AMERICA’S CUP UPDATE : NOTEBOOK : Fund-Raising Keeps Defenders Away While Challengers Play

SAN DIEGO —  What have the defenders been up to while the challengers are racing?

Not much.

Team Dennis Conner is in limbo, while Mike Schreiber sews new sails at the North loft near near the San Diego Yacht Club. They’ll even have a staysail for the second round starting Feb. 8.

Most of the crew, including tactician Tom Whidden, have gone home to their families and regular jobs, and Conner has been hustling sponsors in New York.

Apparently no major modifications are being done to Stars & Stripes for now--but the team did finally get a spare mast.

America 3 boss/skipper Bill Koch also has been fund-raising back East, while the crew prepares its third boat, still unnamed, to replace winless Jayhawk in the second round.

The boat is expected to start sailing Monday or Tuesday, with Koch the skipper, leaving Buddy Melges on the unbeaten Defiant.

This is where America 3’s multi-boat advantage could start to tell. Stars & Stripes might be slightly faster than Defiant with new sails, but the question is how it will compare to Koch’s third and fourth boats--the ones Koch is counting on to monopolize the defender finals in April.

Conner’s designers eventually hope to rebuild much of what they had planned for a second boat into Stars & Stripes.

America 3 executive vice president Vincent Moeyersoms said, “Eventually, the hull becomes a limiting factor. You can optimize everything else.

“It’s not only the hull configuration but stiffness and weight distribution, as well as other properties.”

Iain Murray, asked about the limits of improvements he could accomplish with Spirit of Australia while it’s laid up for the next couple of weeks:

“We’re bound by how much blood we can take out of each crew member in 24 hours of each day.”

Even before it left Australia, Spirit was rumored to have a radical, long keel bulb, with a supporting strut at the aft end. Murray seemed to confirm this.

“I think the reason our boat isn’t turning well is it’s got too many things hanging down,” Murray said, “too many feet to trip over. Left feet.”

Cup fever is firing up early in New Zealand.

The BNZ Challenge Supporters Club already has 41,000 members. For $10 U.S., a member gets a T-shirt, membership certificate and a newsletter.

New Zealand has a population of only 3.2 million, so if membership reaches the goal of 100,000, that means one in every 32 citizens has joined up.

A syndicate member calculated, “To match that (ratio) in the U.S., Dennis Conner would need 10 million supporters.”

The Kiwis also are backed by the Auld Muggers Club, soliciting corporate sponsorship at $750 (U.S.) a shot, with a gimmick.

“For every race we lose we’ll give them $50 back,” Michael Fay explained. “For every race we win they give us $50 more.”

So far 250 companies have signed up.

There is a followup to the ruling by the challengers’ international jury regarding Nippon’s non-use of its spinnaker pole for an extended period against Il Moro di Venezia.

The jury ruled that Nippon broke Rule 64.3 but imposed no penalty, leaving Nippon with the victory.

Tom Ehman, executive vice president/general manager of the America’s Cup Organizing Committee, sent defense syndicates America 3 and Team Dennis Conner a memo the next day acknowledging that the challengers’ jury was granted wide latitude by the Challenger of Record Committee, while the defenders’ jury was not by the ACOC Defense Committee.

“If the same thing occurs in our (defense) trials,” Ehman wrote, “the jury will have no choice but to disqualify the yacht. . . .

“I think (the challengers) are allowing the jury to play God, and it may cause some controversy down the road. . . . This decision probably sets some sort of precedent.”