AMERICA’S CUP ’92 : Defiant Breezes to Easy Victory : Sailing: Melges, crew perform flawlessly to beat Stars & Stripes as defenders’ competition gets under way.

SAN DIEGO — As expected, the first race of the America’s Cup XXVIII defender trials Tuesday went to a veteran skipper with shrewd tactics and flawless crew work.

And the winner was . . . Buddy Melges.

The 61-year-old Wizard of Zenda (Wis.) outsailed the formidable Dennis Conner around the 22.6-nautical-mile course, placing America 3’s Defiant in front at every mark to win by 1 minute 34 seconds.

Too much could be made of the result, which is worth only one point, whereas victories in subsequent rounds will be worth two and four points.

But it punctured a small hole in the Conner mystique and underscored what he had been saying all along: that he has a fight on his hands against Bill Koch’s America 3 sailing factory to win the right to defend the Cup.

Koch’s Cup sailing credentials may still be questionable. He’ll get his first crack at Conner today with his other boat, Jayhawk.

But Melges’ mantle is every bit as full as Conner’s, including five world championships, Olympic gold and bronze medals and enough national ice boat and E-Scow titles in the Midwest to sink a trophy case.

Melges just hasn’t won an America’s Cup.

Winds were so light--a typical San Diego condition, in other words--that the start of Tuesday’s opening race was delayed 15 minutes. Conner’s bowman, Scotty Vogel, went to the top of the mast to scan the horizon for where it might be building.

When a breeze of 8 to 9 knots settled in from the northwest, tactician Dave Dellenbaugh took Defiant’s wheel and kept Conner at bay through the starting sequence, then turned it over to Melges 30 seconds before the gun.

At about that time Conner, trailing Defiant to the starting line, broke away to the right, thinking that side of the course had more favorable wind--perhaps, ultimately, the crucial error.

Dellenbaugh said the left end of the line was closer to the wind direction by 15 degrees, and “15 degrees is about five boat lengths.”

So when the boats crossed on opposite tacks four minutes later, Melges was in front to stay.

No matter, some partial observers thought, Conner will think of something.

Conner did. He forced Melges into a tacking duel to protect his lead, flopping 21 times up the first leg--classic match racing that some experts, including Conner, thought would be missing with the new, larger International America’s Cup Class boats.

Conner still trailed by 36 seconds at the mark, but surely he had something up his sleeve.

Maybe. Flying a larger gennaker, or reaching sail, he cut Melges’ lead almost in half, 40 to 22 seconds, on the middle reach of the Z-leg halfway through the race, but then lost it all back on the next leg.

For a moment on the next-to-last leg, Conner seemed to be pulling it out. He trailed Melges around the leeward mark, then tacked immediately as Melges sailed off to the right.

Melges, sailing conservatively by the match-racing manual, tacked for a loose cover--that is, to prevent Conner from finding his own favorable wind shift--but instead drifted into a pocket of light wind.

A few minutes up the leg, Conner was well ahead and to leeward, spilling disturbed air on Defiant’s sails. Finally, Melges tacked away, and Conner threw up his arms in a gesture of victory.

As it turned out, Melges had tacked on the layline to the last mark still 1 1/2 miles away. The wind freshened and lifted him, allowing him to round 1:07 in front of Stars & Stripes.

Conner tried to attack Melges on the last, downwind leg, jibing eight times, but only lost more time to the finish.

Melges said, “This is only one win of many, many races to come. The America’s Cup wasn’t won or lost today.