Veteran Stars & Stripes Crew Has Some Wins in Its Sails : Sailing: Conner’s group probably has a big edge in experience.

One boat, one crew, one skipper--not a formidable force in the modern America’s Cup, unless you consider the equation.

“Our strength is our skipper,” says Bill Trenkle.

And the strengths of that skipper, Dennis Conner, are his sailing and organizational skills and, in no small part, his crew. Together their strength is a boat--only one boat, but a good boat, maybe good enough to win.

Trenkle, tactician Tom Whidden and bowman Scott Vogel are in their fifth Cup campaigns with Conner, all starting in 1980 with Freedom. Trusted, loyal, dedicated, battle-hardened, they are the core of a crew unique among all the others: They have won the America’s Cup--three times, in fact.

They also are among the oldest. Whidden is 44, Trenkle and Vogel 33--somewhat advanced for climbing 110-foot masts, which Vogel is prepared to do, or for taking a flying winch gear in the mouth, which Trenkle did last week.

This is the over-the-horizon gang. Stars & Stripes has more crewmen over 40 than under 30.

They haven’t been out there on the race course much lately, but nobody seems concerned. Like old gunfighters, they’ll ride up to the starting line Tuesday knowing exactly what to expect.

“Crew practice is nice, but we have an experienced crew,” Trenkle said. “Crew training was not one of our main focuses ever.”

Nor was career advancement. Trenkle is one of the minority on salary. A graduate of the New York Maritime College at Ft. Schuyler, as is Vogel, he is port tailer afloat and operations manager ashore--the man in charge of the boat.

Otherwise, the crew gets room, board and a modest allowance.

“They all made a lot of sacrifices,” Trenkle said. “We tried to make the schedule so a lot of them didn’t have to (completely) leave their jobs. They could go back once in a while. But some did give up jobs to do it. Some of the other guys on other teams took it just as a job.”

For most of last year Conner scheduled his sailing for 10 days on and 10 days off.

While the boat was laid up, some of the crew went home, Conner went fund-raising and Whidden--president of North Sails and a top sailor in his own right--went back to Connecticut to look after business, while Trenkle supervised maintenance and modifications.

Even this weekend, two days before the start of the defender trials, Conner was in New York on syndicate business. He has needed people such as Trenkle back at the base.

“He’s good at giving you responsibility without overriding everything you do,” Trenkle said.

“He’s always open to answer questions without making you feel like it’s a problem to go ask him. Very easy to work with. It’s good working with somebody who works so hard.

“He has had to do a lot more fund-raising, when he’d rather be sailing. But since the (IACC) worlds (in May), most of the crew has known where they’re gonna be and what they’re gonna be doing. America 3 has shuffled a lot of people around.”

Since they can’t afford a faster boat, they’re just trying to make this one faster.

“Just because we haven’t built five boats doesn’t mean we didn’t have the design capabilities to do five good boats,” Trenkle said. “Since we were unable to build a new boat, we’ve been able to do things that optimized this boat . . . to fine-tune the ballast, get it trimmed up, get the sail plan exactly right, do underwater configurations (from) the wind-tunnel resources at GM.”

With limited time on the water and without a benchmark boat, Stars & Stripes has had to rely largely on computers to guide its development.

“One of the good things we found in our research is that we do have a very good hull configuration, thanks to the advanced composite engineering group from the Newport News Shipyards, which is our main structural engineering group,” Trenkle said. “Every major modification has been engineered by them.

“When we went back to do further analysis on how much lighter, how much stiffer we could make the hull and all that, we were pretty happy.”

Ironically, it was Conner who developed the concept of a benchmark boat, or trial horse, to a science. Has he missed it?

“That’s hard to say,” Trenkle said. “We’ve done some computer sail testing and analysis, but we don’t know how good it is until we start racing.”

Then it comes down to the sailors. Even when Conner is gone, the crew takes the boat out for testing, but it’s not quite the same.

When Conner is on board, Trenkle said, “There’s a noticeable difference. Everybody’s intensity is higher. He’s in full command.

“He hardly says anything. He knows everybody knows what to do and when to do it. When he does communicate, he gets his point across in very few words.”

John Bertrand, the alternate helmsman, is new to the team.

“There’s always a lot of discussion in the back of the boat in terms of tactics and strategy,” Bertrand said. “Tom and Dennis communicate very well together. Dennis is either asking questions or making statements.

“The mainsail trimmer and the jib trimmers are always looking at the speed and the angle. They’ll talk to Dennis, saying, ‘We need a little more speed.’

“Even the grinders can help the trimmers by looking at the sail trim and anticipating when they need to grind. Everyone is involved in sailing the boat.

“Dennis rarely gives any commands. When he wants to tack, he’ll just tack, and they’re well-trained in that respect.”

As a pure sailor, Trenkle said, Conner “has uncanny judgment on the water, like nothing I’ve ever seen.”

When he joined Conner in 1980, Trenkle said, “I was surprised. I’d never worked for anybody so demanding . . . so meticulous and thorough.”

The atmosphere must agree with the crew, if the personnel turnover during the current campaign means anything.

“Zero,” Trenkle said.