QUONSET POINT, R.I. -- Like a billowing cloud of steam, the spinnaker undulates and hovers over the bow as the boat cuts through the waves of Rhode Island Sound.
Suddenly, the ghost-like form plunges onto the deck. A crewman is standing in a hatch, furiously hauling the sail into a storage compartment below deck, his arms pumping violently and his head and shoulders engulfed by the white mass.
In about five seconds, Ryan McCrillis has packed 4,500 square feet of silky cloth into a bag the size of a bale of cotton.
McCrillis, a 23-year-old graduate from the Naval Academy, should be enrolled in Navy Flight School in Pensacola, Fla., learning to fly F-18's. Instead, the Navy has granted him a deferral of his five years of service so he can try another form of naval warfare: winning the America's Cup back from New Zealand.
McCrillis is trying to land a place among what may be the world's most elite crew of sailors: the Young America team, sponsored by the New York Yacht Club, the Annapolis Yacht Club and sailing organizations in five other cities.
The former midshipman is joined in his quest by another Annapolis resident, Chris Kam, 33. Grant "Fuzz" Spanhake, a 39-year-old sailor from Annapolis who crewed on the Maryland-based Chessie during this summer's Whitbred Around the World Race, has already made the cut. He will be one of the 16 sailors racing with the team off Aukland when the America's Cup matches begin in October 1999.
Whether McCrillis and Kam make the team will be a close call, with the decision coming in the next few months, said Jane Eagleson, spokeswoman for the team. There is no formal try-out; the team's leaders choose the crew based on long-term observation.
For almost two years, all three men have been testing equipment with the Young America team at a former Naval base here preparing their assault on the oldest trophy in sports.
Because the team is collecting data on secret new keel and sail designs, the fenced compound where the team has been training has the high-security feel of a commando base in a James Bond movie.
The half-dozen trailers in the compound are under 24-hour watch by a uniformed guard. The team's test boats are always shrouded in blue plastic skirts when they are out of the water. And when
they sail, a pair of motorboats speed out to interrogate any boaters who drift nearby with cameras.
"Sometimes I find the secrecy is even more intense than on military missions," said McCrillis, who graduated from the Naval Academy in May. "And the use of high technology is very much like in the military."
The project even has a Pentagon-sized budget: $40 million to build two sailboats and train a team of 35 crew and support staff. The boats are being designed by Bruce Farr of Annapolis, one of the world's premier designers of racing yachts.
Another day of tests
As the sun rises over the west passage of Narragansett Bay on a recent morning, a 130-foot-tall construction crane lifts a carbon-fiber sailboat from a wooden base behind curtains that hide it from view. For a moment, it hangs above the water, its keel exposed.
The device beneath the boat looks ominous, like a weapon of mass destruction: jet black, the length of a torpedo but flattened slightly, with a pair of knife-like blades slicing downward from its rear in a V-shape.
"No pictures," insists Eagleson. "We don't want anyone to know what we're working on."
The boat, which has a red shark painted on its side, is lowered into the water beside a similar yacht with a mermaid's face on its bow. Her eyes are closed, her chin cocked forward and her golden hair flowing the length of the boat. These are the Spirit of Rhode Island and the Young America, 75-foot racing yachts that sailed in the 1995 cup. The team is using them to test new equipment as it designs new boats for the next race.
The crane swings a sail bag nearly the length of a telephone pole onto the deck of the Young America, with McCrillis and the other crew members guiding it into place. The air is loud with sea gulls, the water beside the dock flashes with tiny fish.
A haggard-looking lobster boat, Old Glory, belches to life at the end of the pier. It rumbles into the smooth gray water, exhaust swirling, as a crewman heaves a white line that another ties to the bow of the Young America.
As Old Glory tows the sailboats away from the dock, there is a loud, metallic clacking sound. Two of the crew are bent nearly halfway over, cranking long black handles on a winch system that is lifting a crewman in a harness to the top of the 110-foot mast.
Meanwhile, near the stern, McCrillis squats in front of a computer bolted to the deck. He explains that data on the boat's performance during today's tests is being collected so that engineers can decide on the fastest design. He's careful not to say too much.
Hush-hush
"What kind of information are you giving out, Ensign Ryan?" one of the older crew members barks, noticing that McCrillis is talking to a reporter. "Thanks a lot, you bum. See you next race."
