Conner Assesses Cup Contenders : Sail America and America II Syndicates Boast Boats to Beat

SAN DIEGO —  Dennis Conner will be among those sailing off Perth, Australia, next week when the new breed of 12-meter America’s Cup yachts start comparing speeds.

The sailing has been given back to the sailors, and now the computer guys can only watch and byte their nails.

“In a couple of weeks, everybody will know how fast everybody else is,” Conner said at a press conference here Friday. “That first five minutes alongside somebody you’ve never sailed against is the most exciting part.”

Conner, who lost the cup to the Australians in 1983, is scheduled to fly to Australia Sunday and admitted that he is keenly curious to learn if his year of testing and tuning the Sail America syndicate’s five Stars & Stripes boats in Hawaii will pay off.

“It’s like carrying on a romance by letter and all of a sudden you get to meet your sweetheart,” he said, smiling.

For practical comparison, none of the 13 challenging syndicates’ new boats have met, but they may not be able to avoid one another now. Conner said that they will all want to practice on the America’s Cup course eight miles north of the port of Fremantle because of wind and water conditions peculiar to that area.

Conner has two boats there and could practice by himself, but he said: “It’s inevitable that they’ll come over and check alongside.”

Most will be very curious about Conner, who has run the most isolated campaign of all. He hasn’t tuned with any other syndicate and he didn’t even compete in the 12-meter world competition at Perth last February.

“It just turned out that way,” he said. “That wasn’t the reason we went to Hawaii. But it’s turned into more of a psychological weapon than we’d hoped.”

Conner went to Hawaii in search of Perth-type conditions: Wild and wet. He would have preferred it rougher.

“The wind was about the same, but we’ll need to get out in that short chop to see how the boat performs in that,” he said.

His major decision will be to select between Stars & Stripes ’85 and ’87 to enter in the first round of challenge eliminations starting Oct. 5. S&S; ’86 has been discarded.

Conner also said that the British had scuttled their radical new boat with the elongated stern and will sail their first boat, Crusader, which was not impressive.

In Conner’s mind, that leaves a limited field of viable contenders for the challenger’s role. All polls rate his effort or that of America II, the New York Yacht Club program with skipper John Kolius, as the boats to beat.

The other American syndicates, with their skippers, are Eagle, from the Newport Harbor YC, Rod Davis; Golden Gate, St. Francis YC, Tom Blackaller; Heart of America, Chicago YC, Buddy Melges, and Courageous, Yale Corinthian, David Vietor, with a highly modified 12-year-old campaigner.

“We still look to (America II) to be the favorite,” Conner said. “We don’t know what to expect from the other three guys. At this point we’ve pretty much discounted Courageous.”

He would put America II, New Zealand and his boat in the semifinals starting in January, with the fourth spot contested among “whoever’s the fastest of the other Americans,” along with Canada II and French Kiss.

Conner expects the two Australian defense finalists to be Australia IV, whose Alan Bond holds the cup, and Kookaburra III.

And where do his boats stand in that field?

“We’re considerably faster than Liberty (with which Conner lost the cup), but we didn’t have a lot of races against Australia II in 22 knots of wind at Newport (R.I.),” he said. “We suspect they would have had a bigger advantage over us than they did in 15 knots.”