SAILING : Last Boat Finishes 27 Hours After Conner’s Stars & Stripes

Steady winds produced one of the fastest of the 47 Newport-Ensenada International Yacht Races, with all official finishers crossing the line before midnight Saturday. A few other boats among the 401 starters dropped out.

John Haupt III’s 42-foot wooden-hulled At Ease finished at 11:42 p.m. Saturday, some 27 hours after Dennis Conner’s 60-foot catamaran Stars & Stripes, which broke its own record in 8 hours 29 minutes.

Mike Campbell’s Andrews 70 Victoria from Long Beach finished in 14 hours 12 minutes but was well off the record of 12:13 by Dennis Choate’s 68-foot Saga in 1983.

Finishing at 5:55 p.m. Saturday was Out Patient, a Cal 29 skippered by Doug Milne, a paraplegic, with a crew of handicapped sailors.

Stars & Stripes sailed the 125-mile course so fast that it crossed the line half an hour before the race committee boat arrived at Ensenada and had to clock itself in. Late Friday night a woman handed the boat’s finish slip to a Newport Ocean Sailing Assn. official and said Conner had asked her to deliver it before he headed home by automobile.

“We’re accepting Dennis at his word,” press chairman Fred Martin said.

Despite the record, Stars & Stripes’ handicap was so low that it placed only seventh in the Ocean Racing Catamaran Assn. class on corrected time.