AMERICA’S CUP DAILY REPORT : DEFENDER TRIALS : Defiant Goes Down to First Defeat

A day after Dennis Conner said he didn’t need to win another race until the fourth round of the America’s Cup defender trials in April, Bill Koch passed up a chance to drop Conner’s Stars & Stripes into last place Monday.

Instead, Buddy Melges steered Koch’s new America 33 to an eased-up, 49-second victory over Koch and Defiant that left Defiant in last place with two points, one behind Stars & Stripes.

It was Defiant’s first loss (7-1) but Melges remained unbeaten (9-0)--realistically, a credit less to his considerable skill than to the fact that Koch keeps letting him sail his faster boat.

Both probably will be aboard America 3again against the troubled Stars & Stripes today. America 3, inheriting six points scored by Defiant in the first round, has 10. But it doesn’t mean as much since Conner has reduced the first three rounds into a testing program.

“We’re still shaking down the boat,” America 3mastman Peter Craig said after Monday’s intramural race in winds of 10 to 11 knots, fading to seven by the finish.

Defiant’s starting helmsman, Dave Dellenbaugh, won a spirited pre-start sequence from Melges, but Dellenbaugh and Koch couldn’t do much about America 3’s speed. Despite a broken jib sheet and halyard on the first leg, America 3swept to a 19-second lead, which it extended to 2:37 at the final mark.

Then Melges made it close by hoisting a spinnaker as Defiant reached off faster with a smaller gennaker to make up 1:48 on the last three-mile leg.