SAILING : Probable Winds Favor Conner in Record Bid in Race to Ensenada

Dennis Conner, in his “soft-sail” 60-foot backup catamaran from the 1988 America’s Cup defense, will be among 530 entrants in the 44th Newport Beach-to-Ensenada race starting at noon Friday.

It’s the world’s largest international sailboat race. There will be nine starts for 18 fleets on two starting lines.

The overall record is 10 hours 31 minutes 3 seconds set by Bob Hanel’s Double Bullet in 1983. Conner tried to break the record last year but was foiled by light winds. This time, he may have a shot. Race chairman John Long expects to see 12- to 20-knot westerlies throughout the 125-mile race.

The slowest boat figures to be Mike Warns’ 24-foot wooden-hulled South Pacific, which has a Performance Handicap Racing Fleet rating of 300, the highest race secretary Caroline Starr can recall in the race.

Lorin Weiss, unofficial race historian, said: “It gets 10 seconds a mile (in handicap time) from the Newport Pier.”

Women will be catamaran skippers for the first time in the race. Geri Conser of Costa Mesa, better known as a sailing photographer, will steer the 40-foot Mistral built by her husband John, and Liz and Willie Hjorth of Marina del Rey will sail the smaller Hiolani II.

Morgan Reeser, 28, of Miami, is America’s top-ranked 470 dinghy sailor, but he’s close to scuttling his Olympic hopes.

Reeser was thrown out of the Olympic pre-trials at Newport Harbor Yacht Club this month for violating the sportsmanship code of Rule 75--i.e., assaulting an opponent. It was his second run-in with that rule this year, although an incident at another pre-Olympic event at Miami last January led to no penalties.

Early in the Newport Beach event, Reeser protested that Mike Sturman of Santa Monica was wearing an overweight ballast jacket. The jacket was found to be half a kilo--1.1 pounds--overweight, hardly a factor in the outcome, but Sturman was disqualified from the day’s races.

Then Saturday, after Reeser had won both races to move into first place, Sturman protested that Reeser was wearing a life jacket not approved by the Coast Guard. Obviously, the illegal garment didn’t help Reeser win, either, but Sturman’s motive was clear.

Several of the 470 sailors wear similar life jackets, which are British-made, with air pockets the Coast Guard doesn’t like, but Sturman’s protest was directed only at Reeser.

After being told he had to forfeit both victories, Reeser apparently blew up. Coming downstairs from the protest hearing room, according to reports, Reeser met Sturman and kicked at him. Sturman’s crewman, Bob Little, following, came to Sturman’s defense, and he and Reeser decided to step outside. They had started to scuffle when others interceded. No action was taken against Sturman or Little.

A report was sent to the U.S. Yacht Racing Union, which could suspend Reeser, possibly from going to Barcelona for the pre-Olympic regatta this summer, or perhaps hand him a worse penalty.

The Olympic pre-trial regattas off Marina del Rey and Newport Beach were scheduled to coincide seasonally with next year’s Olympic trials at those venues, which were selected to approximate the light-wind conditions expected at Barcelona in 1992. Marina del Rey and Newport are notorious for light wind.

Oops! On the first day the wind was howling 22 to 30 knots off Marina del Rey, keeping the Tornado catamarans in the harbor. Off Newport, the dinghies went out to race in the usual 6 to 10 knots, but shortly after noon, the big wind suddenly arrived, causing chaos.

It took 2 1/2 hours to collect damaged boats and waterlogged sailors.

The conditions were more like the last Olympics at Pusan, South Korea, but give the Olympic Yachting Committee credit for trying to improve on ‘88, when the trials in light-air venues selected light-air sailors for heavy-air Olympics.

After the pre-trial events, Olympic Yachting Committee Chairman Mike Schoettle of Rancho Palos Verdes rated U.S. chances for medals in ’92.

“I don’t see the depth,” Schoettle said, “but in every class, we have medal potential. We have one or two that are clearly at the top or on the pace for a gold medal.”

Solings and Stars remain strong. The two keelboat classes, whose pre-trials will be in Florida in two weeks, produced two golds in ’84 and two silvers in ’88. San Diego’s Mark Reynolds, the ’88 Star representative, won last week’s Western Hemisphere Spring Championships at New Orleans.

But the best bet may be a woman in the new Europe dinghy class. Courtenay Becker of Rye, N.Y., was named yachtswoman of the year for dominating the Europes here and abroad last year, but she has been overtaken by rivals for the Olympic berth--indicating either temporary burnout by Becker or improved depth for the class.

Next come the women’s 470s, led by J.J. Isler of San Diego; the Finns, with ’88 Olympian Brian Ledbetter of San Diego; and the men’s and women’s sailboards, which have considerable depth.

Reeser has dominated the men’s 470s but was off the pace internationally and now faces an uncertain future.