Everyone laughs. Those are the kind of jabs that the crew often gives its youngest member. It's not unlike the abuse that first-year midshipmen receive.
Nobody calls him Ryan. It's always "Ensign!" with his military title and a sly grin. When he furiously cranks the grinder to raise the mainsail, someone quips, "Hey, Ensign! Why don't you do some work for a change?" When he's focused intently on the computer in the back of the boat, Skipper Ed Baird comments: "Ensign, you gotta stop surfing until midnight. It's too distracting." And when a reporter snaps a picture of McCrillis, the crew shouts in chorus: "Poster Boy!"
No respect.
A bodybuilder whose platinum bristle of hair has grown a surfer's swoop since his graduation from the academy, McCrillis ignores the ribbing and explains why he wants to make the team.
His father, Richard, a retired Navy commander, inspired him to be both sailor and combat pilot as he was growing up in Key West.
One of his earliest memories is of capsizing with his father on a catamaran in the warm waters off Florida. He also recalls fishing offshore and seeing his father thunder overhead in an F-18, flipping into a barrel roll as a way of saying hello to his son.
When the younger McCrillis entered the Naval Academy, he became a naval engineering major and captain of the academy's sailing team. The America's Cup seemed like the natural next step.
Because midshipmen must serve five years after graduation, McCrillis applied for and received a deferment. But there's a catch: If he doesn't make the team's final cut, he has to start his military service early.
"It's another incentive to work very hard," McCrillis says, somewhat nervously.
Soon Young America is riding the deep swells of Rhode Island Sound. The lobster boat cuts the sailboat free. McCrillis jumps to the grinders to crank the main sail aloft. It's grueling work, pumping the black handles, arms burning, chest heaving, until 2,400 square feet of golden cloth has stretched 10 stories into the air.
The two sailboats line up, sailing parallel lines close to the wind. All the talk has stopped. Ed Adams, manager of the team's testing program, stands near the stern, his legs spread, pointing a yellow laser gun with a bulging blue eye at a cross on the other boat's sail.
"Countdown!" Adams calls out. "10-9-8-7-6 ..."
McCrillis crouches at Adams' feet, monitoring the computer. A wire slithers from Adams' gun into a second computer nearby, which has a screen showing a triangle and a series of numbers.
For exactly 10 minutes, the boats sail in exactly the same direction. Baird holds the wheel steady, his eyes fixed on five digital displays on the mast. "Boat speed 9.3 ... target speed 9.28 ... wind direction 195 ..."
The crew kneels silently, rarely moving. Occasionally, Baird will issue a terse command and a crew member will scramble to the bow to adjust the jib.
The wind is light but steady, with white clouds mushrooming overhead. Knifing through the rolling waves, Young America slowly pulls ahead of the Spirit of Rhode Island.
"Test over. Young America wins by 20 yards," Adams calls out after the 10 minutes have passed.
Adams puts down his gun to explain what they were doing. He says both boats were using laser guns normally used by surveyors to triangulate precisely how much farther one boat had traveled than the other during the test.
Using these numbers, engineers can calculate whether a certain keel or sail arrangement made the boat faster or slower.
The crew ran hundreds of these tests this summer and will run hundreds more next summer, in addition to competing in matches to hone their racing skills.
Repetitive
"Sometimes it's like [the movie] 'Groundhog Day' around here, the same thing every day, the same tow out every morning, the same line up ..." confides Chris Kam, who lives part of the year in Annapolis. "It's an unusual life being a professional sailor. You never know if you are going to make the next crew. You just sail because you love it. There is no job security, no union, no $H retirement benefits. Sometimes all I want is a chest of drawers to put my clothes in."
Fighting for a place on the Young America team can be thrilling, frustrating, tiring. The crew rises at 6: 20 a.m. seven days a week to sail until dark.
But it isn't the military life McCrillis is used to. For one, he gets to keep the surfer's swoop in his hair. For another, he keeps an apartment in posh Newport. And at night, he windsurfs beside cliff-top mansions.
"I actually went surfing last night under the moon," McCrillis says, as his boat heads back to the pier after a day of testing. "There were shoulder-high waves, a starry sky. It's a great life."
He pauses, than adds that he hopes to make the final cut. "I know my dad would be proud."
Pub Date: 10/08/98