Rod Davis’ Defection : Sailor Returns Home Under New Zealand Flag to Challenge for America’s Cup

SAN DIEGO — When Dennis Conner was asked recently what he thought of an American, Rod Davis, helping New Zealand in the America’s Cup, his response was quick and pointed.

“You mean Benedict Davis?” Conner said.

The next day, when Conner’s comment was printed, a puzzled New Zealand journalist asked an American colleague to explain it, leading to a brief account of Benedict Arnold’s notorious hero-turned-traitor role in the Revolutionary War.

Davis may have had to explain it to his wife, as well. She’s a New Zealander, too.

Davis, 32, is the sailing master and crew coach of the 123-foot creation the Kiwis call their K-boat, an evolutionary step beyond the legendary J-boats of the 1930s. Once the boat--properly christened New Zealand but also known by its nickname, Kiwi Mischief--leaves the dock, Davis is in charge.

This is the same Rod Davis who stood proudly wearing a gold medal while “The Star Spangled Banner” was played after the 1984 Olympic sailing competition at Long Beach, where he was part of Robbie Haines’ Soling crew.

But if he has indeed gone over to the enemy in sailing’s current revolution, it’s only because he believed his own side snubbed him.

Davis, a two-time Congressional Cup winner, was skipper of the Newport Harbor Yacht Club’s ill-fated Eagle entry in the last America’s Cup at Fremantle, Australia, in 1986.

The record will show that Conner won back the Cup in ‘87, but Eagle was long gone by then, eliminated before Christmas.

So Davis was hanging around Fremantle, continuing to live in the deserted Eagle compound and without much to do except wait for his wife, Liz, to give birth to their first child, Hannah.

Davis would pass time at the media center, watching the races on closed-circuit TV. Then one day, before Conner was to sail Stars & Stripes ’87 against Chris Dickson’s fiberglass KZ-7 in the challenge finals, Davis showed up on the Kiwis’ backup boat for a practice sail.

“I actually had contacted the Sail America Foundation prior to the New Zealanders’ contacting me,” Davis said. “We’d sold some sails to (Stars & Stripes) after Eagle got eliminated, (and I) offered to come out sailing with them. They never really responded one way or the other.

“Then Chris Dickson called me up one day and said, ‘Would you like to come out and do some starting?’ So (Eagle tactician) Doug Rastello and I went out and did that.”

That led to Davis’ acquaintance with Michael Fay, the Auckland merchant banker who is head of the New Zealand syndicate.

“Michael knew I was moving to Auckland after that, and he said we ought to get together and talk about the next America’s Cup,” Davis said.

They agreed that Davis would call tactics for the 12-meter World Championships at Sardinia, Italy, last summer, as he did when Italy won the title in ’86.

“It was kind of a tryout situation to see if it would work out, if they liked me and I liked them,” Davis said.

“That was prior to all the K-boat stuff coming out. At that time, we were thinking the America’s Cup was going to be in 1991 in 12-meters and I would be one of the potential skippers for them, (along with) David Barnes and Peter Lester. What I brought was a bit more 12-meter experience than they had.”

With Davis’ help, New Zealand won the World Championships, and a few weeks later Fay dropped his bomb. Now the New Zealanders weren’t talking about a standard 12-meter skipper and crew of 11 but as many as 40 hands to handle the largest racing boat built in half a century.

Davis said: “My role got shifted from being one of the potential skippers to being the sailing master--kind of the skipper but not being on the boat during the races.”

If the Cup is held in September, as scheduled, Davis will be five months short of the two-year residency required by the rules.

But with New Zealand’s action against the Stars & Stripes catamaran awaiting a decision by the New York Supreme Court, there’s a good chance the defense will be postponed until May.

“I guess I wouldn’t mind that too much,” Davis said. “Then I could be on the boat.”

Normally, when sailors talk about displacement, they mean the weight of a boat, the water it displaces. The Kiwis, though, have given the term a new meaning. Their boat has several displaced persons on board.

One is administrator Laurent Esquier, a Frenchman who has helped manage five Cup campaigns for France, the United States and New Zealand. Another is shore manager Peter Wilson of England, who worked for Canada in ’83 and New Zealand in ‘86-87.

Finally, there is Tom Schnackenberg, Davis’ brother-in-law. He designed the sails for three Australian campaigns, including Alan Bond’s victory in ’83.

Schnackenberg maintains that hiring Davis wasn’t his idea.

“It really wasn’t,” he said. “Rod was talking to Michael off and on from the end of the Eagle campaign. Michael was well aware that (Davis) was married to Lizzie and that he had been spending more and more time in New Zealand the last few years. He saw an opportunity there to get some excellent blood into the syndicate.”

Fay and 57 others have come to live in San Diego for as long as it takes to get a crack at the Cup.

They operate out of a waterfront compound near the Coronado bridge on the island where Davis grew up and his parents still live.

“We run with a pretty flat management structure,” Fay said. “The boss around here is me, not Rod, which is why I spend all the time with the team.

“Rod is the coach and the sailing master on the boat, and he’s very good. The guys have a lot of respect for him, and he fits in well. I think being married to a New Zealander, he’s accustomed to our ways.

“I was talking to Rod the other day, and we were saying that he’s won eight world championships in this, that and the other thing, but he’s never really sailed for San Diego. He’s won a world championship for New Zealand; he’s won one for Italy. The last Admiral’s Cup (in ‘87, when Davis coached) was New Zealand.

“So, really, he’s just a Kiwi with a funny accent.”

Liz Davis’ reaction?

“It’s another new and exciting chapter in our lives,” she said. “We’ve been agreeably surprised with the warm welcome we have received, and Rod is starting to relax about being back home in the ‘wrong’ camp.”

Under tow out to the ocean for a daily practice sail, Davis calls a crew meeting in the spacious cockpit. It’s like two dozen guys lounging in a large hot tub, without the water, but it’s strictly business as Davis reads from a checklist.

Later, Davis said: “You can see that we do get along. It just happened to work out this way. It’s nice to be able to come back to San Diego.

“Although Dennis (Conner) and others try to claim this is my hometown, I would say that actually Auckland is my hometown. That’s where I’ve lived the last bit. I left San Diego in ’76. I was up in L.A. for eight or nine years after that.”

He plans to live in Auckland indefinitely but said, “I’m not giving up my American passport.”

No matter what Conner says.

“That’s just Dennis having some fun, being Dennis,” Davis said. “Dennis is entitled to his opinion.

“Fortunately, it’s not the opinion of other people in San Diego. The reception I’ve received personally has been excellent. Dennis has bigger problems to worry about than calling me names in the press.”