America’s Cup : Conner’s Stars & Stripes Leads Semifinals : He Wins Race When ‘Slam Dunk’ Attempt by Blackaller’s USA Fails

“All right!” Dennis Conner’s crew yelled in unison.

“Oh, no,” groaned Tom Blackaller’s boat people.

It was the slam dunk that failed, giving Conner a 10-second victory Sunday in the first race of their best-of-seven semifinal in the America’s Cup challenger trials.

In sailing, a slam dunk is tacking over on top of a boat that has just crossed your stern. Done perfectly, the leeward boat is pinned helplessly without clear air or room to escape.

Done imperfectly, the leeward boat is home free.

After trailing Blackaller’s USA literally within shouting distance for 24 miles, Conner drove San Diego’s Stars & Stripes across the stern of the San Francisco 12-meter and then through its wind shadow within a quarter-mile of the finish line.

Blackaller tried a slam dunk but, as he said later: “I didn’t pull it off exactly right.”

Conner just kept going, instead spilling disturbed air onto the sails of Blackaller, who was forced to tack away, losing distance. Both crews knew that the next time they crossed on opposite tacks, 50 yards from the finish, Stars & Stripes would have starboard rights and USA would have to give way, and so it was.

There are a lot of critical moments like that freeze-framed forever in America’s Cup lore.

There may have been another on the defenders’ side Sunday when Kookaburra III, leading Australia IV by seven seconds around the last mark, snapped a jib sheet and was unable to trim its tangled headsail, allowing the Alan Bond boat to sail past on its way to a 12-second win.

The result broke their first-place tie and put Australia IV alone in first place for the first time since the trials started two months ago.

In other races, Kookaburra II’s 41-second win mathematically ended Steak’n Kidney’s hopes of reaching the defender finals, and New Zealand demolished the mutilated French Kiss of the chopped-off stern by 2:46.

However, as usual, the defender results won’t be final until the lawyers resail the races before the jury. Sunday, they outdid themselves by lodging six protests in just two races, with every boat claiming at least one. Two of the protests were dismissed, with the other four still to be heard.

Equally tiresome is the New Zealand fiberglass controversy, most recently pursued by the French who, as promised, had their red flag flying before the race even started.

But like their boat, their case went nowhere. The jury dismissed it after a relatively brief two-hour hearing.

Conner also protested Blackaller on a technicality after the failed slam-dunk attempt but withdrew the protest when he won.

Blackaller, the only skipper among eight not to fly a red flag Sunday, said: “These boats don’t seem to get within hailing distance without somebody protesting.”

And he and Conner were that close for 3 hours 16 minutes of the race, sailed in moderate winds of 17 to 20 knots. These 22 California sailors all know one another, and USA tactician Paul Cayard explained the minor incident when Blackaller hailed “mast abeam,” meaning USA was in front and Conner couldn’t luff him.

“I’m down to leeward looking at them and they’re looking at me, smiling and waving,” Cayard said. “(Stripes tactician) Tom Whidden says to me, ‘Hey, do you think you had mast line?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I think so.’ So they kind of conferred down there for a while, and about 15 seconds later, we heard Dennis real meekly say, ‘Oh, we’re gonna protest.’ ”

No hard feelings.

“Both crews really seem to respect each other,” Stripes navigator Peter Isler said. “Even at the finish, they (USA’s crew) had smiles on their faces.”

The series may be bringing out the best in the longtime rivalry between Conner and Blackaller. They enjoy trading tacks on the water as much as they do needling in the press conferences.

“We’re all getting along a lot better this time without the New York Yacht Club being involved,” Cayard said. “Tom (Blackaller) knows he’s getting a real square deal, and Dennis isn’t seeking to gain an advantage except on the water.”

It is there that Conner may have a big edge. With its new, wide-winged keel, Stars & Stripes seems able to outmaneuver USA, with its fore and aft rudders.

“I think that’s a fair assessment,” Cayard said. “We have to think our advantage is in our straight-line speed, so that’s how we try to sail.”

Blackaller avoids the pre-start circling typical of match racing, and Conner doesn’t care to waste his crew’s energy before the race starts, either. But Conner may be able to ambush Blackaller when he has to, as he did Sunday.

“It looked to me like Stars & Stripes was a little faster tacking with the new keel today, and Blackaller was backing off,” Malin Burnham, the Sail America syndicate president, said. “He wasn’t covering at all, so you could tell he was vulnerable.”

Other observers say that, compared to other 12-meters, USA’s unique, low-drag design makes it fast in a straight line but a bit clumsy through tacks.

“When they come out of a tack, with all the things they have to orient, they have a problem,” Jon Wright, Stripes’ mainsheet trimmer, said.

But Blackaller denied that that was why his slam dunk failed.

“I don’t know exactly what went wrong,” he said. “It was toward the end of the race and maybe I was just a little off. You do it a little bit wrong and the other guy can bust out the other side. Right in the middle of the turn, I hesitated a bit to get the stern of our boat away from his bow because it looked like Stars & Stripes might come up and hit us.

“But the boat steers just fine. We don’t have any difficulty steering the boat. We’ll just have to improve our slam-dunk technique.”