Filmed crew is looking for a Hollywood ending

At 1 p.m. today off Palos Verdes, a horn will sound and 11 sailors aboard Morning Light will set a course for Hawaii and perform feverishly as one, trying to gain an edge on the competition.

Their sleek white vessel will sweep past Santa Catalina Island and continue far to the west, through the night, during which they’ll study the weather to determine the quickest route to the islands.

Then the call will be made, “Cut!” and Morning Light will about-face and return to Long Beach.

Today marks the last big dress rehearsal for the vessel’s long-anticipated July 15 start of the 2,225-mile Transpacific Yacht Race from Los Angeles to Honolulu.

Eleven crew and four alternates, who were among 538 sailors to have applied for Roy E. Disney’s Morning Light Project, are all that’s left of a yearlong endeavor that will become a feature-length movie to be released in theaters next spring.

The film will show in vivid detail the molding of young sailing talent, the melding into a team, and the difficult and dangerous, yet highly rewarding task of racing on the high seas.

Undoubtedly, the climax scene will entail Morning Light streaking past the finish line near Diamond Head, its jubilant crew spilling forth tears of emotion. “There are very few times in someone’s life where you have a goal, a long-distance goal, and you get to pour everything you have into it, and for us this is one of those times,” says Chris Branning, a co-navigator from Sarasota, Fla.

Branning, 21, a junior at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, did not make the original cast of 30, but was allowed in when another sailor withdrew. Branning was 11th, however, when the cut to 15 was made, placing him on the vessel.

His job as co-navigator is to study weather and fleet positions, to enable Capt. Jeremy Wilmot, 21, an Australian and the only non-American on the boat, to choose the most fortuitous course. As for the distraction of film crews and cameras, Branning smiles broadly and says, “Our language got better as we went along, and then we just stopped caring about what we said. After all, we are sailors.”

Adds Genny Tulloch, 22, one of two women on the team and the only woman who will sail in the race: “For us, the best thing we can do for them is to make the boat go fast and win the race, so that’s what we want to do.”

Remarkably, the team of 18- to 23-year-olds is given a reasonable chance of winning based on a corrected-time formula used to account for vessels of varying size.

No other crew has trained as extensively, and only Morning Light’s has been coached by legendary personalities such as Stan Honey and Robbie Haines.

With Disney, who will compete in his 16th Transpac aboard the much larger Pyewacket, they’ve nurtured every aspect of the team’s growth.

Disney, a billionaire and nephew of Walt Disney, housed the sailors in Hawaii, where they practiced the home stretch in strong seas, day and night. At one point beyond Molokai,

they attained a speed of 29.1 knots.

“There are very few races where you get to go downwind and then end up in 12-foot waves, warm water and in a 20-knot wind,” Branning says. “The feeling is unreal. And we’re sailing a surfboard. The Transpac 52 was made for this race.”

More recently, the sailors were housed in Long Beach, where they’ve been training in light winds. The captain and navigators were given a crash course in advanced meteorology and know all about such phenomena as the quirky Pacific High.

“They’re doing a terrific job,” Disney says. “I’m so proud of these kids; they’re handling the boat so well.”

Co-navigator Piet van Os, 23, is the oldest and feels especially fortunate to have been included. A senior at the California Maritime Academy, he was aboard a 500-foot ship off Chile when he saw an online announcement for the project.

He pleaded with his officer and received a two-week leave to fly to the United States for tryouts. “That has never been done in the school’s history,” says Van Os. “Usually, once you step off, you’re done.”

Tulloch is a Harvard graduate and former college sailor of the year. A dinghy specialist who led an unsuccessful campaign to compete in next summer’s Beijing Olympics, she says her foray into offshore racing has been an experience she would not trade.

“I knew very little about this race, but learned that it’s full of lore and one of the big five ocean races that you need to do before dying,” she says. “And it’s funny because my dad has decided that now that I’m going, he’s going to also do the Transpac” aboard a different boat.

Mark Towill, 18, grew up in Hawaii and will attend Brown in the fall, so in a way this will be his final journey home before he leaves for college. “And it’s been amazing,” he says, “because we started out as total strangers, but now I consider my teammates to be my best friends and like family.”

That makes the former Walt Disney Co. vice chairman their beloved father figure, and the benefits of that go beyond his deep pockets.

“Roy is a very special person; he’s one of the coolest guys I know,” Branning says.

“I mean, he took us to Disneyland. We went to the front of all the lines and had two private tour guides. It was pretty spectacular.”

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The Transpac field is set at 76. Starts will be held off Point Fermin July 9, 12 and 15.

Disney, 77, has “un-retired” in an attempt to win back an elapsed-time record he had held since 1999, before Morning Glory broke it in 2005, the last year the biennial race was held.

That record is 6 days 16 hours 4 minutes 11 seconds. Pyewacket was second, 2 1/2 hours behind.

pete.thomas@latimes.com