Conner Plays a Game With New Set of Rules : Sailing: America’s Cup skipper is critical of new boats and different protest procedure.

Nobody ever played the America’s Cup game better than Dennis Conner, but now they have changed the rules on him.

The master of the 12-meters doesn’t see the lumbering aluminum boats that he drove so well but new, light, high-tech craft built of space-age materials that may break if the crew exhales all at once.

“The boats will be . . . not as safe to sail . . . a handful,” Conner said here Thursday.

And the genius of gamesmanship sees no protest rooms but on-the-water judges who won’t be swayed by post-mortem explanations of fouls that occur.

“I see this as taking away a potential advantage for the American defense, which I’m not thrilled about,” Conner said.

Conner, who never liked to go to sea without an edge, will have to look elsewhere--or, just plain out-sail the opposition.

Conner was sizing up--or setting up--that opposition when the three syndicates that will compete to defend the Cup for the San Diego Yacht Club in 1992 met at a luncheon sponsored by the America’s Cup Organizing Committee. It was a sellout of 600 at $20 a pop--$30 at the door--and several were turned away.

The trophy itself arrived with its full-time keeper, Jack Keith, in a rented chauffeured limo.

New players introduced Thursday were Bill Koch, a serious sailor with serious money--he’s been identified as a “billionaire” industrialist--and David Lowry, a real estate developer and San Diego YC member who brought the Beach Boys into the event, with ’84 Olympic silver medalist John Bertrand of Newport Beach as skipper.

Koch and Lowry disagreed with Conner about on-the-water judging. They like it: settle the dispute now and get on with the sailing. Since ’87 the sport has seen enough litigation to last a lifetime.

The new boats, designed with San Diego’s relatively light winds in mind, will measure 75 feet--10 or 12 feet more than the 12-meters--but carry half again as much sail with two-thirds the displacement.

Asked how such a boat would fare in the gale-force winds of Fremantle, Cup veteran Paul Cayard, who heads the Italian campaign, said recently: “It would sink.”

Even at San Diego, Lowry said, it will be “a little scary . . . hard to control.”

Koch said: “They’re going to be quite fragile. I wouldn’t want to take ‘em out in 20 knots of breeze.”

Conner worries more that they’ll make for dull racing:

“If there’s a big discrepancy in the speeds of two boats, the racing won’t be interesting, and as many people as we have here entered, some will be faster than others by quite a bit more than in 12-meters. If there’s a five-minute difference and these boats are going around at 10 or 12 knots, you won’t be able to see the other boat.”