Kiwis Get Aid From U.S. Friends : Sailing: A designer from San Diego, mathematician from Long Beach help New Zealand, which leads Conner, 4-0.

Should Team New Zealand, leading Dennis Conner’s Team Stars & Stripes, 4-0, sweep the America’s Cup away today, it’s worth noting that the Kiwis had a little help from their friends, some Americans.

It is well known that Doug Peterson of San Diego was a principal designer of their boats, Black Magic 1 and 2--”Don’t forget, I asked (the defenders) first,” he says--and that weather wizard Bob Rice of Lancaster, Mass., has been keeping them in the wind, although, he says, “I have a little mixed emotion watching the U.S. boat getting trashed.”

But there also are Ed Baird, a world-ranked match racer from St. Petersburg, Fla., who serves as a coach and adviser, and John L. Hess of Long Beach.

Hess, 64, retired from McDonnell Douglas in 1991 after 35 years. His field--computational fluid dynamics, or CFD--is the heart of modern computerized boat design.

“He’s a brilliant mathematician that came up with the basic logarithms for the CFD,” Peterson said of Hess.

Although Hess is considered one of the top men in his field in the country, no other syndicates knew of his involvement with Team New Zealand until it came to light Friday. Once his role was learned, there was concern that the Kiwis might have allowed Hess to cross the line from consultant to designer.

“If it’s true, it would be very unfortunate,” Team Stars & Stripes spokesman Jerry La Dow said.

The rules for the event require a designer or crew member be “domiciled in, or has had a principal place of residence in or has had a valid passport of that country for no shorter period than the two years before the date of the first race of the applicable America’s Cup Match.”

Hess has been working with Team New Zealand since the fall of 1993, but spent only a week in New Zealand working with the Kiwis. The rest of his work has been in Long Beach.

Conner’s team apparently didn’t intend to pursue the issue.

“The Kiwis said it’s OK as long as I don’t design anything--and I couldn’t design anything if my life depended on it,” Hess said. “I can advise on CFD and on the code.”

Team New Zealand spokesman Alan Sefton said, “As in everything else, we’re squeaky clean. We’ve taken pains to be so.”

McDonnell Douglas spokesman Don Hanson said, “(Hess) was part of a group of experts in the analytical side of flow studies--aerodynamic flow, but the same principles apply to hydrodynamics. He wasn’t in any design group. That wasn’t his forte.”

Hess said all he does is test others’ designs.

His Kiwi connection is David Egan, listed in the press kit as a computational fluid dynamicist. He took a class from Hess at Long Beach State.

CFD, Hess said, “is related to low-speed flow, which is perfect for (sailboats). Its advantage is it runs really fast. You can run a dozen designs a night. Without a code, they have to make a model of it and put it in a tank. Dave coded it at Long Beach State, with my advice.”

Hess is not a sailor.

“I’ve lived in Long Beach for 30 years but never got into it,” he said.

He said his “main contribution is to the underbody,” checking proposed changes to the keel and rudder. “They’ve moved the (keel bulb) wings back and forth, made them bigger and littler.”

Hess also said he wasn’t happy to see the Cup leaving the United States, but that “there is satisfaction in seeing your piece of hardware come out better than the other guy’s piece of hardware. When Boeing and MIT can’t beat you, you have to feel pretty good about it.”