DATE: Friday, May 9, 1997                   TAG: 9705090686

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY ERIKA REIF, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: HAMPTON                           LENGTH:  127 lines

QUIETLY, TEAM OF WORLD-CLASS SAILORS GETS READY TO RACE

A sailboat bumps gently against the Hampton pier. The flash of a dark blue hull, gray deck and mast shooting 85 feet upward might catch the eye of someone passing the downtown dock. Or the world-class racing boat might go unnoticed.

To the men scurrying on board the Swedish Match and disappearing below deck to talk, a low profile is OK. They are from Sweden, Australia, New Zealand and Germany, here as members of a team preparing for the most arduous grand prix ocean race in the world of sailing: the Whitbread Round the World Race, held every four years. And they brought their boat to Hampton Roads to sort of keep out of sight.

More than a dozen sailboats from various countries will compete in September, when the 32,000-mile odyssey begins in Southampton, England. This year's race also will include the Chesapeake Bay's first-ever entry, the Chessie, built in Bristol, R.I. Both the Chessie and Swedish Match were christened in Baltimore last week. The Chessie then sailed to Newport, R.I., where it will stay until June.

Following the Swedish Match's quick jaunt north for the christening, the team has been doing trial runs in the Chesapeake Bay and the ocean, and fine-tuning equipment on shore, preparing for a qualifying race Wednesday. The 64-foot yacht was built in New Zealand and shipped to Philadelphia, where the crew unloaded it in mid-April before sailing to Hampton.

The men are staying at the Radisson Hotel in Hampton and are docked at the Downtown Hampton Public Pier. Most of the crew describe it as a perfect arrangement - close to the ocean, to marine supply stores, and to the restaurants and bars on Queen Street.

On Sunday, their first day off since arriving, some of the sailors drove to Washington, and others stayed in Hampton to relax.

A typical day for the crew begins with a sunrise jog, followed by a day full of sailing or adjusting boat parts.

Not only can every crew member sail any position, but each also can repair any breakdown. Australian Sam Murch is one of three shore crew members responsible for the technical side of the boat. In Hampton he was often working in the red cargo container serving as one of two mobile workrooms that meet the sailboat in every port.

``All the guys, when they're not sailing, they're working on the boat,'' Murch says. ``If anything goes wrong on the boat, they've got to be able to fix it.''

``It's survival out there,'' he says, referring to the racers' Spartan existence as they battle everything from hunger to floating icebergs on the open sea.

By nightfall in Hampton, the crew is tired. Rodney Ardern has been through it all before. The 26-year-old New Zealander raced in the last Whitbread and knows the shore dining routine.

``Just another dinner, just another restaurant,'' he says, ``somewhere.''

The sailors are scheduled to leave at midday Saturday for Boston for a 3,000-mile Whitbread qualifier, the Guernsey Trans-Atlantic Challenge, scheduled for Wednesday. They decided to spend these weeks in Hampton partly for privacy, rather than docking in a major yachting area like Newport, R.I.

``Most people passing by don't know what this boat is all about,'' says Tim Kroger of Germany, one of the 11 sailors on the team. ``That's good for us.''

He is referring to secrets scattered throughout the boat. These gems of information are simply ``things that make the boat go fast,'' he says, details missed by an untrained eye that would be exposed like pearls to anyone in the serious business of racing.

And the Whitbread is both big business and serious. Conceived over a pint of beer by a member of the Whitbread brewing family and an English admiral, the first race took off from Portsmouth, England, in 1973. The eight-month ordeal literally wears the flesh off sailors while testing the most current racing technology.

The primary sponsor of the Swedish Match is its namesake company, which sells tobacco, matches and disposable lighters. Other corporate partners benefit from huge international exposure, like the one that supplies the crew with logoed, navy blue polo shirts, knee-length shorts, weather gear and even bathrobes.

Each yacht has a doctor aboard - and for good reason.

During Ardern's previous Whitbread, one crew member's leg caught a rope and snapped; another let go of the mast and swung back into it, smashing his face; and some, including Ardern, walked around with bloody hands from working with sharp objects in the icy wind. Ardern and four other Swedish Match crew members have survived the rigors of past Whitbreads and are back for more. But the race will be a first for 26-year-old Magnus Woxen, an engineering student from Stockholm.

``You skip your education if you get a chance to do this race,'' Woxen says. ``It's challenging, it's a race - and why not go around the world?''

Woxen and the others are selected on their sailing ability and by how well they mesh with the team, says shore manager Scotty McAllister, never far from his cell phone. The crew also has proved that it doesn't make many errors, even under pressure.

``These guys are employed because they are the best we can find in the world at what they do,'' McAllister says.

And the man with the last word on hiring the crew is the skipper, Gunnar Krantz. They call him ``Gurra'' - short for guru, quips one sailor.

Besides having raced in two Whitbreads, 42-year-old Krantz has been a sailmaker and boatbuilder, imported power boats from the United States to Sweden, developed an electronic device known as the Jumbo Repeater, invented - yes - a water-soluble wax hair remover sold as Super-Vax, and in 1994 authored a book with the crew's navigator and doctor, Roger Nilson, titled ``You Don't Have To Be Crazy, But It Helps.''

The book, for those who read Swedish, is about competing in the Whitbread. Krantz is living proof of the book's theme, squeezing his wedding in during the last Whitbread at a stopover in New Zealand.

But the day-to-day preparations are less glamorous. Although the 1993-94 Whitbread is said to have been seen on television by 2.6 billion people in 177 countries, audiences tend to see more of the race's dangers than its drudgeries.

On a recent morning with rain pummeling the metal container roof, five crew members crowded in the narrow workshop, chipping, sawing, drilling. The goal remains the same: Make the boat faster and lighter, and prepare equipment for an extended ocean pounding.

In the back, co-skipper Earle Williams sat before a computer monitor. At 38, Williams has the distinction on the crew of having won a Whitbread.

The New Zealander has been racing internationally for 22 years. His priority this minute, however, is a mundane task - revising the crew's job list to hang on the container wall.

Even for a big race, as he knows, it's all in the details. ILLUSTRATION: Photo by MARTIN SMITH-RODDEN/The Virginian-Pilot

A multinational team is training in Hampton aboard the Swedish Match

for the Whitbread Round the World Race, a 32,000-mile endurance

test.

Graphic

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