Dennis Conner and crew scored a hat trick triple victory in the 64th Newport to Ensenada race this year on his Farr 60 “Stars & Stripes”. The boat was First Monohull to Finish, First in the Maxi Class and First in the Entire Fleet of boats on corrected handicap time. DC and crew won the most prestigious prize of the race, President of USA Trophy, along with several others. Conner had been first to finish three times previously but had never won overall at the same time.
There were a handful of bigger monohulls with faster ratings than Stars and Stripes, which rated minus-63 seconds per mile.
Conner said, ‘S and S is not quite as fast in the prevailing conditions as the bigger boats. After the start the boats sorted out as you might expect based on the ratings. [Lorenzo Berho's Kernan 70] Peligroso and [Bob Lane's Andrews 63] Medicine Man were about six miles ahead at the Coronado Islands.
‘Stars & Stripes was the first boat to jibe to port and got a nice header going to the LNG Plant at the entrance to [Todos Santos] bay. This enabled her to catch up with the boats ahead. At this point there was 18 miles to go. It took 10 hours to finish, so you can see it was stop and go. The guys on S and S did a great job beating the faster boats to the finish and were very excited about being first to finish, first in class and first overall.’