Conner to race boat which sank during testing

DENNIS CONNER’S America’s Cup team said yesterday they would use a boat which sank to the ocean floor only four months ago for their sudden death challengers quarter-final against Britain’s GBR Challenge.

In a bold move, Conner has settled on his $5 million boat Stars & Stripes USA 77 for the best of seven race quarter-finals against GBR, Britain’s first America’s Cup challenge in 15 years.

Their campaign suffered a heavy setback in July when USA 77’s rudder broke off and the boat sank during testing off California.

“This is what we always considered to be our race boat,” Team Dennis Conner helmsman Ken Read told a news conference. “With our slight mishap in California it set us back a bit, of course...the boat builders and shore crew have worked really hard to where we’re quite comfortable with it now,” Read said, joking that USA 77 would be sailing “back from the depths”.

But USA 77’s comeback might be put on hold for another day. The quarter-finals are due to start today but strong winds of up to 30 knots are forecast for the Hauraki Gulf off New Zealand’s largest city, making a postponement possible.

Conner’s team finished seventh among the nine challengers after two qualifying round robins and were drawn to sail the Britons in the seeded 5-8 “single chance” group.

Read said extensive testing in a range of weather conditions had left his crew with no doubts about USA 77’s strength and reliability despite it being the first boat ever to sail an America’s Cup race after sinking.

“We really wanted to use USA 77 in this last round.

“But we hadn’t quite proved to ourselves that the boat was as solid as we needed it to be to push it as hard as possible,” he said.

America’s Cup class yachts are built as light as possible to maximise speed within anticipated weather conditions, design principles which can make them vulnerable in stronger conditions.

The most famous example of what can go wrong was in 1995, when OneAustralia snapped and spectacularly sank during a semi- final off San Diego. The boat was never salvaged.

The decision to sail USA 77 could be the biggest gamble for Conner, who rarely sails on his cup boats now but whose career includes America’s Cup victories in 1974, 1980, 1987 and 1988.

Losers from the “single chance” quarter-finals group are eliminated, while the winners go into a quarter-final repechage against the two losers from the seeded 1-4 “double chance” group.

Strong US challengers OneWorld were the only other team to change boats for their quarter-finals. OneWorld will sail software billionaire Larry Ellison’s resurgent Oracle BMW Racing team, who finished the round robins in second place on a countback ahead of OneWorld.

OneWorld, backed by telecoms investor Craig McCaw and Paul Allen, co-founder of Ellison’s avowed software enemy Microsoft, were undefeated in the first round robin but lost three races in round robin two.

Slick Swiss syndicate Alinghi finished first after the round robins and will sail defending Louis Vuitton Cup challengers champions Prada of Italy in the quarter-finals.

Fashion mogul Patrizio Bertelli’s Prada team started the series badly but surged through round robin two after making extensive changes to their sleek silver boats.

Eighth placed Le Defi Areva of France replaced skipper Luc Pillot with Philippe Presti for their quarter- final against fifth placed Victory Challenge of Sweden.