in 12-meters) beat 13 months,” Dickson said.

In the crucible of competition, Conner doesn’t run into mark buoys when he’s only nine seconds behind. Conner’s crew doesn’t try to switch from gennaker to spinnaker and wind up with both of them in the water, tangled around the rudder.

It’s one thing to be flawless against the Eagles and Azzurras, but quite another to produce under greater pressure.

“They were forced into mistakes,” Stars & Stripes navigator Peter Isler said. “They were starting to feel the heat.”

If Conner has a small problem, such as his genoa blowing apart, he puts up another and keeps on sailing.

As a result, he has the Louis Vuitton Cup, a mere steppingstone to his destiny: to reclaim that other Cup that he won in 1980 and lost in ’83. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and no man alive covets that ugly trophy as much as Dennis Conner.

“It’s satisfying to get this far,” he said. “But we can’t lose sight of the real goal here. We’re up against a real formidable package in the Australian nation, and we’re all cognizant of what it means to them. They won’t let it go easily.”

But they must let it go. Conner’s quest seems relentless after the way he brushed aside Tom Blackaller and USA in four straight in the challenge semifinals, then snuffed out the Kiwis’ short-lived aura of invincibility.

Next: Kookaburra III, in the best-of-seven cup finals starting Jan. 31, unless Australia IV pulls a miraculous comeback and wins five straight races to offset KIII’s 4-0 advantage in that best-of-nine series.

KIII has led at every mark in the series and won easily again Monday by 1:13.

If there’s a consolation for Alan Bond to Australia IV’s sudden seizure of the slows, it’s that he won’t have to lose the cup back to Conner.

How do you beat a guy whose boat and crew thrive on 28 knots of wind and seas that look like somebody turned on the super wash cycle? It’s like sailing in a submarine with the top down.

Stars & Stripes’ strategy Monday, as usual, was to start from the left end of the line away from the Kiwis and use superior speed to outrace them to the first windward mark.

But Dickson foiled that plan when he slipped under Conner’s bow, with leeward rights, and Conner had to tack away to the right. Thirty seconds before the gun, Conner tried to jibe back to the left but was so late that Dickson had a three-length lead.

However, Conner got a break. The buoy at the left end of the line had dragged its mooring downwind, and the committee posted a general recall a few seconds later.

The restart was 45 minutes later (10 p.m. PST).

Again, Dickson kept his boat between Stars & Stripes and the left end of the line, but this time Conner also powered off on starboard with the Kiwis. After Dickson tacked five minutes later and they met, Dickson had to dip below his stern.

Conner immediately came over with a slam-dunk tack, and his tactician, Tom Whidden, said: “We’re rolling now.”

So they were, with a 42-second lead at the first mark, which New Zealand sliced to 23 at the leeward rounding.

“They had more sail up today than we did,” said Jon Wright, Stars & Stripes’ mainsheet trimmer. “We sent a boat up to check it out (before the start). We had a bigger main up and took it down.”

Stars & Stripes traded upwind stability for downwind speed, Wright said, because “we like to be to the weather mark first.”

Conner figured to more than make up for the downwind loss on the four weather legs and, as it turned out, KZ7 had to luff its main to keep from being overpowered, which meant it couldn’t point as well.

By the finish, Conner’s net gain upwind was 1:34, five seconds more than his winning margin.

However, for the second time in the series, a Stars & Stripes sail failure put KZ7 back in the race.

Conner was three-fourths up the second windward leg when his big blue boat climbed the crest of a wave, then slammed down deep into a trough and into the next wave, which rushed over the bow into the lower part of the sail.

“When you’re sailing a 12 (meter) in 28 knots,” Isler said, “you’re just waiting to hear an explosion.”

Conner: “The stitching ripped out in the vertical miter that comes out of the foot.”

In the next instant, the sail ripped in two from bottom to top.

Conner’s crew went into its sail-change drill--not practiced in months of sailing, as New Zealand did, but executed from experience--and had a new sail set in three minutes before the Kiwis could catch up.

“The best crew maneuver I’ve ever seen in a 12-meter race,” Wright said. “It was probably a world record.”

They unfastened the destroyed, $18,000 sail, allowing it to float away, and rehoisted another after tacking over to port to meet KZ7 on opposite tacks.

“Dennis said, ‘Just put the starboard sheet on (the new sail) and we’ll cross ‘em,’ ” Wright said. “There was no screaming, no yelling. I thought we’d have to duck ‘em (go behind the Kiwis), but then the guys said ‘hoist.’ ”

A few seconds later, New Zealand, seeing Conner driving under full sail again, tacked away to avoid a confrontation. Stars & Stripes lost only nine seconds on the leg to round 14 seconds in front.

Isler said Stars & Stripes had a similar problem during a practice race against White Crusader several weeks ago “and everybody was running into each other, so we talked about it.”

As a result, Isler said: “we always have a contingency sail ready. It’s the first sail under the hatch.”

Conner said his concerns during the crisis were to “get the new sail up and not lose anybody over the side.”

Pitching decks? Howling wind? Routine stuff where Stars & Stripes trained in the Molokai Channel of Hawaii.

“I think our crew felt comfortable in conditions that were described as awesome here on Gage Roads,” Conner said. “We didn’t find them awesome, and today was a good example.

“People questioned our judgment in going to Hawaii, but at this point I don’t think we need to defend ourselves as vigorously as we would have six months ago.”

Then it was New Zealand’s turn for big trouble. Dickson, going faster off the wind, cut Conner’s lead to eight seconds at the reach mark and was almost abreast of his rival on the second reach when he tried to switch from a gennaker to a spinnaker.

The ensuing disaster gave Conner the eight seconds back.

“It looked like a human error,” Isler said.

But the Kiwis weren’t quite cooked.

Another strong run downwind whacked Conner’s lead from 36 to 9 seconds, but the 9 suddenly became 39 when Dickson, who had steered his boat cleanly around 328 marks since October, hit the 329th--the last one of all--with the port side of his bow.

New Zealand hadn’t slipped often during the last three months, “but when the pressure’s on and you’re trying to get an extra boat length, you can make a mistake,” Wright said.

“They’re class. They were battling all the way. If we win the Cup, it’ll be because of a lot of people we had to beat: Blackaller and the Kiwis.”

Dickson immediately acknowledged his error by continuing to turn completely around the mark--and effectively taking himself out of the race. After that, he couldn’t get close enough to intimidate Conner into a tacking duel, which is New Zealand’s strength.

“It’s too bad they hit the mark,” Isler said. “It would have been an exciting last beat . . . although I must admit there were a few cheers at the time.”

When Wright saw the Kiwis rerounding, he turned and slapped Conner a high five.

“They would have had a hard time passing us,” Wright said. “About 300 yards from the finish, I pulled out this big cigar I’d hidden away and said to Dennis, ‘Do you think Red Auerbach would be lighting up right now?’ ”

Conner stuffed the stogie in his mouth and mugged for the remote TV camera on the mast.

With one bird in hand, he was already thinking about a Kookaburra in the bush.

“We’re gonna make ‘em blink,” Conner said, launching his next war of nerves.

Red Auerbach never said it better.