Conner’s Yacht Toshiba Making Little Headway

Walking past Dennis Conner’s boat, Toshiba, during the stopover at Fort Lauderdale, Fla., last month, EF Language skipper Paul Cayard allowed himself a moment of compassion for his rival.

“Those guys are sailing the race from hell,” Cayard said.

He didn’t know the half of it. While Cayard’s crew is cruising toward victory as the nine boats in the Whitbread Round the World Race prepare to start the next-to-last leg across the Atlantic from Annapolis today, Conner must be wondering what next the devil has in store.

On the leg from Florida to Baltimore, Toshiba, with Conner on board for the second time in seven legs, fought to beat the other U.S. entry, Chessie, by 10 seconds for seventh place.

Conner went home to San Diego savoring that small success, only to receive a fax of resignation from navigator Andrew Cape and word that the all-woman boat, EF Education, was protesting Toshiba for violating EFE’s right of way when they crossed on opposite tacks one night on Leg 7. The race jury ruled for the women, dropping Toshiba to last place and leaving it seventh overall.

Toshiba, the pre-race favorite, has been an unhappy boat from the start. Skipper Chris Dickson quit after the first leg when Conner refused to let him replace five crewmen--one of them Cape. Then came an aborted protest over a navigation light against EF Language at Auckland and the disqualification on Leg 5 for running the engine to remove seaweed from the propeller.

Finally, Paul Standbridge, the English veteran who replaced Dickson as skipper, was squeezed off the boat for Leg 7 when Conner came on board, along with a special navigator familiar with Chesapeake Bay, which might not have sat well with Cape, either.

Cape, an Australian living in England, said, “This has been a very hard race and I have not especially enjoyed it.”

Meanwhile, EF Language can clinch overall victory by winning this leg or finishing ahead of runner-up Swedish Match in fifth place or better. The leg is 3,390 nautical miles to La Rochelle, France, with an ETA of May 16. The last leg, which looms as little more than a victory lap for EF Language, will be 450 miles from La Rochelle to Southampton, England, starting May 22.