AMERICA’S CUP ’92 : Wind Gives Stars & Stripes Bum’s Rush : Sailing: Dennis Conner falls behind, New Zealand moves ahead after making the right move.
It’s not nice to fool with Mother Nature, and off Point Loma it’s not even very smart.
She pulled some more tricks Wednesday when Dennis Conner went down for the third time and Il Moro di Venezia threw a victory against New Zealand to the winds.
The Italians were long gone by 1 minute, 42 seconds at the first mark, but when they failed to cover New Zealand in the capricious breezes the Kiwis went their own way, found better wind and stole a 34-second victory. That gave them a 2-1 lead in the America’s Cup challengers’ best-of-nine finals.
By guessing wrong on the wind, Conner lost by 4:20 and sailed into a 0-3 hole against America 3 in the best-of-13 defender finals.
It was Stars & Stripes’ worst defeat since losing to America 3 by 6:23 and 6:00 during experiments with a goal-post keel in February.
Already giving up speed to Bill Koch’s newer boat, Conner must rely on his wits. But if a man who has been sailing these waters all his life can’t figure them out, what hope does anyone have when Catalina Eddy sticks her fickle finger of fate into the picture?
Catalina Eddy, Stars & Stripes tactician Tom Whidden explains, is the light southerly that comes calling when “the wind under Point Conception hooks and goes into a circular flow. When you have a sea breeze building (from the west), the Eddy can go away or it can go back and forth all day.”
Conner: “It was one of those days when the Catalina Eddy was fighting the sea breeze.”
For the first few minutes Eddy teased Stars & Stripes into the left side of the course.
“We got off to a nice start and within five minutes we had about a 500-foot lead and thought, ‘Wow! This is gonna be great,’ ” Conner said.
Then Eddy turned on her heel and left Stars & Stripes in the lurch. Conner said the wind swung 50 degrees in America 3’s favor, giving the Cubens a short-cut to the windward mark.
“At one point it looked like we’d need our binoculars to see him,” Conner said.
Koch, who steered the last six legs with the big lead, said his braintrust thought the right side would be better all along.
“We saw the wind filling in on the right and a persistent shift to the right and a stronger breeze consistently on the right,” Koch said.
“We didn’t necessarily not like the right,” Whidden said, “but when we came off the line there was a lot more pressure to the left. If America 3 knew that’s what was about to happen, they did a better job than we did.”
Conner: “Not to correct Tom, but I remember it as more of a variable than a persistent shift. (Il Moro di Venezia skipper Paul) Cayard got ahead the same way that Bill beat us--on that right hand shift--and then I’m guessing he covered the right on the second beat, forcing the Kiwis off to the left, and when the wind went to the left they got by over there.”
Wrong, Conner was told. Cayard blew it by sailing to the left.
“What do I know?” Conner said.
On both courses, the boats that took the right side established commanding leads. The difference was that America 3 helmsman Buddy Melges, tactician Dave Dellenbaugh and navigator By Baldridge handled prosperity better than the Italians. They carefully went wherever Stars & Stripes went, taking whatever shifts Stars & Stripes got, leaving no doors open.
That’s also what New Zealand did, once it got in front of Il Moro. The Kiwis didn’t increase their lead, but they didn’t risk it, either.
Il Moro tactician Enrico Chieffi said, “It was a very difficult race to cover the other guy . . . quite impossible to do that.”
He explained that in light winds, such as Wednesday’s 6 to 9 knots, one of these 75-foot boats will give up two lengths and maybe better wind to follow the tactical book and cover a trailing boat, “and he will be back to you pretty soon. (But) by the time we tacked, we saw it was not a very good move (not to cover).”
“That’s the dilemma out there,’ said Simon Daubney, New Zealand’s mainsail trimmer. “We were pretty happy when we got that opportunity to sail around Il Moro.”
Conner should be so lucky. America 3 may need to win only three more races. After the first race was abandoned Saturday when the wind died at the second windward mark, the Defense Committee decided not to use either of the lay days scheduled last Tuesday or April 27 but the reserve day May 3, if necessary--in other words, if America 3 and Stars & Stripes are tied at 6-6.
But if another race day is lost, it will become a best-of-11 series.
“We’re cautiously optimistic,” Koch said. “Dennis has been the comeback king.”
But he’s trying to come back against a boat that has beaten his 11 of 14 times and the last five in a row.
“I noticed with some envy on the third beat that America 3 was going through the water like there wasn’t even any swell . . . just a nice little froth from her leeward bow,” Conner said. “We were just like the Gulf Stream or the Molokai Channel on Stars & Stripes, with spray flying. That’s usually not a good sign when one boat’s knifing and you’re bucking along.”
While Conner stands on a burning deck, for one old adversary the battle is just getting interesting.
Sir Michael Fay, the New Zealand syndicate chief, told Peter Montgomery of Radio New Zealand after Wednesday’s race, “We got ourselves into trouble and were good enough to get ourselves out again. Someone gave us a hand today.
“I’m not too sure it’s a race I’d want to have again. I don’t know how fortunes could swing this much in one race. And then, of course, the two one-second finishes . . . we’ve had our fair share of dramas. If we have another four or five of these and then an America’s Cup like this, if we go through . . .”
With daily live television starting at 7 a.m., interest in New Zealand is building to a fever.
“We’ve got a good boat and a good crew, and they both reflect a lot of hard work by a lot of Kiwis over years and years to try and do this here now for New Zealand,” Fay said. “The boat and the crew won’t let us down. No one wants to win more than the 16 men on that boat.