Conner Tries Again, Kiwis Win Again : America’s Cup: Renewed effort leaves Team Stars & Stripes in the same place as before, far behind Team New Zealand.

Dennis Conner’s Team Stars & Stripes left the dock Monday with a shiny new boat, new crew uniforms, a new theme song booming from a new sound system and new hopes based on improved performance in training Sunday.

But it was the same old story on the water, only worse, as Team Stars & Stripes took the worst Cup drubbing in 21 years and watched another option get blown to spindrift in its quest to successfully defend the America’s Cup.

Team Stars & Stripes got the smooth seas and light winds it wanted against Team New Zealand, but the test of relative speed lasted only a few minutes before the Kiwis sped out front on the first leg and romped to a 4-minute 14-second victory to go ahead, 2-0, in the best-of-nine Cup match.

It was the biggest victory margin in a Cup race since Courageous beat Southern Cross by 7:19 in 1974.

Conner saw it coming. Coming into this, his sixth, Cup competition, he said he was worried after chatting with Australian Cup veteran John Bertrand, who sailed against Team New Zealand in challenger trials all season and concluded, “They have no weaknesses.”

Conner now knows what he meant. In back-to-back races to open the 29th Cup competition, he was walloped in moderate to heavy winds and steep seas Saturday, losing by 2 minutes 45 seconds, and walloped again Monday in 6- to 10-knot winds and smooth seas.

Conner’s team had eagerly awaited the change of conditions, reckoning it might find a hole in the jet-black Kiwi armor. But as Conner put it last week, “Show me where the weakness is. We don’t see the weakness.” He’s still looking.

At least his crew looked more comfortable in Young America--the chartered racer they took over eight days ago--as they forged up the course on a sunny day that followed an overcast morning. Helmsman Paul Cayard did what he hoped to, winning the start convincingly and putting himself in position to capitalize on strong breezes he expected to encounter on the left side of the course.

The New Zealanders, under helmsman Russell Coutts, settled for a slow start on the right side of the line, which is all Cayard left them. They proved not only good but lucky when the wind shifted to the right three minutes after the start and put them ahead to stay.

They rounded the first mark 39 seconds ahead, eight seconds better than their initial lead on Saturday, and stretched the margin to 1 minute 48 seconds by the halfway point, when the contest effectively was over.

Not since 1934, when Sir T.O.M. Sopwith’s British J-boat Endeavour strode to an early lead over Harold S. Vanderbilt’s Rainbow in Newport, R.I., has a foreign challenger won the first two races of a Cup match. Conner’s crew can take comfort that Rainbow came back to win, and more comfort that Rainbow did so despite being the slower boat. But he must be beginning to wonder how much slower than Team New Zealand he can be and still survive.

Team New Zealand’s lead was secure enough by the second leg that skipper Coutts sent strategist Murray Jones up the mast to relax and look for wind. “Go up to the second set (of shroud spreaders) and hang out for a while, Murray,” he told his talkative assistant.

Meantime, two-thirds of the way through the race, Conner relieved Cayard at the helm--the first time he has steered Young America since he chartered it for the match after reckoning it was faster than his Stars & Stripes, in which he won the defender final trials.

But it’s no easy matter learning a new boat in the heat of battle, said Courtenay Becker-Dey, navigator on the mostly women’s defense team that had to do the same thing with Mighty Mary when it was delivered late, two months into defender trials. “I don’t envy them,” she said.

But Conner’s lads have worked hard to master their new boat, and navigator Jim Brady said they managed to beat Stars & Stripes solidly all day in training Sunday, while the New Zealanders were enjoying an easy day, practicing only briefly in San Diego Bay.

“We’re optimistic,” said Brady. And they still have support, getting a big morning send-off Monday from their compound, where a crowd of a few hundred cheered as they left the dock with speakers blaring a new theme song, “I Still Believe.”