UNSINKABLE

Wait till the America’s Cup gets a load of Larry Ellison.

Incredibly rich, flamboyant and competitive, Ellison is quite sure he’ll be the one who reclaims the America’s Cup for America, in his first try, no less.

The America’s Cup has always attracted interesting characters willing to sink a fortune into trying to win the oldest trophy in sports, and Ellison should fit right in when racing convenes next October in Auckland, New Zealand.

Ellison, who developed a passion for sailing long before becoming a high-tech billionaire, is sort of an updated version of Ted Turner, the “Captain Outrageous” who skippered Courageous to victory in the 1977 Cup.

Just listen:

“This is probably the best chance that America has to win the America’s Cup in a decade,” Ellison said Tuesday at Oracle Corp.’s big annual conference in San Francisco.

Posing in front of a scale model of an America’s Cup sloop, Ellison described the $5 million boat that his Oracle Racing team will sail--and he’ll help steer--as a “send-your-blazer-to-the-cleaners” boat.

Translation: He and his crew will need to look spiffy because they’ll be going to the awards ceremony.

“I think we’re favored to win the Cup,” Ellison said in an interview with The Associated Press a few weeks ago. “And I think we should be.”

Just like Bill Koch--the last American and last tycoon to win the Cup, in 1992--Ellison is poised to knock the staid yachting world on its stern.

He’s considered the bad boy of Silicon Valley, running Oracle, the world’s second-largest software company, with an iron fist while trying to catch archrival Microsoft

Although he’s played Captain Ahab to Bill Gates’ Moby Dick in the business world, Ellison, 57, is confident Oracle Racing can finish first in the pursuit of sailing’s biggest prize.

The next America’s Cup will be contested on an ocean of money, with a handful of billionaires backing syndicates.

Don’t worry, Oracle stockholders--Ellison says he’s funding Oracle Racing with $85 million of his own money, although some outside sponsorships could lower his stake.

“It’s so cheap, I’m surprised more people don’t do this,” joked Ellison, Oracle’s founder, chairman and CEO.

Once second on Forbes’ list of the world’s wealthiest people, he dropped to fourth after losing some $40 billion on paper in the high-tech stock meltdown.

Even so, $85 million must seem like pocket change to Ellison. When stocks rebounded Wednesday, Ellison made $2.2 billion, increasing his stake in Oracle to $21.2 billion.

Ellison’s goal is to win the America’s Cup, then defend it on San Francisco Bay.

To do that, Oracle Racing must outlast some pretty formidable teams in the challenger series to win the Louis Vuitton Cup, then defeat two-time Cup winner Team New Zealand in the America’s Cup match in February 2003. The Kiwis are still expected to be strong despite losing several key members to big-money offers around the globe.

None of that’s daunting to Ellison. America’s Cup competition has been compared to sharks in a pond, and he’s willing to dive in.

“We think our team is so good and our boat is so good that I’m going to do a bit of driving in the race,” Ellison said.

Other syndicate heads are content to write the checks and just ride along as the 17th man in the back of the 75-foot carbon-fiber boats, not allowed to do any of the sailing.

Not Ellison.

“It would be a lot of fun to be a part of that team,” he said. “I think the unique aspect of sailing is, if I were to buy the New York Yankees, I think it would be a really bad idea to start Game 1 of the World Series. I think I’d embarrass myself and disappoint the fans.

“But I think I can do a pretty good job of driving the boat--some of the time--and really be part of the creation of the team, the engineering effort and the actual driving the boat.”

Ellison is making the jump to the America’s Cup after several years of successfully campaigning his maxi yacht, Sayanora.

“It’s the toughest competition in terms of racing around buoys. The only challenge left was the Cup,” he said.

Ellison plans to share time at the wheel with Peter Holmberg, one of the world’s top-ranked match-racing skippers, and Chris Dickson. He’ll probably steer on upwind legs, but certainly not during pre-start maneuvers, when boats joust for the favored side of the course.

Dickson has sailed extensively with Ellison aboard Sayanora since 1995. When asked about his boss’ sailing ability, Dickson said he doesn’t comment on Ellison.

Said Holmberg: “I’ve been pretty impressed. He’s no slouch.”

Ellison said he won’t do anything to hurt the team.

“If I’m not doing well, I’ll get off the wheel,” he said.

Ellison learned to sail dinghies on San Francisco Bay when he was in his 20s.

“I think I engaged in the same fantasy as a lot of people, which is a desire to sail your own boat around the world,” he said.

He said he stopped sailing because he couldn’t afford it. A few decades later, when he could afford it, he had Sayanora built in the mid-1990s.

Ellison decided to do the America’s Cup after Team New Zealand fractured. Some of his Sayanora crew and support team were on the Cup-winning team, and rather have them accept offers elsewhere, he started a syndicate.

He bought the assets of AmericaOne, which lost to Italy’s Prada Challenge in the challenger finals in 2000. Prada, in turn, was routed 5-0 by Team New Zealand in the finals, the first in Cup history without an American boat.

Ellison, CEO of the 130-strong Oracle Racing, is having two new boats built.

Dennis Conner, a four-time winner who’ll be sailing in his ninth America’s Cup, said rich rivals like Ellison raise the competitive bar. But Conner also knows that interesting personalities bring attention to the sport.

“All in all, I’m glad he’s here,” said Conner, who’s a professional sailor, not a tycoon.

For all his bombast, Ellison still seems affected by the 1998 Sydney to Hobart race, when a freak storm with hurricane-force winds struck the fleet off the southeastern coast of Australia, sinking several boats and killing six sailors.

Sayanora won for the second time, but there was no celebrating.

“It’s a very humbling experience to be in a hurricane in a sailboat with the best sailors in the world,” Ellison said. “You discover your limits at a time like that.”

Sailing, Ellison said, has taught him that “life is short and glorious and fragile. Life is the only miracle.”