Conner and Stars & Stripes Entered in Ensenada Race

Dennis Conner will sail one of the controversial Stars & Stripes catamarans in the 42nd Newport-Ensenada race starting Friday, April 28, and this time nobody objects.

Vic Stern, secretary-treasurer of the Ocean Racing Catamaran Assn., said Tuesday that the organization had approved the conventional, “soft-sail” rig that was the backup boat to the airfoil-wing craft Conner used to trounce New Zealand’s larger monohull in a two-race defense of the America’s Cup at San Diego last September.

The winning boat has since been disqualified by the New York Supreme Court and the Cup awarded to the Mercury Bay Boating Club of New Zealand in the resolution of a protest by syndicate chief Michael Fay, although the San Diego Yacht Club is pursuing an appeal of the decision.

Starting at noon in a fleet of 27 multihulls, Conner and a crew of eight will be racing the setting sun toward the Ensenada record of 10 hours 31 minutes 2 seconds set by Bob Hanel’s Double Bullet in 1983. Stern thinks Stars & Stripes could finish the 125-mile race before sundown.

“If she gets a steady 12-knot wind, she could be there in 7 1/2 hours,” Stern said. “It’s a fantastic boat. When I sailed on it recently, we were doing 20 knots in a nine-knot breeze.”

Stars & Stripes is about the same size--60 feet--as Rudy Choy’s Aikane X-5, which has won the last two Ensenada events, but is lighter and carries more sail. She has been assigned a Performance Handicap Racing Fleet (PHRF) rating of minus-172 to Aikane’s minus-58, meaning she must give 114 seconds a mile to Aikane, or 3.96 hours over the distance.

Stern, who has sailed in a record 27 consecutive Ensenada races, the last several aboard his own Imi Loa catamaran, said he thinks Stars & Stripes still could be the overall winner, as well as first to finish.

“Her rating assumes her weather hull will be out of the water 50% of the time,” Stern said.

That would be much more than it was when Conner sailed the sister boat ultra-conservatively against New Zealand.

Bill Trenkle, crew member and vice president of marine operations for Dennis Conner Sports Inc., said: “It’s a matter of keeping the speed up when the wind gets light (in late afternoon off San Diego). They predicted us (for the handicap) in 10 knots of wind, but we’re not going to get 10 knots all the way.”

Also aboard will be Tom Whidden, Conner’s tactician for the last four Cup campaigns, and Tony Wilson, the president of Hobie Cat, which is sponsoring the effort.

Trenkle said the boat won the last tuneup race against the airfoil rig before the September event, but Conner chose to sail the airfoil because it performed better in light air.