AMERICA’S CUP UPDATE : NOTEBOOK : Koch Shouldn’t Be Overconfident

Prospects of beating America 3 don’t look great for Dennis Conner--as Bill Koch keeps saying--but Conner cautions those who would concede the defender trials to Koch with almost two months of racing remaining.

“I’ve been around this game long enough to know that until the final results are in anything can happen,” Conner said. “We saw Australia II almost lose the America’s Cup (in 1983) with a boat that really should never have lost a race.”

That was the year that Conner’s slower Liberty took the Australians to the seventh race at Newport, R.I., before losing 4-3.

“If you ask Michael Fay and the people from New Zealand, they were counting on being the challenger in 1987 when they had 37 wins and one loss going into the finals of the challengers’ trials.”

Conner’s 12-meter Stars & Stripes won the challenger finals, 4-1, and swept Kookaburra III in the finals, 4-0, to reclaim the Cup.

“So even if I felt very confident I wouldn’t be stupid enough to say it,” Conner said. “I’m just gonna do my best to keep my mouth shut.”

One of the more interesting races this month might be Monday, an off day for the Cup competitors, between replicas of two 1851 sailboats.

The Californian, a replica of the old revenue cutter C.W. Lawrence that was based in San Diego in the 19th century, challenged the replica of the America, which won the original Cup race around the Isle of Wight in 1851.

The boats are larger than the 75-foot International America’s Cup Class--the Californian 93 1/2 feet and the America 105 feet.

They’ll start off the beach of the Hotel Del Coronado. At the gun, they’ll raise their sails. The first mark is the harbor entrance, the second off Harbor Island inside San Diego Bay. They’ll finish between the B Street pier and a committee boat from the San Diego Assn. of Yacht Clubs.

Steve Christman, president of the Nautical Heritage society, which owns the Californian, said, “This is an historically interesting test. America was a private yacht and the Lawrence was a revenue cutter. There has been a question in many historians’ minds as to whether the revenue cutters were as fast as private yachts.”

There’s not much else at stake.

“This will be a simple good old Yankee race,” Christman said. “The prize is simple, too--a bag each of potatoes, carrots, onions and turnips.

“Vegetables were used by 19th century working vessels fairly often as prizes to winning boats. No one had much money, and you could always eat your winnings.”