AMERICA’S CUP ’92 : Stars & Stripes Endures Charge From Jayhawk

Like many large ocean racing boats, the International America’s Cup Class has two steering wheels.

On America 3’s boats, the joke goes, one is for owner Bill Koch and the other is for the instructor, but the crew on Stars & Stripes wasn’t laughing Sunday.

Dennis Conner took a slight edge at the start of the fifth race of the defender trials and led throughout to win by 2 minutes 16 seconds, but with Koch snapping at him most of the way.

Koch, steering his supposedly slower Jayhawk, forced Conner to defend his position through 40 tacks on the first windward leg and 27 more on the second. It was the kind of aggressive sailing that most experts, including Conner, thought would be unlikely with the new 75-foot boats--least of all with the inexperienced Koch at the helm.

“I don’t think we’ve ever had so much fun on a boat,” said Koch’s tactician, Andreas Josenhans. “It was a blast . . . good learning and really fun sailing.”

It’s also tough on the grinders--the guys who run the winches that trim the sails--but was exactly what Conner’s crew needed.

“We haven’t had a lot of practice racing these boats around a race course,” trimmer Bill Trenkle said. “With only one boat, we’ve been out there by ourselves trying to practice crew maneuvers and sail changes, and you just can’t simulate the type of intensity you get on a day like today.

“Today was probably our biggest learning day. A few more close races like that will help us get up to speed even quicker.”

Tactician Tom Whidden said, “Jayhawk’s crew was maybe a little bit farther along. But if you think back over the years that we’ve all been doing the Cup together in Dennis’ boat, we’ve never started particularly strong on crew work. At Fremantle (in 1986) we were dumping sails in the water. We’re getting a little better.”

Whidden said the rust also extends to the tactician and helmsman.

“I attribute the poor performances against Defiant to me,” he said. “Tactically, we need to do a little better job in placing the boat on the race course.”

And as for some of the mediocre starts: “Dennis historically has been a real good starter because he has excellent timing. Maybe right now his timing isn’t what it ought to be.”

Koch has Bill Campbell steer Jayhawk for the starts, but Whidden said that in a tacking duel “the helmsman is pretty much on his own. That’s when the helmsmanship really shows up.”

If so, Koch passed the test. He kept Jayhawk in the chase until the third and last windward leg when Conner took the left side of the course, let Koch go right and cashed in on a calculated wind shift that put him out of reach.

The result left Stars & Stripes with two victories and two losses, between America 3’s newer boat, Defiant, at 3-0 and Jayhawk at 0-3. Those two will race Tuesday after a lay day today.

Defiant, with Buddy Melges steering, has had little trouble with either rival--and Josenhans said, yes, the America 3 boats are rivals, including the helmsmen, Koch and Melges, although the latter has more than 40 years of experience on his side.

“Those two guys are really serious,” Josenhans said. “They’re trying to steer better than each other. The competition is terrific.”

The worrisome part, however, is that while Conner’s starts, Whidden’s tactics and the crew’s sail handling probably will improve over the next few weeks, will his boat?

When Jayhawk goes to the museum after this first round, to be replaced by the third of Koch’s four boats sailing off the assembly line, Stars & Stripes will be the only boat left that sailed in the IACC Worlds last May. Everybody else has a newer boat.

“Our boat performed quite well today,” Whidden said. “Today’s wind (of about 8 knots) was more in Stars & Stripes’ range.”

But there is still doubt about how its basic speed compares.

If it really doesn’t measure up to Defiant, with two more Koch boats due, Whidden said, “We’re in deep you-know-what.”