Davis Enjoys One Good Turn at Helm

SAN DIEGO —  A Kiwi at the top of a mast, a missing Dennis Conner, a secret fin under the Japanese boat, Ted Turner and Jane Fonda--is it too soon for America’s Cup drama and intrigue?

That was all part of the scene Thursday when seven boats wound up two days of practice racing before the start of the first International America’s Cup Class Championship starting Saturday.

Rod Davis sailed New Zealand to a 45-second victory over Paul Cayard’s new Il Moro di Venezia boat in Friday’s 21.2-mile race around the new eight-legged America’s Cup course. The race took 3 hours 2 minutes 41.2 seconds.

Both sailed red boats--perhaps heralding another shift in the 140-year tradition of the Cup, which has never seen a red boat win.

After his billowing gennaker headsail blew apart, Davis had to hold off Cayard while rounding the second mark with bowman Nick Heron at the top of the mast--106 feet, 7 1/2 inches above the deck--retrieving the halyard.

Chris Dickson skippered the Nippon Challenge to third place and the overall, if unofficial, victory in the three-race Pre-Worlds Regatta. He had a pair of seconds Wednesday.

Dickson and his Japanese crew finished more than seven minutes behind Cayard but did well to regain third. They were pushed over the starting line prematurely by France’s Ville de Paris and had to restart. Then their spinnaker pole broke, and they sailed the latter part of the race without one, their chute flying freely but effectively.

But the underside of the Nippon boat was of more interest. When the white hull bounced off a swell and the forward section lifted out of the water, a thin, vertical fin became visible.

It is similar to the forward rudder featured on Tom Blackaller’s USA 12-meter in 1986-87 but is set farther aft, slightly forward of the keel.

Is it a second rudder? A kelp cutter to prevent the proliferation of seaweed off Point Loma from collecting on the keel?

Will the Japanese tell? Film at 11.

Conner and Ted Turner might be curious. Jane Fonda probably doesn’t care.

Conner decided not to sail Thursday after hearing the forecast for 20 to 25 knots of wind and hearing tactician Tom Whidden’s report after a drive out to the end of Point Loma in the morning.

“It looked like the Gulf Stream out there,” Whidden said. “We’ve got one mast and one boat, and our guys are a little elderly. It’d be silly to break something and not be ready for Saturday.”

The sea settled down, though, and the wind never got above 12 knots----and, if the truth be told, Conner and company did not seem terribly depressed about not going out. They learned Wednesday with two third-place finishes that their new Stars & Stripes is competitive and see no point in risking it, considering the breakdowns other boats have suffered and the larger stakes ahead.

Conner also will be sailing in the World Championship day to day.

“I guess Saturday and Sunday,” said syndicate spokesperson Barbara Schwartz. “I guess we’re not committing beyond that.”

The worlds will have five days of fleet racing, then two days of match racing among the four semifinalists.

While Conner was absent Thursday, Turner rode the race aboard Bill Koch’s older America-3 boat, the one be bought from the French for crew training. Buddy Melges, with Gary Jobson as tactician, steered it to last place after a premature start and a questionable gamble sailing far away from the fleet to the left side of the course.

Koch decided to keep his new boat, nicknamed “Jayhawk,” in port after cracking the boom Wednesday.

Fonda, Turner’s fiancee, watched from America-3’s VIP boat. Jobson was Turner’s tactician when the latter defended the America’s Cup with Courageous in ’77. They did better then.

Davis grew up in Coronado, which is also known as “Kiwinado” during the New Zealand team’s residence there through next spring. After David Barnes steered the boat to two fifths with hard-luck breakdowns and wind shifts Wednesday, Davis took his turn at the helm Thursday and led at every mark, with Cayard never far behind.

“Cayard was going a little bit better so we set a big gennaker on the first reach and it was the wrong sail,” Davis said. “I told the crew, ‘Be prepared to pull the thing down,’ but before they could, God took it down for us.”

When the sail blew apart, it left the end of the halyard--the line that pulls up the sails--at the top of the mast. Somebody had to go up to get it or they wouldn’t be able to fly another spinnaker or gennaker.

“You don’t ask for volunteers,” Davis said. “Nick knows the routine.”

So Nick was hauled up the mast in a sling, with the next mark coming up and Cayard charging from windward, a couple of boat lengths behind.

“We talked about putting him up there after we rounded (the mark),” Davis said, “but Cayard might have passed us. So we decided to leave him up there until we got around the mark. Nick’s a tough cookie.”

Later, Heron shrugged and said clinging to the top of a swaying 100-foot mast like a monkey on a stick was all in a day’s work. The view must have been wonderful.

“Next time we’ll stick an Instamatic in his pocket,” Davis said.

From that point, Davis and Cayard were so far ahead of everybody else that it became a match race, with Davis covering every one of Cayard’s moves. That’s what the real America’s Cup is about.

New Zealand has been sailing its boats for about three months, Nippon for a year, so Cayard’s performance in winning Wednesday’s second race and chasing Davis home Thursday was impressive for a boat that has been sailing for only a week.

Davis, one of the best match-racing sailors in the world, said, “It was a great race with Paul--an excellent match race, and that’s our game now.”