SAILING : Conner Victory Vanishes Along With the Wind

Tuesday was a lazy, hazy day, the kind that could kill sailboat racing as a spectator sport.

The fleet pitched and rolled in a deep swell somewhere off Point Loma, inducing an epidemic of mal de mer that spoiled everybody’s lunch. The nine boats competing in the International America’s Cup World Championship drifted agonizingly around the three-lap, 21.2-mile course.

The wind peaked at about eight knots and dropped as low as 2 1/2, when Dennis Conner seized an advantage, coaxed Stars & Stripes past Paul Cayard’s Il Moro di Venezia like a ghost and went on to build a 10-minute lead on the final leg.

But Conner didn’t win. Nobody did. He was still half a mile from the finish line when the 4-hour 45-minute time limit elapsed. Far back in the fleet, cheers must have gone up on some other boats, because the race didn’t count and won’t be resailed.

So, going into today’s fifth and final fleet race, the two American defense teams will be fighting for the fourth and last berth in the sailoffs Friday and Saturday--Conner’s Stars & Stripes, with 14 points, and Bill Koch’s incredibly dangerous Jayhawk, with 16 3/4.

It has been a tough series for Chris Dickson’s Nippon Challenge, which was picked by some observers to win this event but has virtually no chance of reaching the sailoffs. The mast fell down in the first race, he was running dead last when the race was called Tuesday, and his father, Roy, has been laid off as the syndicate’s operations manager in a cost-cutting step.

Perhaps New Zealand was most pleased when Conner didn’t get home in time. The Kiwis lead the event, but with Coronado native Rod Davis steering again, had to restart after jumping the starting gun and were in fifth place at the end.

Stars & Stripes blew out its fifth spinnaker of the series on the first off-wind leg but raised a smaller sail in its place and--surprise--picked up speed in pursuit of Il Moro. When Cayard had trouble getting the red boat’s bow around the second windward mark in 3 1/2 knots of wind, Conner slipped around smoothly and sailed past Il Moro as the crew struggled to get a sagging gennaker to draw air.

Conner was not terribly disappointed. He was not enthusiastic about sailing in the Worlds, and his goal was not to win the event but to learn how to sail his new boats--and, for ego’s sake, he has made his point.

“We were pleased to be able to play with the big guys and not hear questions about, ‘Dennis, how does it feel to be so far behind?’ ” he said. “We put the squelch on that one.”