SAILING / RICH ROBERTS : North Will Sail in Race Week

Audi/North Sails Race Week off Long Beach this weekend will have an extra touch of class. Lowell North of San Diego will sail on Tony Reyes’ Swan 46 Islero in Class D.

Racing among 119 boats in seven classes starts Friday at 4 p.m., with two more rounds Saturday and one Sunday.

If sailing has legends, North is one of them: founder of North Sails, Olympic gold medalist in 1968, the only four-time Star class world champion--and a man without an enemy.

North recently had a second hip transplant but is getting around on crutches. His first operation didn’t stop him from going to the America’s Cup at Fremantle, Australia, in 1986.

Two of the best American match racers are named Isler.

J.J. Isler, wife of Peter Isler, won the first international women’s match-racing championship at Portofino, Italy, early this month. With eight teams from five countries competing in J-24s, she sailed through the double round-robin, 14-0, then blitzed the sail-offs, 4-0.

That stirred up talk around San Diego that she might become the skipper of one of the two proposed women’s America’s Cup efforts, competing against her husband for the right to defend the Cup. She has beaten men in open events.

But one America’s Cup campaign in the family is enough.

“If the Cup were in ‘93, I would have tried to sign on with Peter’s campaign,” she said. “But (with both in ‘92), it would take too much away from my Olympic campaign. I really want to do that again.”

J.J. Isler, sailing a 470 dinghy with crew Amy Wardell, was fifth in the 1988 U.S. trials won by Allison Jolly and Lynne Jewell, who went on to win the first women’s Olympic gold medal in sailing.

At Portofino, Isler’s five-person crew included her sister, Margi Fetter. J.J. Isler is a former captain of the Yale sailing team and was Rolex yachtswoman of the year in 1987, the same year Dennis Conner won the men’s award for reclaiming the America’s Cup.

New Zealand’s crew came up one man short before the final day of last weekend’s match-racing series against Peter Isler on San Diego Bay when the key sail trimmer, Grant Loretz, became ill early Sunday.

Isler, already down in races, 4-1, and in points, 6-1, gave rival David Barnes one of his extra sailors, Gordy Wagner.

What’s this, an outbreak of sportsmanship in the America’s Cup?

Isler was the navigator for Conner on the Stars & Stripes catamaran in the lopsided 1988 defense that wound up in a storm of name-calling at the bitter news conferences after the two races. Isler sat silent and embarrassed at one end of the podium as Conner swapped insults with New Zealand’s Barnes, tactician Peter Lester and designer Bruce Farr.

“I remember J.J. cornering David (Barnes) right afterward and having a word with him to try to defuse anything there,” Isler said.

“I felt bad that all the sailors on both teams had to take part in the races. For me personally, it was a fun, positive learning experience, except that we had to go race in the end. The racing wasn’t any fun for anybody.

“Now I don’t hear them talking about it at all.”

Isler shouldn’t have lost any ground with potential backers with his performance against the tough New Zealanders last weekend. He came back strong Sunday to win the first two races and tie the series, then lost by a big margin after switching to the blue-hulled Swiftsure III, alias Soft Scrub.

Isler wouldn’t listen to the excuse, but several observers thought the white boat--Hokelele, alias Coor’s Light--was faster upwind in a breeze.

Isler, the top-ranked U.S. match racer and fourth in the world, was most impressive in his starts--a critical factor in match racing. He got off the line seven out of eight times in better position than three-time Congressional Cup winner Rod Davis, who handled the starts for New Zealand.

“Isler is the best starter in match racing right now,” said his tactician, Dave Perry.

Michael Fay hasn’t selected his skipper for the ’92 challenge, but Barnes and Davis don’t seem uptight about it.

“We consider it far too early in the game to worry about that,” Barnes said. “Those sort of things evolve after a while, as long as you’ve got the right sort of people.

“Who exactly steers or who’s tactician or navigator is probably not too important. We’ve got any number of people capable of doing the job. It’s just a matter of who fits in best where.

“We’d like to think that we can also be man enough to say, ‘OK, if you’re better, you do the job,’ rather than letting egos get in the way.”

Larry Klein watched Sunday’s races from an inflatable dinghy.

Klein, the 1989 Rolex award winner for his J-24 and Etchells 22 world championships, has organized his own American’s Cup campaign: Triumph America.

Conner didn’t watch but seems to be lurking in the wings to make his splash.

Conner is ranked seventh in world match racing--a distinction he could do without. He doesn’t compete on the circuit, but his 1988 points for the Cup defense still count.

The trouble is, they don’t count enough to rank him on top, which may mislead his supporters.

Pete Melvin and Steve Rosenberg of Long Beach will sail the Chula Vista Yacht Club’s challenge in the Little America’s Cup for hard-sail C-class catamarans in Australia next January.

Melvin sailed a Tornado cat in the 1988 Olympics and, with Rosenberg, won the ProSail Hobie 21 title last year.

A Cabrillo Beach YC bid by sailmakers Steve and Brian Dair of San Pedro failed last year when a helicopter’s downdraft blew apart their fast but fragile “Wingmill” and its rotating airfoil as the first race was about to start.

The more conventional Chula Vista boat, designed by Gino Morelli, is being built at RD Boatworks in San Juan Capistrano, where the Stars & Stripes catamarans were created.