Seppos Rub it In ..20 Years Later
"Twenty years ago tonight, Dennis Conner and his crew began a magical and momentous America's Cup finals sweep of the Aussies Boating
By Bill Center
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
January 30, 2007
Throughout the race, the skipper, as was his practice, had said little.
But after taking a glance up the mainsail upon rounding the final mark, Dennis Conner looked forward and told his crew to look sharp.
Advertisement “Guys,” said Conner, “This is the last leg of the America's Cup.”
The date was Feb. 4, 1987 – actually Feb. 3 back in the United States – and the place was a treacherous patch of water off Fremantle, Western Australia, called the Gates Roads.
The event was one of the greatest achievements ever by a team representing San Diego, the climax of Stars & Stripes' four-race sweep of Australian defender Kookaburra III in the America's Cup.
The finals actually started 20 years ago this evening in a race that capped Conner's long climb back from the most ignominious defeat in the history of competitive sailing in the United States.
In the fall of 1983, Conner became the first American skipper to lose the America's Cup, in a seven-race battle with the technically advanced and faster wing-keeled challenger Australia II.
Rebuffed by New York Yacht Club in his attempt to reclaim the Auld Mug for the organization that had owned the America's Cup for 132 years, native San Diegan Conner decided to launch his own challenge out of San Diego Yacht Club.
“We started from scratch and built a champion,” Conner would say years later.
“Nothing before or since compares with the magic of that time,” Bill Trenkle said recently while reflecting upon the Stars & Stripes victory in Australia.
“It's hard to imagine the America's Cup will ever be that big again. All the elements came together.”
The America's Cup of 1986-87 was a watershed event.
“When you consider the circumstances, the personalities involved, the sailing conditions and the exposure ... it would be all but impossible to duplicate the scenario,” continued Trenkle, who was one of the dozen Stars & Stripes crewmen.
Before Australia II's stunning victory off Newport, R.I., in 1983, the America's Cup was basically an event followed by sailing purists. Conner received little attention from the mainstream media for trouncing Australia with Freedom in the 1980 defense.
But in 1987, the eyes of the United States focused on Western Australia. So did, for the first time, television cameras, including those placed on the competitors themselves.
Not only was the U.S. going to Australia to reclaim its Cup, so were viewers from around the world.
And if that alone weren't enough, the weather conditions – near-gale-force winds whipping, steep seas that seemed to roll unchecked over thousands of miles of the Indian Ocean – turned sailing one of the venerable 12-meter sloops into an extreme sport.
Plus, the participants were at each other's throats throughout the preliminaries. The top Aussie defense rivals, Alan Bond and Kevin Parry, hated one another. And things weren't much more amicable on the challenger side.
Conner charged New Zealand's one-of-a-kind fiberglass 12 meter to be in violation of the international class rules. And one half of the challenger semifinals was a heated showdown between American arch-rivals Conner and Tom Blackaller of San Francisco.
Great theater.
Overnight ratings soared on ESPN. And we mean overnight. The races started at 8:30 p.m. in San Diego and after the nightly news on the East Coast.
“We'd get letters from farmers in Iowa who were watching us in the early hours of the morning,” recalled Trenkle. “It was stunning.”
So were Stars & Stripes' results.
After a slow start in October's preliminary trials, Conner's boat and crew gained momentum as the trials ground on in November and December and peaked just as the semifinals began after Christmas.
Stars & Stripes was designed to be at its best in the heavier conditions of the late Australian summer – and it delivered.
After eliminating the Kiwis in five races in the best-of-seven semifinals, Conner's crew was matched against Parry's Kookaburra III, a sloop designed and skippered by Iain Murray.
One of my favorite memories of Fremantle was the look on Bruce Nelson's face as the Stars & Stripes co-designer returned to Conner's compound from the unveiling of the Aussie defender.
Nelson headed straight for his computer and found a design with lines almost identical to those of Kookaburra. It had been a design that the Stars & Stripes team considered – and rejected.
“Either this is very good news or very bad news,” said Nelson.
It was great news.
Neither the Aussie boat nor its crew was a match for Conner's entry.
Over a five-day span, Stars & Stripes won four straight races by margins ranging from 70 seconds to a second shy of two minutes in the finale.
Conner and his crew flew home as national heroes. After being saluted in San Diego, the team headed en masse to a White House meeting with President Reagan before heading to New York for a ticker-tape parade.
Later this week, members of Conner's championship team will meet at SDYC for a reunion that will include members of the support staff as well as the “Mushrooms” from the backup crew.
In addition to Conner, the crew consisted of tactician Tom Whidden, navigator Peter Isler, mainsheet trimmer Jon Wright, tailers Trenkle and Adam Ostenfeld, bowman Scott Vogel, pitman Jay Brown, mastman John Barnitt and grinders Kyle Smith, Jim Kavle and Henry Childers.
Yes, there is an America's Cup this year. Switzerland will be defending in Spain against a fleet that includes one American entry (Oracle-BMW).
But it's no longer the event it was in Australia 20 years ago.
It never will be again. "
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