AMERICA’S CUP NOTEBOOK : Rod Davis Rides Winds of Change Back to His Home, Coronado

Rod Davis came home to Coronado this week, a visitor in a familiar land.

Davis came home a Kiwi. Or is he? Sailors fool you.

A John Bertrand from Australia won the America’s Cup from Dennis Conner in 1983--the year before a John Bertrand from California sailed a Finn to a silver medal for the U.S. in the Olympic Games.

So is this the same Rod Davis who with Robbie Haines and Ed Trevelyan won a gold medal for the U.S. with a Soling in 1984, then sailed the graphically splendid but notoriously slow Eagle for the Newport Harbor Yacht Club in the 1986-87 America’s Cup?

If so, what’s he doing sailing for New Zealand in the 1992 America’s Cup? And starting another Olympic campaign in a Star boat, also for New Zealand?

By their nature, sailors go where the trade winds take them. For a time, Davis was helping Japan’s Bengal Bay Challenge, but that effort is now in limbo. New Zealand’s Chris Dickson is sailing for Japan’s Nippon Challenge, America’s Paul Cayard for Italy’s Il Moro di Venezia.

But Davis’ Kiwi connection is more personal. At an event in New Zealand, he met Liz, a Kiwi girl. They married. Their first daughter, Hannah, was born at Perth, Western Australia, during the America’s Cup competition.

Afterward, in 1987, they settled in Auckland, New Zealand, where Caroline was born. Last week, she celebrated her second birthday in Long Beach, where Davis was competing in the Congressional Cup.

Their next child will be born in San Diego. They have rented a house in Coronado, where Davis spent most of his youth, where his parents still live and where, by one of life’s quirks, New Zealand’s Cup campaign is based. Hannah, now 4, will start school there next year at Crown Elementary--her father’s first school.

Maybe Davis, 35, could have just stayed there and waited, and the Cup would have come to him.

This man is no island. He does have roots. Some of them are just transplanted. When he left, he said he will always be an American.

“And I’ll stick to that,” he says. “I still will not give up my U.S. citizenship. Somebody asked me, do I feel more like an American or a Kiwi? I thought about it, and then I said, ‘Both.’ ”

But his extended residence in New Zealand will allow him to compete for New Zealand in the 1992 Olympics.

“I had to be released by my national authority (the United States Yacht Racing Union), and I had to fill out a form that says by taking on New Zealand citizenship I do not want to jeopardize my U.S. (citizenship),” he said. “It makes sense. I live down there.”

It also makes sense that Davis would campaign a Star boat in the Olympics. San Diego is for Star boats--the strongest of international classes--what western Pennsylvania is for quarterbacks. Dennis Conner, Lowell North, Gerry Driscoll, Malin Burnham, Mark Reynolds, Vince Brun . . . the list of world and Olympic champions is impressive.

“I’m gonna spend so much time in San Diego (through next May) that I figure, what better place to learn to sail Stars?” Davis reasoned.

Early this month, he competed in his first Star event with crew Don Cowie, a native Kiwi. It was the prestigious Bacardi Cup in Florida, featuring several world-class sailors.

“We were aiming to get 23rd and got 25th out of 70 boats,” Davis said. “We were pretty happy. We got the boat two days before. We had practiced one day in a Star in San Diego.”

Davis and Cowie figure to face only three to five rivals in the New Zealand Olympic trials, so their chances are good to get to Barcelona.

The America’s Cup is another matter. It’s undetermined whether Davis, David Barnes or Coutts will steer the big, new boat. Coutts--the 1984 Olympic Finn champion and a top-ranked world match racer--isn’t yet a member of the team, but indications are that he will be.

“A New Zealand team without Russell Coutts involved doesn’t make sense,” Davis said. “He’s a darn good sailor. I’m more worried about winning the America’s Cup than winning a job on the boat.”

Spoken like a real Kiwi.

Spain did not enter the International America’s Cup Class world championships before the March 1 deadline but is negotiating to buy New Zealand’s third boat, currently sitting idle on the shore at Coronado. The boat was meant for Bengal Bay until that team rolled over. The Swedish team also is hoping to get it.

A team doesn’t have to sail a homemade boat in the worlds, just in the Cup in 1992.

Charterers of a giant Aeroflot transport offered to fly Team Dennis Conner’s boat from Bristol, R.I., where it was built, to San Diego.

For $250,000.

Conner stuck to his original plan to bring it cross-country by truck. It left Tuesday and is scheduled to be christened April 7.

However, the Aeroflot will fly Italy’s third Cup boat from Venice to San Diego in mid-April, but a Soviet Air Force transport will deliver the Soviet Union’s boat on about April 4.