Kiwis Steal Show With Their New Boat : Sailing: New Zealand easily wins shortened challenger practice race.

Call off the races. Send everybody home. Crate up the America’s Cup and ship it to New Zealand. It’s all over but the sailing.

OK, you’re right. It’s a bit early to concede. But the way the Kiwis trounced the opposition with their new boat in the first of a series of challenger practice races Saturday off Point Loma was not heartening to their rivals--nor even to Dennis Conner, who joined the race briefly before the challengers’ chase boats ran him off their course.

For weeks speculation was high on what designers Bruce Farr and Russell Bowler had placed inside the box they sent from Auckland to San Diego with a red bow around it, just in time for Christmas for the crew.

It was a little red wagon, and boy can it fly. Significantly shorter and lighter than its 75-foot rivals--how much shorter and lighter they haven’t said yet--New Zealand’s fourth International America’s Cup Class creation, distinctive for its pug nose, wide-open cockpit and one-meter-long bowsprit, is well apart from the design lines taken by everyone else.

Skipper Rod Davis was at the helm, and with input from tactician David Barnes and navigator Peter Evans he made the most of wispy and shifty 4- to 6-knot zephyrs to win by more than three minutes over about half of the 22.6-mile Cup course.

The eight boats had sailed only five of the eight legs when the race was stopped after three hours at 3:30 p.m., about the time the moon was drifting across the sun.

The Kiwis upstaged the eclipse. Either it had become evident the fleet would not complete the full course before dark--or the race committee from the Southwestern Yacht Club simply called it a TKO.

Davis cautioned observers not to get carried away with the boat’s first performance.

“We always seemed to have a little more wind than the other guys,” Davis said. “We won it probably more because Barnsey and Peter Evans put us in the right place than because of blinding speed on any point of sail.”

New Zealand was only third around the first, upwind mark, behind France’s older boat, sailed by Bertand Pace, and Iain Murray’s Spirit of Australia, with Peter Gilmour at the helm.

That order continued down the first run until the boats jibed from right to left and New Zealand suddenly shot past Spirit of Australia, then rolled over Ville de Paris, which was stuck in a pocket of dead air.

“All of a sudden we got this puff and jumped out six or eight lengths,” Davis said. “I think it was a lot of good fortune today.”

Gilmour got Spirit of Australia across the finish line second but was disqualified for not returning after jumping the gun at the start. Pace inherited second place, in front of France’s new, blue boat sailed by skipper Marc Pajot.

Also sailing were Spain, Syd Fischer’s Challenge Australia, New Zealand’s older boat, with Russell Coutts steering, and Nippon Challenge. The powerful Italians were off on the horizon with two boats but planned to race today, which will give a better measure of the new Kiwi boat.

“We’d have preferred that they would have raced,” Davis said.

The Kiwis didn’t participate in a similar, informal series last month, before their latest boat arrived.

“You’re always apprehensive how you’re gonna go against the rest of the world,” Davis said, “we’ve been working in isolation for so long.”

Farr had said months ago that he thought he had a “breakthrough” boat--one that would walk away from the rest of the class.

Today may tell more. The forecast was for winds of 20 knots or more, giving New Zealand a chance to test its boat at the other end of the spectrum. Is it as good in strong winds as in light?

“It’s hard to know,” Davis said. “If it is that windy . . . we want to break our boat in nice and gently.”

Above all, Davis said, he isn’t convinced it’s anything special.

“I don’t believe in breakthrough boats,” he said.