America 3, Kiwis Sail Into the Lead : America’s Cup: Wind favors Koch boat in defenders’ race. New Zealand tops Italians by 1:32.

Tactician Tom Whidden figured that Stars & Stripes had been pushing skipper Dennis Conner’s luck in its daily jousts with Bill Koch’s America 3 powerhouse--a fortuitous wind shift here, a small breakdown there, the wind quitting completely with the opponent far ahead.

“We’ve been asking a lot of things of the Big Guy,” Whidden said, “and (Sunday being) Easter we didn’t want to overplay our welcome, so we kind of gave Him the day off.”

But just when it seemed weirdness had taken a holiday at the America’s Cup . . .

“We had a medicine man today present us with a crow’s feather that carries messages to the wind,” Koch announced after his boat beat Conner’s by 2 minutes 9 seconds in the first race of the best-of-13 defender trials.

The medicine man was Curtis Kekahbah of the Kaw Indian nation. The crow is regarded as a messenger of God. Hailing from Kansas, Koch is heavily into Indian culture. He named his other boat Kanza, for the “wind people.”

“These days I’ll take help from anywhere I can get it,” Koch said.

Don’t laugh. The wind was 8 to 10 knots for most of the race, a breath or two too strong for Stars & Stripes to be at her best.

Worse, the seas were abnormally rough for the wind strength--and, as Conner concedes, “The America 3 boat seems to go awfully well when we have a bigger sea . . . (and) our boat doesn’t like anything more than smooth water.”

So despite an atrocious false start by America 3 helmsman Buddy Melges that gave Stars & Stripes a 31-second head start, the boat with the eagle on the sides--or is it a crow?--overtook Stars & Stripes on the second, downwind leg and never looked back.

Just to keep it close, the Cubens even let Koch steer the final five legs.

If Conner had been able to get close enough, he might have tried Il Moro di Venezia skipper Paul Cayard’s clever but futile ploy in a loss to New Zealand by 1:32 in the first race of the challengers’ best-of-nine finals.

It was close until the halfway mark, when Il Moro lost 33 seconds on the second reach because it used too small a headsail. The Italians anticipated different wind conditions and didn’t have the correct one on board.

That allowed New Zealand to stretch its lead from 24 to 57 seconds and break open the race, although the Italians had one last shot to pull it out. Coming into the leeward mark on the right-of-way starboard tack, they cut their large gennaker free just as New Zealand, on port tack, was passing by on its way upwind from the mark.

The sail blew toward the Kiwis, and if it had touched them Cayard would have protested--”Absolutely,” he said.

The sail was left behind because, Cayard said, the takedown had been so fouled up that “we definitely weren’t going to get that sail on board.”

But if by chance it had hit the Kiwi boat . . . well, it was worth a try.

Despite expectations to the contrary, there appeared to be little basic speed difference between the boats--perhaps because of the lumpy seas that New Zealand dislikes almost as much as Stars & Stripes.

Il Moro lost on its own errors, beginning with a failure to account for the 1 1/2-knot current running through the course this week, causing the Italians to miscalculate their start as the Kiwis got away 18 seconds ahead.

“We made a big mistake in not adjusting the computer for the current,” Cayard said. “We gave it to ‘em.”

Conner needs to turn around his luck . . . maybe get his own medicine man to smooth the troubled waters.

“I thought we sailed a pretty good race,” he said. “Honestly, I can’t think of too many things we could have done better.”

New Zealand is now 5-2 against Il Moro in the three months of racing. America 3c,8.5 is 9-3 against Stars & Stripes. Racing continues today in both series.

Melges, who blamed himself for America 3’s badly mis-timed start, was asked if Curtis Kekahbah would be his boat’s idle 17th crewman today, just for luck.

“He may be the helmsman,” Melges said.

* GUARDED OPTIMISM

America 3 won Round One, but with the rest of the best-of-13 ahead, Bill Koch’s crew is anything but cocky. C9A