Conner Sailing to Compete

FREMANTLE, Australia —  When the second man in Dennis Conner’s office wanted to know about the appeal of the sea, Conner asked if he meant nature, sun and wind and such, and the second man said, “Oh, you know, Dennis, just the joys of sailing in general.” He did not anticipate the answer.

“I don’t like to sail,” Conner said.

The listener stuck a finger in his ear and wiggled it, as if to remove the wax.

He had just spent the morning aboard Stars & Stripes, the America’s Cup yacht of the Americans, at the special invitation of Conner, and had spent hours watching the man many consider the best sailor in the world in his element.

He had seen how gently Conner handled the crew, making orders sound like favors. Like: “Would anybody be heartbroken if we took down that sail?” He had seen how quickly the crewmen snapped to it, and how compatible they were with their skipper. He had seen how instinctively Conner sensed a reduction in speed caused by something as unobtrusive as seaweed, without even glancing at a closed-circuit camera equipped on the boat to detect just such a nuisance.

This man didn’t like sailing? The man who would soon be putting out to sea to see about returning America’s Cup to America? Did Dorothy Hamill dislike skating? Did Ella Fitzgerald dislike singing? Did birds dislike chirping?

“I guess I don’t dislike it, exactly,” Conner said, qualifying his off-the-cuff comment. “But sailing is a way of keeping score. I don’t sail just to sail. I like to compete.”

For example, he said he wouldn’t sit down to play bridge just to play cards. The essence of bridge to Conner would be when everybody added up points to see who won.

Listening to this, the second man in the room was still preoccupied with the revelation that the world’s greatest sailor wasn’t all that smitten with sailing. “You’re not a water guy, then?” he finally asked Conner, getting right down to basics.

Once again, he did not anticipate the response.

“I can’t even swim,” Conner said.

Now, wait a minute. The guy who goes out daily to the deepest points of the ocean, a guy who helms boats that bob and sway their way across crazy waves, a guy who was born and raised in San Diego as the son of a fisherman, this guy can’t swim?

“I spend all my time trying to stay out of the water,” Conner smiled and said.

Do you mean to sit there and say that if the skipper of Stars & Stripes got tossed overboard during one of his races against Kookaburra III in the Cup finals, that unless somebody acted quickly with an inner tube or something, he would go blop, blop, blop and down for the third time, never to be seen again? That he couldn’t even tread water?

“Well, I can dog-paddle a little,” Conner said.

This is hardly your typical sailor. Or your stereotypical sailor. No tattoos that say “Rosie” or “Mother” on Dennis Conner. No vulgar language or bell-bottom pants. No girl in every port and no love affair with the mysteries of the deep blue sea.

Just a knack for doing something well and a burning desire to do it better than anybody else.

“Nothing makes me angrier than to hear that he has no feelings,” said his wife, Judy, before today’s first race. “There’s just something deep inside him that makes him want to win, that makes him driven to be the best.”

There is a theory that Conner never intended to make sailing his life’s devotion but discovered to his surprise that he had a special talent for it, one that made him not just a good sailor but a great sailor.

Things sometimes work out that way. Larry Bird, for one, often has said that he would much rather have excelled at an individual pursuit, such as tennis or auto racing, but couldn’t ignore the fact that basketball was the game at which he had something extra.

Conner dedicated himself to conquest, not just to competition. To help him, he put together a crew with motivations just like his, men who don’t seem to mind squeaking by on the $300 a month they have been paid during the long, hard weeks of Cup competition, so long as victory can be won.

No “God, family, football, in that order” platitudes, the sort you hear from many sportsmen, ever come from Conner. “If I find a crewman who can put this ahead of religion, family, girlfriend, life, career, everything, I’ll give him a tryout,” he declared.

Occasionally, some of those around him will wonder if burnout is just around the next buoy. More than once there has been speculation that when this America’s Cup challenge is over, win, lose or draw, Conner will call it a day. Get out of sailing competition entirely.

Nothing could be more untrue, Conner said, emphatically. After he wins here--this is precisely the way he put it--”I’m going to win a regatta in Florida, too,” later the very same month. “And then one in Sardinia. And then one in Monaco.” And on and on, boxing the compass, spanning the globe.

Conner doesn’t care if some people do not understand him. Same as he doesn’t care if some people in this world are not walking encyclopedias of sailing.

Before inviting an outsider to take a test run, Conner asked how much he knew about the sport. The passenger assured him that the first time he heard winged keel mentioned, he thought somebody was referring to the golf course where Johnny Miller won the U.S. Open.

Conner was considerate and helpful. “See that boom?” he asked, pointing to one as Stars & Stripes set sail. “If it hits you, it’ll kill you.”

He bragged about the work of the crew, about how they rise at dawn, do calisthenics, get themselves in shape and then get the boat in shape, all for chicken feed pay. “Your buddy Bird wouldn’t do that,” Conner said.

He told how Stars & Stripes might have been called Yankee and painted in pinstripes if only he could have gotten through to George Steinbrenner, the New York baseball club owner and millionaire shipbuilder, when Conner was seeking financial support for his Cup bid. He gladly would have been Yankee skipper for the Yankee shipper.

Conner’s current boat is in ship-shape shape and ready to outrun Kookaburra in the week to come, he believes. Although he admires the young Australian skipper, Iain Murray, and even thinks they resemble one another a bit, Conner cannot resist a little gamesmanship. Seconds after shaking hands with him on the eve of the first race, Conner watched Murray leave the room, then said: “The kid looked a little nervous, didn’t he?”

So far, he has been having a good time, on land and sea. Conner even sang along with his crew on a recently completed music video-- “Whatever goes down, must come up . Stars and Stripes wants America’s Cup . “ --and, having been so heard, he is hereby advised not to quit his day job.

No one needs remind Conner what he does best. He very probably is the best sailor in the world. And he very probably will remain so, as long as it is the boat that is in the waters off the coast of Australia, and not the man himself.