New Zealander Uses Home Edge

Thousands of countrymen afloat and ashore welcomed Grant Dalton into Auckland, New Zealand, early Friday afternoon for a close and windy finish to the fourth leg of the Whitbread Round the World sailing race.

Fringe head winds from Cyclone Susan, gusting to 45 knots, drove Dalton’s Merit Cup across the line two minutes ahead of Dennis Conner’s Toshiba after the four-day, 1,270-nautical mile leg from Sydney, Australia, across the Tasman Sea.

With Conner aboard his boat for the first time in this race, it was Toshiba’s best finish. George Collins’ Chessie from Baltimore, the only other American-owned boat left in the race, was an additional 10 minutes back, followed 12 minutes later by Sweden’s EF Language, whose skipper is Paul Cayard of San Francisco and whose crew is half American.

EF Language retained the overall lead because Cayard made a remarkable comeback to fourth place from next-to-last halfway through the leg. With nothing to lose, he deviated sharply south from his initial northerly course and found favorable winds all the way to the northern tip of New Zealand’s North Island before the nine Whitbread 60s turned the corner south toward Auckland.

Although Merit Cup has Monaco backers and an Italian clothing sponsor, its crew is almost all Kiwi, so it was a popular reception at “the City of Sails” for one of the prerace favorites that struggled in earlier legs.

Conner was the only American on his boat, which has a mixed crew of Australian, New Zealand, British and Canadian sailors and had finished a disappointing sixth twice and third on the previous legs.

Conner described the race to the finish via e-mail: “What a day! I was thinking there was a good chance we were headed for a second [place] and took a turn on the helm. One hour later we quickly came upon Swedish Match becalmed and sailed around her in tricky conditions and worked into a three-mile lead.

“Our spirits soared with dreams of a huge win, [but] two hours later we sat becalmed ourselves and Merit [Cup] and Chessie sailed by. I realized I had been steering for eight hours and had gone from second to first to third and back to second. It has been a war ever since.”

The fifth leg, around Cape Horn to Brazil, will start Feb. 1.