In the Tornado catamarans, it’s no longer a Pease and Jay Glaser show. Pete Melvin, an ’88 Olympian, got his campaign going at Marina del Rey to beat the Long Beach wife-husband team in a close contest, although neither has been up to medal speed in world competition.

Last comes the Flying Dutchman class, an endangered species in the United States. Jonathan McKee and Carl Buchan won a rare world title and the Olympics in ’84. Texan Paul Foerster, an ’88 Olympian, is back, but there isn’t enough domestic competition to lift the class to the world level.

Bill Martin, president of the U.S. Yacht Racing Union, has a problem with his organization. He doesn’t like the name.

Martin favors changing it to U.S. Sailing Assn. or, for easy reference, U.S. Sailing.

“The perception of the non-sailing world is that we’re an elitist, blue-blazer group,” he said.

That’s what he told members of the Southern California Yachting Assn., most of whom were wearing blue blazers for this month’s meeting at the Long Beach Yacht Club.

Martin may have a point. When is the last time anybody said, “Let’s go yachting “?

Chuck Kober of Long Beach, a past USYRU president, also has said the name has little to do with the sport.

“We don’t all sail yachts, we don’t all race and we aren’t affiliated with the AFL-CIO,” he said.

A vote on the proposed change will be taken in October.

While Martin is trying to play down sailing’s snob image, Cadillac, a sponsor of Dennis Conner’s America’s Cup campaign, stated in a news release distributed at the christening of Stars & Stripes: “This association will help Cadillac reach a very important audience--upscale consumers . . . (who) precisely match Cadillac’s target audience.”

The company said it is supporting “professional golf, yachting and show jumping” to reach people with “exclusive lifestyles.”

Martin, who lives in Ann Arbor, Mich., hopes to reach everybody. He also said USYRU should no longer be regarded as an Eastern Establishment outfit. Twelve of the 25 directors live on the West Coast.

“The center of racing is right here,” he said.

Sailing Notes

ULDB 70S--Roy Disney’s new Pyewacket, winner of the Puerto Vallarta race earlier this year, increased its lead in the season series by winning the Skylark series off Newport Beach with a 2-1-2 showing. Owners or family members were required to drive, but Disney and his son, Roy Pat Disney, had Olympic gold medalist and 1990 Congressional Cup runner-up Robbie Haines for tactician. Runner-up Peter Tong had Dave Ullman aboard Blondie. Next came Brack Duker’s Evolution, Ed McDowell’s Grand Illusion and Mitch Rouse’s Taxi Dancer. . . . The sleds’ next points event is the Newport-to-Ensenada race, followed by the 29th Cal Cup off Marina del Rey May 24-26. . . . The first North Sails Sprint turned out to be a crawl, with two of the 13-boat fleet’s oldest boats, the Dick Pennington-Doug Baker Cheetah and Blondie, running 1-2 less than two minutes apart. The 80-mile run from Long Beach to San Diego was supposed to be a downwind race, but the wind was five knots and head-on from the southeast at the start. While most of the fleet proceeded to tack repeatedly down the beach, Cheetah headed out to sea, followed later by Blondie. They picked up a southwesterly sheer and sailed straight to San Diego without tacking. Cheetah finished in about 13 hours at 11:40:36 p.m., with Blondie 1 minute 56 seconds behind. The next boat, John DeLaura’s Silver Bullet, arrived 1 hour 26 minutes later.

OCEAN RACING--A lot of things can go wrong in a race, but first- and second-degree burns are rare. Tom Linskey, formerly of Marina del Rey, and his wife, Harriet, have rejoined the Yamaha Osaka Cup race from Melbourne to Osaka in their 27-foot boat Freelance after he was hospitalized for five days. Linskey was burned shortly before the second day’s start from Portsea when a pot of cooking oil ignited in the galley, and he told Harriet to throw it overboard. Some of the flaming oil splashed on him. Linskey jumped into the water but was burned so badly that he wasn’t able to start until more than six days later, in 40th and last place. However, as the leaders were finishing this week, the Linskeys had moved up to 36th and were still gaining on stragglers, 2,600 miles from Osaka.

SERIOUS RACING--Alamitos Bay Yacht Club will supplant some of the ceremony with sailing for its opening day on May 4. Commodore Norma Clapp said there will be dinghy races, with an unusual prize: a parking spot for a year. Those familiar with the parking situation at ABYC expect cutthroat competition.

EVENTS--The Southern California Schock 35 fleet and other boats returning from Ensenada will compete in the Audi Yachting Cup off San Diego next weekend. . . . The Pacific Corinthian YC’s Ventura Fun Ocean Racing Series starts its second season May 5 inside Channel Islands Harbor. Details: (805) 987-3939. The PCYC’s second race of the Ventura County Offshore Racing Circuit is scheduled on May 11 outside the breakwater.