When the wind gods deliver a full range of conditions and icons Dave Ullman and Dennis Conner win trophies on tiebreakers, the sailing has to be pretty special. So it was for 160 boats in 15 classes at the 17th North Sails Race Week, where the breeze blew itself into exhaustion from 16 knots down to 5 over three days of sunsplashed competition. Organizers ran three courses -- one inside the outer harbor and two outside.

In handicap terms, Conner's win with his Reichel/Pugh 50 Stars & Stripes over Mike Campbell's new Andrews 52 Victoria in PHRF-1 was just as tight. Victoria, with a rating of minus-45, owed Stars & Stripes (minus-36) nine seconds per mile, so when Victoria finished 1 minute 7 seconds in front of Stars & Stripes in the last race - won, incidentally, by John MacLaurin's Pendragon IV - it was eight seconds shy of correcting out, leaving the pair even with eight points each. Stars & Stripes won that tiebreaker by virtue of its two first-place finishes to Victoria's one win.

"We go better against him in light air," said Bill Trenkle, Conner's veteran trimmer and president of Dennis Conner Sports. "They have real good speed downwind, and they don't give up much upwind." Conner immediately turned the boat back toward San Diego."We're really busy with the America's Cup program," Trenkle said. "This is fun but it takes second fiddle to that."

Also otherwise occupied these days is John Kostecki, the leader of Germany's illbruck Volvo Ocean Race campaign who dropped in for just the weekend to call tactics on John Kilroy's Samba Pa Ti, which won the Farr 40 class by four points over Alexandra Geremia's Crocodile Rock.

"This was tough racing," said Kostecki, a native of San Francisco. "It was a nice break coming to California, but my home is in Germany now."Kilroy said it was good to have Kostecki back on board but that he wasn't the only difference from recent performances when Samba Pa Ti, a former Farr 40 world champion, was off the pace.

"We'd been using our old sails," Kilroy said, noting that the class allows only seven new sails each year. "We were saving our best set for this, the SORC, the Big Boat Series [in San Francisco] and the Nationals in Chicago."

FARR 40 (14 boats, Pacific Coast Championships)

1. Samba Pa Ti, John Kilroy/John Kostecki, 1-2-1-5-9, 18 points.

2. Crocodile Rock, Geremia/Robbie Haines, 2-1-15-dnc-2-2, 22 points.

3. Groovederci, J & D Demourkas/Chris Larson, 8-4-2-4-5, 23 points.

4. Revolution, Brack Duker/Peter Isler, 4-10-4-6-1, 25 points.

9. Peregrine, David Thomson/John Cutler, 11-14-7-1-13, 46 points.


PHRF 1 (11 boats)

1. Stars & Stripes, Dennis Conner, 1-4-1-2, 8 (first race nullified).

If there's a way to ruin a sailor's day blessed with warm sunshine and a steady sea breeze, it must be what happened between two competitors in the marquee Farr 40 class at North Sails Race Week Saturday.

At the first windward mark of the day's second race, Alexandra Geremia's Crocodile Rock, sharing first place with John Kilroy's Samba Pa Ti at the time, crashed into Mike Condon's Endurance to knock the latter boat out of the regatta with two races remaining Sunday. Crocodile Rock was on port tack, Endurance was on starboard in the layline parade, so Crocodile was totally wrong - and knew it.

"I cried," Geremia said, tears welling in her eyes. "I still cry every time I talk about it. The Endurance guys were so gracious. Thankfully no one was hurt." Endurance suffered a large hole in its port side near the chainplates that anchor the mast rigging. Crocodile Rock was not damaged but dropped out, anyway.

The incident left the Santa Barbara boat in a three-way tie for fourth with 18 points. Meanwhile, Samba Pa Ti's performance has returned to its former level of excellence with the return of John Kostecki as tactician this week. Does he make a difference? "

Is the Pope Catholic?" asked Mike Howard, a member of the rival Groovederci crew. Kostecki, on hiatus from preparing his German illbruck team for the Volvo Ocean Race starting in September, has shepherded Kilroy and his crew around the course to two wins and a second in the three races for an eight-point lead over Peter Stoneberg's second-place Shadow.

In a late development Friday, the first race of the PHRF-1 big-boat division was nullified by the race jury. Several participants requested redress because the race committee started the starting sequence a few minutes earlier than the 4 p.m. stated in the Notice of Race.

Although Dennis Conner's 50-foot Stars & Stripes finished first in that race, Oscar Krinsky's 1D48 Chayah corrected out for the win on handicap time. Neither of those boats protested. The biggest beneficiary was Mike Campbell's new Andrews 52 Victoria, which dropped out after losing its headstay near the first windward mark.

Victoria's designer, Alan Andrews, who was aboard, said, "The splice on the headstay came undone. We were just getting ready to round the mark. Mike did a good job turning downwind." Andrews said the boat wasn't in serious danger of losing its mast because "the jib luff was supporting the rig." Victoria went 1-2 Saturday and leads Conner (1-4) by two points.

Robust conditions found men - and women - to match its muscle Friday when 160 boats in 15 classes met North Sails Race Week head-on. Opening day of the 17th year of Southern California's largest grand prix sailing event generated 16 knots of breeze with gusts to 20 that churned up a Maytag type of sea.

John Kilroy's Samba Pa Ti, with John Kostecki taking time off from his upcoming Volvo Ocean Race campaign to call tactics, and Alexandra Geremia's Crocodile Rock were the only Farr 40s Cita didn't catch.

Long Beach's Mike Campbell, whose Andrews 52 Victoria, designed to the new Transpac 52 rule, lost its headstay while leading the PHRF-1 fleet near the end of the first windward leg and dropped out.

Meanwhile, with Victoria gone, the battle of big boats fell to Krinsky's Chayah and Dennis Conner's Reichel/Pugh 50 Stars & Stripes. Conner finished 2 minutes 12 seconds ahead of Chayah but, with his minus-36 rating, owed the Chayah (minus-24) 12 seconds a mile. That was just enough for Chayah to correct out by 29 seconds.

As it was, the Long Beach boat almost didn't get to the starting line on time. Helmsman Walter Johnson said, "We became aware we were in the [starting] sequence when we saw the P [code] flag come down on the committee boat with a minute to go. Fortunately, we were able to tack and start just to leeward of the fleet."

Although Stars & Stripes led around every mark, Johnson said, "We just paced them, knowing that boat for boat they weren't going to outrun us."