High Hopes on High Seas for Racing Crew

Battling choppy seas, fatigue and homesickness, a well-financed group of sailors, their families and a support crew have been in Ventura for more than two months preparing for the first grueling step in the quest for victory during the America’s Cup yacht race two years from now.

Since early April, Oracle Racing--owned by billionaire software developer Larry Ellison--has operated a sophisticated $80-million sailing empire from a boat dock off Spinnaker Drive in Ventura Harbor.

Amid the dry-docked fishing trawlers and moored pleasure craft at the boat basin, the Oracle operation, with rows of gray portable office buildings and a massive, tarp-covered work area, is hard to miss.

Five days a week, two 16-sailor teams with members from around the globe take a pair of massive training boats, the USA 49 and the USA 61, to the churning waters off Ventura County.

Each man’s goal, whether he is from New Zealand, Australia or the United States, is the same: to make Oracle Racing’s final 16-member crew, which will eventually compete in the 2002-2003 Louis Vuitton Cup. The 10-team race is the preliminary event before the America’s Cup, which will pit the winner against a two-time defending championship sailing team based in New Zealand.

“We have to live up to the U.S. expectations for this to be a big deal,” said Paul Cayard, the 42-year-old San Francisco resident who serves as sailing operations director for the Oracle team. Cayard has competed on two previous America’s Cup crews. “It will take experience and teamwork. It’s a complicated game.”

Included on the preliminary crews are top-notch sailors who bolted other sailing teams for the lure of Ellison and his wealth--most crew members make well over $80,000 a year and some more than $100,000--as well as a core of New Zealand yachtsmen poised to compete against the team from their homeland in the America’s Cup.

“I have spent a lot of time in the U.S., so for me personally the team is the most important thing,” said John Cutler, a 38-year-old New Zealand native who has sailed professionally for more than a decade. “The nationality is a side issue.”

Several team members have brought along their families, while others say they are eager to be reunited with wives, girlfriends and children they left behind.

Meanwhile, home these days for most on the Oracle team is a complex of rented townhouses in Oxnard.

“It’s like the Truman Annex in ‘The Truman Show.’ We are all looking at each other,” said 28-year-old America’s Cup veteran Cameron Dunn of New Zealand. “You can’t do something without someone looking at you.”

In September, Cayard, Cutler and the other Oracle team members intend to pack up the entire training operation and ship it to New Zealand for the Southern Hemisphere’s summer racing season. The 123-member team expects to return to Ventura next spring for another half year of practice before the preliminary competition starts in October 2002.

The team’s two racing boats for the Louis Vuitton Cup are under construction at an undisclosed location.

“It’s much like a football team, where the decision on the final team is not made until the end,” said Joanna Ingley, a spokeswoman for Oracle Racing. “No one’s position is guaranteed.”

On a recent sun-splashed afternoon on the water about three miles off the Ventura County coast, competing crew members worked at a feverish pace in two 24-ton practice boats.

From the shore, the matching boats with their 100-foot sails appeared like shadowy birds on the far-off horizon. Up close, they were anything but.

Their crews maintained constant movement as each sailor group carried through with an assigned job. Several burly men in red vests and sunglasses tugged on sails. Two sailors hoisted ropes and pulleys that carried another man to a towering mast. The crew of one boat turned the yacht in a rapid 360-degree circle, leaving a bubbling wake while trying to match the conditions they will face off the Auckland coast next year.

The boats heaved and groaned like massive designer-made whales as the two competing teams jockeyed for a better starting position at the beginning of the mock race.

“Whoever maneuvers the boat better gets into an advantageous position,” said Bill Cook, a performance analyst for the team from Annapolis, Md., who watched on a support boat as the pair of racing yachts came within a few feet of each other. “Right now, they’re trying to figure out where the wind is coming from.”

Huge puffed-out spinnaker sails propelled the boats at 8 to 10 knots as they raced downwind on a two-mile course. Orange markers positioned in the Santa Barbara Channel served as boundaries. As they turned to sail directly into a steady breeze, crew members cranked down the spinnaker and raised the smaller jibs.

Looking physically spent by noon, the crews took a lunch break with a gourmet meal of chicken, pasta and broccoli prepared by the team’s on-site cooking staff.

Monday through Friday, the two training boats and their crews sail out for practice sessions accompanied by support staff. Small inflatable motor-powered rafts cruise between the boats shuffling video cameras and sailors back and forth. Security breaches are rare, but in keeping with the hyper-competitive nature of the Oracle sailing effort, support staffers keep watch from the boats for spy craft and photographers with long lenses who might be working for rival sailing teams.

A larger support vessel follows close behind this flotilla carrying the sort of high-tech computer equipment one would expect from an operation run by the founder and CEO of Oracle Corp., whose software powers some of the world’s top Web sites. On board, a support crew that includes a trained paramedic translates and records the complex data on everything from wind speed to water currents.

There are certain tests that only those on the boats know about. Visitors not connected with the racing team were ushered off the water on inflatable rafts as the team tested new but unspecified equipment.

“You don’t want to share anything you learn with the opposition,” said Robbie Young, a 38-year-old New Orleans resident who specializes in handling the large spinnaker. “Everyone is trying to gain the advantage. We’re not going to be the ones to let others know what we’re doing. Why would we?”

The presence of Young and his fellow teammates has had a positive effect on the region, according to Ventura officials, though no detailed city study has yet been conducted.

“We saw it more as an image piece. It’s pretty cool to have an America’s Cup team here,” said David Kleitsch, Ventura’s economic development manager, who participated in many of the early meetings that eventually led to the team’s choice of the harbor as its summer home.

“It’s important to the community as an area for sailing and tourism. It puts the city of Ventura on the map,” he said.