AMERICA’S CUP / RICH ROBERTS : Blake’s Team New Zealand Leads the Way

This time last year, Peter Blake was skimming 27,000 miles around the world on a 92-foot catamaran in somewhat less than 80 days to claim the Trophee Jules Verne. Time: 74 days 22 hours 17 minutes.

An attempt the previous year had ended abruptly when Blake ran into a half-submerged cargo container off Cape Town, South Africa.

Before that, every four years he would kiss his family goodby and be off sailing in the 31,000-mile Whitbread race for nine months until finally, on his fifth try, he won it with the powerful ketch Steinlager II.

Blake, 46, has spent about five years of his life at sea, racing half a million miles. And although he might not at first succeed, he will go to the ends of the earth to attain his goals.

There were skeptics when he entered the America’s Cup in 1992 as the non-sailing manager of Sir Michael Fay’s New Zealand team, but not anymore.

Now it’s Blake’s Team New Zealand (11-1) that leads the fleet of seven challengers into the third of four round-robins today.

“We didn’t really think we would be in this position,” Blake said. “Some people say to us, ‘Have you shown your hand too soon?’ Well, I don’t think you can. Getting into a winning frame of mind, as long as you don’t get too complacent, is a good way to be. We have a number of (boat) improvements coming on line as time goes by, round by round.”

Blake took most of the heat when New Zealand’s strong bid in ’92 was shot down during the challenger finals against Il Moro di Venezia for illegally using its bowsprit--a longstanding charge the Kiwis had stubbornly ignored.

“The last time it was someone getting at us,” he said. “We were on the defensive. We should have been big enough to realize that the silly bowsprit didn’t actually make the boat any faster. It just eased the sail handling. We should have got rid of it. It wasn’t going to win the America’s Cup for us, but it certainly could lose it for us.”

Blake doesn’t think New Zealand could have beaten Bill Koch’s America 3in the Cup Match, anyway. Il Moro lost, 4-1.

“It would have been embarrassing,” Blake said.

But this time the Kiwis, ever the innovators, have found themselves in another row. OneAustralia protested their placement of crewman Murray Jones on the top spreader, 100 feet above the deck, to look for kelp and puffs of wind. The four men and two women on the international jury upheld the protest, resulting in New Zealand’s only defeat.

New Zealand’s request to reopen the matter was denied, but Blake said it isn’t over yet. Sound familiar?

The difference this time is that the Kiwis had asked the jury earlier if it was OK.

“Our approach this time was, ‘Boys, we’re going to be squeaky clean and avoid the problems of last time,’ ” Blake said.

The jury’s documented response seemed to be affirmative. Then it nailed the Kiwis for it.

“They tell us you can have someone up there performing a necessary task,” Blake said. “My opinion, which I’m afraid with all my sailing miles will not change, is that it was a necessary task. They said, ‘You can do that from the deck,’ and I said, ‘No, you can’t.’ It’s not going to end yet, I can assure you. But it mustn’t distract us from the main aim, and it doesn’t.”

Unlike ‘92, Blake sails on the boat, but in the low-profile role of mainsail grinder. Russell Coutts, the world’s top-ranked match racer, is the skipper.

“I’m just part of the crew,” Blake said. “It’s Russell’s call. They came to me and said, ‘Look, we’d like you to be on the crew.’ It’s quite a change for me having to be told what to do and getting yelled at from time to time, rather than doing the yelling.

“It makes my life harder in lots of ways because I have sponsor commitments and a bit of money to raise. But we don’t have the situation where the sailors come off the water and (we’re asking), ‘Why’d you do this or why’d you do that?’ ”

It also put Blake in position to claim a grand slam of sailing: Whitbread, circumnavigation record, America’s Cup.

“I don’t really look at it like that,” he said. “It’s just something that’s winnable.”

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Team New Zealand is sailing the second of two new boats. The first is narrower, which would seem to give it an edge in San Diego’s light wind but choppy seas, but it’s being used only as a benchmark to measure incremental changes on the race boat. Asked if it could be a trump card to be played later, team manager Peter Blake said, “Quite right. It may or may not be.”

America’s Cup Notes

It seems Coach Peter Gilmour, an Australian, will no longer be able to sail with Nippon as the supposedly non-contributing 17th man. Official measurer Ken McAlpine ruled that no 17th man--VIP, sponsor, etc.--can ride more than twice in any round-robin and no technical people, such as designers, more than three races. While saying nothing, Gilmour has been looking over helmsman John Cutler’s shoulder in every race.

Kevin Mahaney’s Young America will race the America 3women in today’s first match of the defenders’ third round. Dennis Conner’s Stars & Stripes meets America 3Wednesday. . . . Neville Wittey will be back aboard Sydney 95 as tactician and starting helmsman after finishing third in the Australia Cup on the Swan River at Perth, Australia, last week. Jesper Bank of Denmark defeated Roy Heiner of The Netherlands in the finals, 3-0. It was the first event of the year on the world match-racing circuit. Next is the Congressional Cup at Long Beach March 13-17 featuring Ted Turner and other past winners in a “masters” format. Most of the usual competitors are tied up in the America’s Cup.

Young America navigator Ken Read has won his second Rolex (American) Yachtsman of the Year award, 10 years after his first. Skipper Kevin Mahaney and tactician John Kostecki also have won it.