Moromania Proves to Be a Dream For Insomniacs : America’s Cup: The races, televised late at night, have captured the attention of Italy.

Win or lose at sea off San Diego today, Raul Gardini, farmer-turned-yachtsman, already has sailed to Italy’s greatest maritime triumph since Columbus.

Such is the verdict at home of a rich man’s quest that has turned into an insomniac’s blessing and a national passion: Moromania.

Il Moro di Venezia is a national hero. And so, suddenly, is its sport among a people whose nautical prowess is mainly the stuff of history.

In popular gaze, the computer-designed, synthetic-hulled Moro has tacked, in line astern, into a proud tradition: fearsome Roman triremes, the oared galleys of medieval merchants, the cocky caravels of Renaissance explorers.

“From squibs on the sports page Il Moro has bounced into Page 1 of the national newspapers,” observed the magazine Panorama. “What was until yesterday considered a sport for the super rich with their nose in the air is becoming a sort of collective mania.”

Everybody is an expert. Never mind that 81% of Italians blithely tell pollsters that they have never set foot on a sailboat. Or that only one Italian in 100 claims to be a regular sailor. This is the first time in nearly 30 years a European boat has reached the Cup finals, and it is a high-tech beauty emphatically stamped “Made in Italy.”

Today, all Italy remembers those mischievous Kiwis and their irregular bowsprit, even if last month, most people didn’t know the difference between a mainsail and a gennaker.

Bleary-eyed Monday morning admirals more accustomed to soccer diagrams debate wayward winds and improvident tacks with great animation. They pore over complex newspaper charts of the race course that a few weeks ago would have been no more intelligible than the sketch of an intestine.

When Italian television rights to the America’s Cup were up for grabs, RAI, the powerful state network, wasn’t interested. A private network, Telemontecarlo, took the plunge and has tripled its investment.

California is nine hours behind Italy, so the new generation of Italian armchair sailors usually don’t get back to their berths until the wee hours here. Telemontecarlo has a modest audience share, but has become the most watched late-night channel when the boats are at sea. At one point in the challenger series finals against New Zealand, shown live after midnight here, about 3.5 million Italians were watching, according to Telemontecarlo.

Can part of Moro’s allure be that it is a tightly run ship from a country that is without a president, a prime minister or a government?

Every night, politicians, movie stars and athletes call up for on-air conversations with Telemontecarlo’s Cup host, Cino Ricci, skipper of the Azzurra, Italy’s also-ran in the ’83 Cup. They inquire about wind and sea conditions and offer best wishes to the crew.

Boxer Nino Benvenuti called up one night to say: “I’m a sailor.”

To which Ricci replied: “And I’m a boxer.”

Well-wishers dispatch mountains of cheerleading faxes to Gardini. The fax number in San Diego is regularly flashed on television.

Cheers, too, go to the Moro’s “skipper”--as he’s known even in Italian--Paul Cayard, whom viewers are told is “an American naturalized Italian.”

Last weekend, a giant outdoor television screen competed with the action at the qualifying rounds of the Italian Open tennis tournament here. Everybody who was anybody was there. But the Beautiful Person who counts most in Italy was in San Diego.

Gardini, 58, has been single-mindedly chasing the Cup since 1988. The first Moro was launched from the Tencara shipyard near Venice in 1989. The one racing today is Moro V.

In the meantime, Gardini, a dynamic and flamboyant executive and enthusiastic sailor, was ousted last July from leadership of the Ferruzzi-Montedison industrial conglomerate.

With Tencara formed purposely for the Cup and $22 million already spent, company directors agreed to continue the Moro project, which was given a $40-million ceiling on boat-yard costs and has more than paid for itself in publicity.

Gardini has retained control of his quest, and the boat whose sails sport the stylized image of Venice’s symbol, the Lion of St. Mark, also bears the name he chose for it.

Shakespeare might have believed Othello was the Moor of Venice, but Italian newspapers believe that the boat’s name has a more earthy origin. Gardini, who hails from peasant stock in Romagna on the Adriatic coast, is said to have chosen the name from the local dialect in which a moro is a headstrong, courageous and ultimately conquering figure.

Until the Cup races end, Italy will keep a weather eye on the winds of California.

Whether Moro’s fling with fame will set Italy sailing again is another question.

For Moromania flourishes at a slack time in the Italian sports year: The soccer championships are mostly decided, skier Alberto Tomba’s snow has melted, one of the country’s best show jumpers has been felled by AIDS and Ferraris have not been running well in Formula One.