Still Some Stars, but No Stripes : America’s Cup: Conner’s crew, using a borrowed boat, begins final series against Team New Zealand today<i> .</i>

Dennis Conner never would have ordered a mermaid paint job, never would have let anybody else steer his boat, but if this is to be his last hurrah he’s determined to make the most of it. Thus, the 1995 America’s Cup defense has become a strange marriage of Conner’s crew with a rival’s boat, with Paul Cayard, a sailor 17 years his junior, at the helm.

The midnight-blue Stars & Stripes will be left ashore when Conner, 52, sails out on PACT 95’s Young America today to open a best-of-nine series with Team New Zealand, much to the chagrin of Stars & Stripes’ designer, David Pedrick, and New Zealand syndicate chief Peter Blake.

“I think the decision to use Young America is a big mistake,” Pedrick said Friday. “Stars & Stripes defeated Young America in the hardest-fought defense trials in the history of the America’s Cup. In yachts so evenly matched, it is optimistic to think that a crew from one yacht can get peak performance from another yacht with less than a week to prepare.”

Cayard said Friday, “We’re probably up to the 75 percentile. It’ll get better every time we sail.

“PACT’s a little bit faster, but not a huge amount. The big advantage is the maneuverability. That in itself makes it a better boat. It maneuvers better. It’s a more flexible boat.”

That, Pedrick and Blake agree, is beside the point.

“The fundamental question is whether the America’s Cup event should tolerate letting the defenders play by different rules than the challengers, rather than adhering to consistent rules of fair play that are central to competitive sports everywhere,” Pedrick said in a press release.

Earlier Friday, Blake had said, “If we are fortunate to win the event, we’re going to clean it up. We’re going to have rules that are fair to both groups, the way any fair sporting event should be. If that means that New Zealand holds it for only one time, if we lose it, so be it.”

Conner and America’s Cup controversy are old friends. And he never liked his latest Stars & Stripes much, anyway.

“Let’s face it,” he said. “My star’s not getting any higher, from my sailing abilities standpoint. If this turned out to be my last America’s Cup, and we had sailed the blue boat and lost, it would have been big emotional baggage for me to have wondered for the rest of my life what would have happened had I sucked it up and made the deal to sail a faster boat.”

No way the Kiwis would borrow a boat. Their two Black Magics finished first in 37 of 38 races in the challenger trials, although much of their opposition would be classed in boxing jargon as “tomato cans.”

New Zealand made one change on its boat. Unknown to Blake, Peter Wilson, a member of the shore crew and a hot-rod buff, painted a fireball with trailing flames on the keel bulb. Blake was delighted.

“You don’t put flames on anything that’s slow,” Wilson said.

Conner and John Marshall, PACT 95 president, also are convinced that Young America was the fastest of the defenders, leading to an obvious question: Why did it lose?

Because, Marshall said, there was more America’s Cup and San Diego sailing savvy aboard Stars & Stripes.

“Talk about not only winning America’s Cup races but winning races in San Diego,” Marshall said. “We just didn’t have enough hours (in) San Diego.”

While those two collaborated, Bill Koch, whose America3 successfully defended the Cup against Italy’s Il Moro di Venezia in ‘92, was out of the picture with his women’s team on vacation in Mexico.

That didn’t bother Cayard, who as skipper of Il Moro suffered Koch’s success in ’92.

“I don’t like him very much,” Cayard said. “Having Bill Koch gone . . . it’s better for the event that he’s not around.”

*

America’s Cup Notes

Since last weekend, PACT 95 designer Bruce Nelson and mainsail trimmer Andreas Josenhans have been sailing on their former boat with Dennis Conner’s crew, while Young America tactician John Kostecki sailed Stars & Stripes, which was “supercharged” with larger sails beyond the class rating in order to be more competitive. . . . The first five races are scheduled today, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. . . . The forecast was for winds up to 20 knots today.