AMERICA’S CUP UPDATE : NOTEBOOK : High-Flying Conner Knows His Way Around Most Airports

Dennis Conner just got his updated frequent flyer report from American Airlines, one of his major sponsors.

He’s up to 4.6 million miles--probably more than a lot of airline pilots. That means he has averaged 460,000 miles a year, or 1,260 miles a day, since he started the program 10 years ago.

That also means an average of about four hours in airports every day.

“That’s a depressing thought,” Conner said.

On the other hand, he said, “I’ve met 50% of my contacts sitting around the Admiral’s Club.”

Most of the trips are to hustle money for his Cup campaign.

Last week he made two trips to New York. Wednesday night he flew to Miami to appear at a boat show. He spends his time on airplanes reading mail or doing paperwork.

Both Bill Koch and helmsman Buddy Melges were aboard the new America 3 in Tuesday’s six-minute win over Stars & Stripes.

Koch said, “I said to Buddy, ‘Let me try it after the start so I can get some close-encounter work.’ Buddy says, ‘Well, Bill, let me settle the boat out a little here first.’

“Fifteen minutes later I looked up and the navigator, By (Baldridge), said, ‘We’re about 16 boat lengths ahead.’ So I asked Buddy, ‘Please, Buddy, are we far enough ahead so I can drive?’ ”

Warwick Collins, a British naval architect, has had his solicitors inform all of the syndicates that he has a tandem keel design with an international patent.

“There have been a number of reports in the British press, and elsewhere, as to the use of tandem keels,” Payne Hicks Beach wrote, questioning whether “any of the syndicates are utilizing keels that constitute a breach of our client’s patent.”

Several boats, including Dennis Conner’s Stars & Stripes, Iain Murray’s Spirit of Australia and New Zealand, are believed to have experimented with versions of tandem keels or fore and aft rudders.

Beach said it’s OK for Cup boats to use his patented design, because “the publicity surrounding such keels may be of benefit to our client.”

Not necessarily.

After three lopsided losses to America 3’s boats, Conner said Tuesday night that he planned to modify his boat this week for the second time, rather than wait for the end of the second round of defender trials.

If he is scrapping a tandem keel system, he probably joins Australia’s Iain Murray, who threw his own radical configuration in the dumpster before the end of the challengers’ first round.

There will be no closed-circuit TV coverage at the America’s Cup International Centre of today’s race between Stars & Stripes and Defiant, which was postponed from Wednesday because of high winds.

To save costs, there is no TV whenever the two America 3 boats race each other.

Otherwise, the telecasts start at noon, the pre-start sequences at 12:05, unless there’s a postponement because of wind conditions.