Dennis Conner Quotations

With these new boats and our veteran crew of American sailors, I feel this is one of the best campaigns I've ever put together. The bare hull of USA-77 just left Newport, Rhode Island two weeks ago and here she is going sailing today, which is true testament to how hard our whole team has worked to make this day possible,

Design has taken the place of what sailing used to be.

Sailing is just the bottom line, like adding up the score in bridge. My real interest is in the tremendous game of life.

While the (America's) Cup is yachting's Holy Grail, it has also come to represent the ultimate test in 'the game of life.' Just as in life, success demands commitment and commitment demands a positive winning attitude. I told all the guys who came into our Cup campaign that if they were going to make the grade they needed three essential ingredients: attitude, attitude and attitude. I wanted commitment to the commitment. When they finally made the crew, some of them joked that they ought to be committed for their commitment to the commitment.

If you can visualize it, you can actualize it.

My goal in sailing isn't to be brilliant or flashy in individual races, just to be consistent over the long run.

It basically was an art before. We're just starting to scratch it into a science.

We were having trouble finding a guy to do the bow. There were a couple of mistakes up front one day, and Dennis leaned over the wheel and said, 'Tomorrow, you're going to try it.' That was the beginning of the end. Unfortunately, I got too good at it, and he wouldn't let me try anything else.

I've never sailed a schooner. Never even been on one.

No question it's repairable. We'll be sailing again before the trials and everything will be fine. We're extremely fortunate.

There were a lot of smiles on a lot of faces today,

If you want to talk about luck, we're normally sailing where it's 600 meters (2,000 feet) deep ... The good news is no one was hurt. The crew hardly got wet.

If I hadn't lost it, there never would have been the national effort to get it back in Fremantle, and without that there never would have been the ticker-tape parade up Fifth Avenue in New York, lunch with the president at the White House and all the doors of opportunity that it opened,