AMERICA’S CUP NOTEBOOK : To Skip or to Skipper? Conner Ponders Forgoing IACC Worlds

It was April Fool’s Day, but Dennis Conner didn’t sound like he was fooling. He said he may not compete in the International America’s Cup Class world championships May 4-11.

“We’ll see,” he said.

Conner a spectator for an America’s Cup event on his own home pond?

“I don’t know what we’ll do,” he said. “I’ve entered. But I don’t know if our boat will even sail.”

Conner’s latest Stars & Stripes will be christened Sunday at the San Diego Embarcadero when his youngest daughter Shana, 18, whacks it with a bottle of bubbly. Then he’ll start figuring out how to sail it. He’s never sailed one of the new boats.

But the question he raises is what the IACC Worlds have to do with the real America’s Cup in 1992, besides offering a promotional showcase on live national television. Conner sized it up the same way early in ’86 when he chose to stay in Hawaii and prepare rather than sail in the 12-meter worlds at Fremantle. Why?

“For the same reasons I might not compete this time,” he said. “The ones that are here--are they gonna use their best boat or are they gonna sandbag? Why would someone go out and show all their cards here? How many people are really racing other than to get a little line on the competition? I’m sure everybody’s not going to be going full-on. We’ll have to wait and see.”

The syndicates with money--Nippon, Il Moro, Mercury Bay, America-3--will be sailing development or training boats, not their ’92 campaign boats, and some of the others won’t even have their first boats built in time.

How concerned Conner’s major sponsors--Cadillac, Pepsi and American Airlines--would be about losing the exposure remains to be seen.

But if the prospect of losing their star player throws the San Diego Yacht Club and the America’s Cup Organizing Committee into mass cardiac arrest, there was some good news, too. Conner might depart from his America’s Cup blueprint and join defense rival Bill Koch of America-3 in some fall training exercises, for the good of the defense.

Conner wouldn’t confirm that, but the two syndicates have broached the subject in discussions about a defense trials format for ’92.

Peter Isler, who was Conner’s navigator, had suggested earlier that Conner, lacking immediate prospects for a second boat, wasn’t one to be caught without a plan.

“He may have something up his sleeve, where he may have arranged with some other team to work with them,” Isler said. “That wouldn’t surprise me because he does rely on that. But I’d be surprised to see that sort of cooperation among the U.S. teams, even if the yacht club wanted it to happen.”

But Conner has a problem. He finally has a boat, but it certainly won’t be fine-tuned for a while. That takes a lot of time--and, ideally, a second boat, and it may be near Christmas before he has that.

In 18 years, Conner has learned how to win America’s Cups. This will be his fifth as a skipper and sixth overall. The best way is to have a second, similar boat for a benchmark or what the sailors call a “trial horse.”

But 12-meters cost about a fifth of what the new boats cost, and there were always a lot of them around. It was the veteran Jack Sutphen and the “Mushroom Crew” sailing Stars & Stripes ’85 that helped make S&S; ’87 a winner at Fremantle.

Isler said, “Dennis has always had two boats. Even in the catamaran affair we had two boats. He didn’t invent the trial horse, but he’s the guy that perfected it.”

Electronics, tank tests and dissimilar boats can’t be trusted.

Conner said, “You’d better have something pretty similar because you’re looking for pretty small differences when you’re changing a trim tab or a bulb (keel) or one sail to another. Even when you have something identical, it takes a long time.”

Gary Jobson, another Cup veteran, said, “The trial horse is essential. I don’t think electronics are sophisticated enough today to substitute for having a boat alongside. The side benefit is that when you have two boats trialing, in essence you’re really racing, so your crews get sharper at the same time.

“If you look at (the ’87 Cup in) Australia, the teams that did not have trial horses, none of ‘em did very well.”

There is another possibility: the first America-3, which Koch bought from the French syndicate for training, will be up for sale or charter when Koch gets his own second boat in July.

But would Koch sell it to Conner, the guy he’s trying to beat?

Jobson, Koch’s co-skipper, said, “Yeah, I think so. We haven’t heard from him. But I think we’d entertain it.”

Some of the other challengers also will have extra boats, but would they sell one to a defender?

“The French did,” Jobson said.

But the French needed the money at the time. Nippon, Il Moro and Mercury Bay don’t. And would Koch sell it to any of the other challengers?

“The French boat becomes a good trial horse for somebody,” Jobson said. “But maybe it’s better off being with Conner than the (challengers). At least it helps the defense.”

Koch soon will be two boats up on Conner, after the revelation that a second boat is being built at Hercules Aerospace in Utah. Did Conner know?

“Hmmm . . . no comment,” he said.

And is Conner having a second, secret boat built?

“We’re just happy to have our first one,” he said with a nifty head fake.

His new boat is midnight blue and white--blue being his winning color in all three Cup victories.

“I didn’t want to tempt fate,” he said. “Actually, there was a little hesitation on painting it blue, because with the carbon fiber they worry about it getting heat as it continues to cure.

“Also, I have a feeling it’s gonna be a little warm (below decks). The guy working the sewer (handling sails), I’m not gonna be in his top 10.”

Is this Conner’s last Cup? He’ll be 48 in September, and it’s evolving as a young man’s game. But he did finish a close second in the physical and deeply competitive Etchells worlds in Australia this year.

“I’m coming up on my 20th anniversary in this game,” he said. “Six America’s Cup (five as a skipper), that’s a lot. I think the most anybody else has done this is twice--Charlie Barr and (Bus) Mosbacher. Seems like it went pretty fast.”

He contradicted a reporter who noted that this will be his first Cup on home waters--discounting the mismatched catamaran defense against New Zealand’s monohull in ’88.

“Any time you’re defending the America’s Cup you can’t take it lightly,” Conner said. “There’s all the pressure and all the media and all the practice. It was real to the people that had to do the work.”

The international flavor wasn’t nearly the same, with only two syndicates involved.

But, Conner said, “When you’re racing for the Cup, it’s always one against one.”

Iain Murray’s underfunded “people’s challenge” in Australia got a major boost from a black-tie fund-raising affair attended by 800 supporters at Sydney recently.

One guest was Tom Wilson, public relations officer for the San Diego Yacht Club, who told of a laser spelling out “Spirit of Australia”--the syndicate’s name--across one wall as loud rock music blared and the America’s Cup, on loan from San Diego, rose from a cloud of swirling colored smoke “like the Phoenix rising from the ashes.”

According to Wilson, the folks couldn’t get out their checkbooks fast enough. They wrote or pledged $2.7 million on the spot, although Wilson didn’t say whether that was Australian or U.S. dollars.