America’s Cup ’92 : Wind Changes Find Il Moro Ill Prepared : Sailing: Course revisions confuse Italian syndicate, allowing Nippon Challenge to stay unbeaten.

SAN DIEGO â€”  The wrong mark?

In the America’s Cup?

And mighty Il Moro di Venezia, of all people?

Mama mia!

In a moment, another impressive performance turned into a navigational nightmare when Il Moro lost its way on the third day of the first round of the Louis Vuitton Cup challenger trials Tuesday.

As shifting winds caused the race committee to twice change the position of the windward marks, the Italians became confused, sailed to the wrong mark and lost their first race to Chris Dickson’s unbeaten Nippon Challenge by 3 minutes, 55 seconds.

The wind reached an above-average 14 knots for San Diego but shifted treacherously for the sailors--65 degrees from northwest to east of north, then back 85 degrees to west.

It had all of the sailors guessing, and the Italians guessed wrong.

However, the international jury was meeting Tuesday night to consider a protest submitted by the on-the-water umpires against Nippon for flying its gennaker headsail without a spinnaker pole.

So Il Moro might still get the one point for the race, but not even that nor a brilliant start that seemed to put Nippon away won’t make up for the chagrin of it all. Every amateur sailor knows the feeling.

Il Moro’s American skipper, Paul Cayard, tried to mask his pain with jokes--”Sandbagging,” he said. “We were sandbagging . . . Avoiding kelp?”--but it wasn’t easy.

Worse, he had to explain it in two languages, and he did it con classe .

“We had a problem,” Cayard said. “We were confused about where we were on the course.”

He never mentioned the Chieffi brothers--Tommaso, his tactician, or Enrico, his navigator, who share the responsibility for such things, because, Cayard said later, “the skipper has the ultimate responsibility.”

That should play well in Venezia.

Cayard said they recognized by code flags on a committee boat that the heading to the second windward mark had been changed because of a wind shift to the right. What they didn’t notice was the color of the new mark.

“They put a placard that describes the color of the mark you’re going to,” Cayard said. “The normal rotation (when one is changed) is yellow-orange-yellow.

“For us it was a yellow-to-yellow change because New Zealand and Challenge Australia had received the first course change of the day, which was orange.”

Unaware of the first change, Il Moro sailed for the orange mark instead of the new yellow one several hundred yards to the right, and sailed itself out of the race.

Onboard TV cameras showed Cayard and the crew relaxed and confident on the second windward leg.

Then anxiety seemed to set in as Nippon closed in on a favorable wind shift, and soon Cayard swung his right arm backward toward the Japanese, as if to say, “If we’re headed toward the mark, where are they going?” as Tommaso Chieffi searched the course with binoculars.

“I said, ‘Let’s get over there with them before this gets any worse,’ ” Cayard said, “and I was asking about where we were on the course, and the discussion was that we were fine.

“Obviously, we weren’t fine. We noticed it about five minutes too late.”

Meanwhile, aboard Nippon, there was equal anxiety in Dickson’s afterguard of fellow New Zealanders John Cutler and Ere Williams.

“I kept asking, ‘Are we going to the right mark?’ ” Dickson said. “They said, ‘Absolutely yes. The Italians are going the wrong way.’ ”

Earlier, Il Moro seemed to put Nippon away in the pre-start sequence with some brilliant tactical maneuvering by Cayard against Dickson, the top-ranked match-racing skipper in the world.

Cayard squeezed up to leeward of Dickson behind the committee boat and Nippon’s mainsheet touched Il Moro’s bow--enough contact to constitute a foul against Il Moro, the right-of-way boat.

Cayard protested and the on-the-water umpires agreed, ordering Dickson to execute the first penalty turn in the history of the Cup since the introduction of umpires this time.

Dickson had to execute a 270-degree turn after the start, but before he could even get to the line he had to do a 360 to clear the committee boat, as Il Moro sailed away--into oblivion.

Il Moro couldn’t even claim the excuse Baron Bich had in 1970 at Newport, R.I. in the last race of the challenger trials. Bich, of ballpoint pen fame, became lost in a fog and sailed his 12-meter France around the wrong mark in a race against Australia’s Gretel II, skippered by Sir Jim Hardy.

“We may even get lucky and get the point back,” Cayard said.

That would depend on the jury’s interpretation of Rule 64.3, which also applied to New Zealand’s use of its unique bowsprit, although the cases are different.

The rule reads: “A spinnaker, including a headsail set as a spinnaker (i.e., a gennaker), shall not be set without a boom (i.e., pole). The tack of a spinnaker that is set and drawing shall be in close proximity to the outboard end of the spinnaker boom, except when hoisting jibing or lowering the spinnaker.”

The difference is that New Zealand has detached its pole only during the jibing process, while switching the gennaker or spinnaker from one side of the boat to the other.

Apparently, Nippon sailed along for 15 or 20 minutes, according to umpires Graeme Hayward of Canada and Robert Lane of Marion, Mass., with the spinnaker attached only to the bow of the boat.

In Tuesday’s other races, Spain (2-1) sailed back into reality in losing to Ville de Paris (2-1) by 6:24, Spirit of Australia (1-2) slam-dunked Sweden’s Tre Kronor (0-3) by 13:13--or nearly two miles of the 20-mile course--and New Zealand (2-1) just put its little red boat on cruise control for an uneventful win by 5:03 over Challenge Australia (0-3).

Today’s featured race matches Nippon and Ville de Paris. Also: New Zealand vs. Tre Kronor, Challenge Australia vs. Spirit of Australia and Espana vs. Il Moro.

Spain’s previous victories were against Tre Kronor and Challenge Australia, one of whom is reasonably sure to win when they meet Sunday at the end of the first round-robin.