He Has Quips for the Queries : Defenders: Stars & Stripes loses again. Conner is a laugh a minute.
Heeeerrre’s Dennis!
“Which way is the music coming from--so I can face it?”
And, to Stars & Stripes co-designer David Pedrick: “How do you plan to make a living the rest of your life?”
Dennis Conner was still laughing it up at the post-race press conference after another lopsided loss to sailing’s version of a tag team. America 3’s older boat, Defiant, flattened him by 4 minutes 16 seconds Sunday after the “Cubens’ ” new boat had battered him onto the ropes by 6:23 Saturday.
Worse, the midnight blue Stars & Stripes really does seem to be going slower than it did in the first round of America’s Cup defender trials, when it could beat only the obsolete Jayhawk, now retired.
The problem apparently is a new, complex steering system involving a forward rudder and perhaps a radical keel visible in close passes past spectator boats in the pre-start maneuvering.
“They seem to have a little trouble,” rival helmsman Buddy Melges said. “Watching that thing at the start and all the (disturbed) green water underneath Dennis’ boat, I was getting scared to get too close for fear that they might turn the one wheel the wrong way.”
Asked for details, Conner said, “Well, I could well you, but I’m not going to”--and, turning to Melges: “You already know, Buddy, but the challengers probably don’t.”
Conner then said, “The boat is different. I’d rather have the boat perform from my helmsmanship the way it did before we made this change.
“Either the boat doesn’t steer the way I would like it to or I haven’t learned how to operate it yet. As Buddy said, it’s a little scary out there.”
Melges compared it to the trouble the late Tom Blackaller first had steering the USA 12-meter, which had fore and aft rudders, in the 1986-87 America’s Cup at Fremantle, Australia.
“Blackaller was the only guy who could double-park his boat (sideways), and I think Dennis is the same here,” Melges said.
Conner: “If it turns out to be fast, I’ll love it.
It was a laugh a minute, and if Conner didn’t seem deeply concerned, he explained why.
“You’re never really out of it until you’ve lost four races in (the fourth round in) April,” Conner said. “All we’d have to do is win five races in April and we’d be in the finals.”
In other words, the defender trials are structured so that all three boats will be in the fourth round, with all points discarded, although the top two get two and one bonus victories, respectively.
Racing the others four times each, Conner would need to win only five races to knock out one and join the other in the two-boat defender finals.
The media guide states: “This system allows a boat to win the series without being mathematically eliminated because of a poor showing in the early rounds.”
Conner has it all figured out.
What he doesn’t have figured out is the new Stars & Stripes, which could be re-christened Jekyll & Hyde.
It was not impressive in light wind Saturday, but it was so bad sailing upwind in Sunday’s fresh breezes building from 10 to 18 knots that mainsail trimmer Vince Brun had to let the sail flap to keep the boat’s steering in balance--not a fast way to sail.
Defiant thrashed Stars & Stripes on the three upwind legs by margins of 1:46, 1:02 and 2:13--a total of 5:01 that Stars & Stripes’ fractional gains off the wind couldn’t recover.
“It’s fair to say we were a little out of balance,” tactician Tom Whidden said. “We tried a couple of different sail trim attitudes to see if we could correct for that.
“This is the first time we’ve had the boat in a fresh breeze in the configuration it is in now, and we probably have a few things to learn about making it go fast.”
They’ll work on that today when the two America 3 boats spar.
Stars & Stripes is now 0-4 against Defiant, and after much discussion of Koch’s abilities to steer a world-class boat, it doesn’t seem to make much difference who’s at the helm.
Tactician Dave Dellenbaugh took his customary role as Defiant’s starting helmsman and straight-armed Conner into a five-second hole at the line. Then Melges, protecting the favored right side of the course, took it upwind to a 1:51 advantage at the first windward mark and turned it over to Koch.
Conner said, “We couldn’t tell who was steering the boat. They were too far ahead.”