On their own, they will sail a Transpac 52 called Morning Light also the working title of the film. None will be actors. There will be no script and no preconceived outcome. Disney said, "If we do our job right, I don't care as much whether they win or lose as how they come together as a group and wind up a team in the end. However they do is how they do. But we're giving them the equipment to win."

Disney recently purchased the Transpac 52 Pegasus from software developer Philippe Kahn. The Transpac 52s Alta Vita and Rosebud, part of the world's most dynamic grand prix class with more than 30 boats in 15 countries, have placed first in the last two Transpacs on overall corrected handicap time.

Disney credited the TP 52 class executive director, Tom Pollack of Newport Beach, for inspiring the project. "We always thought there must be a way to expose Transpac to the world," Disney said. "Morning Light, a real-life adventure feature film recorded as it happens, whatever happens, will be part of the 2007, 44th Transpacific Yacht Race to Hawaii in a project led by race veteran Roy E. Disney.

Photo: Rich Roberts/underthesunphotos.com

"Holy cow!" was one of the milder reactions when they returned to Rainbow Harbor in downtown Long Beach last Sunday after a two-night offshore cruise to find Roy E. Disney's other boat---newly and radically modified---in their usual parking spot along Pine Avenue Pier. They had sailed on the maxZ86 Pyewacket after the team tryouts last year, but now it had grown eight feet and sprouted wings.

Jesse Fielding said, "It's the wildest sailboat I've ever seen."

After the 2005 Transpac Disney, now 77, announced his retirement from racing and donated the boat to the Orange Coast College School of Sailing and Seamanship, then changed his mind, chartered it back and ordered major changes that would stretch it to 94 feet and add wings for stacking sails and bodies as ballast.

His Morning Light team will be sailing a more conventional Transpac 52---not bad; it's the former Pegasus that clocked the fastest elapsed time in Division 2 in 2005. Since resuming training on the mainland the team has done several overnight sails. The latest, which took them nearly 200 miles offshore over 44 hours, gave them a taste of what the first days of Transpac may be like.

Photo: Rich Roberts/underthesunphotos.com

Pyewacket navigator Stan Honey stands on one of Pyewacket's new wings as the Morning Light crew, returning after an overnight tune-up sail, sees the radically modified boat for the first time. Roy Disney will sail the Transpacific Yacht Race on Pyewacket again and is sponsoring the young Morning Light team, as well.

They started off Point Fermin in San Pedro where they'll start alongside Pyewacket and other Division 1, 2 and 3 boats on Sunday, July 15. Unfortunately, conditions were a light and fluky Catalina eddy from the southeast instead of the usual sea breeze from west or southwest.

"I don't want to start [Transpac] in that," co-navigator Piet van Os said. But that night off San Nicolas Island they found a transition zone with 25 knots from southwest to northwest that had them hitting a top speed of 25.6 knots before turning around off Mexico's Baja California peninsula.

Skipper Jeremy Wilmot said the crew, none of whom has sailed Transpac, is just about ready for the main event. "After this trip we're definitely feeling better," he said. Earlier, the team competed in last month's big-boat First Team Real Estate Invitational Regatta for the Hoag Cup at Newport Beach and placed fifth overall among 15 entries, including several sailed by professionals.

Later, they visited northern Nevada to tour North Sails' 3DL sail plant in Minden and spend an evening with 200 junior sailors from Nevada and Northern California at a fund-raiser for Sierra Nevada Community Sailing, which is based at Sparks Marina near Reno.

Rog Jones, the facility's director, said, "The Morning Light crew had our dinner audience on their feet five or six times during the evening as they answered questions from the audience. It was just amazing. They were the most positive thing that have happened in my time of running a sailing non-profit."

The highlight was a five-minute sneak preview of footage gathered toward the documentary film that will recount the Morning Light project. "It was a 'teaser' reel that just blew the audience away," Disney said. "It gives a sense of what the final documentary will be." At this point, the team---strangers 10 months ago---has come together "like family," co-navigator Chris Branning said. "[At] 21, 22 years old, to be given this opportunity is unheard of. I've never even been a member of a yacht club."

Van Os said, "Sailing is such a team sport that if you don't help out somebody next to you you're not going to succeed." To which Mark Towill commented, "The people who tried to make [the tryouts] a competition weeded themselves out." There are two females among the final 15, Genny Tulloch and Kate Theisen. The latter is an alternate for the 11 who will sail Transpac. Tulloch said, "For us it wasn't an issue. We do need big, strong guys on the boat, but they wouldn't disregard our sailing ability for someone with more muscle."

And for the lot, it's more about sailing than a movie. "We just want the movie to show hardcore sailing [and to demonstrate] that this is what it's like," Tulloch said. Branning said, "I never worked this hard in school."

The Morning Light team (Ages at time of race)

CHRIS BRANNING,        21, Sarasota, Fla., 2/C Midshipman, U.S. Merchant Marine Academy. 
GRAHAM BRANT-ZAWADZKI, 22, Newport Beach, Calif., graduate,  Stanford Univ. 
CHRIS CLARK,           21, Old Greenwich, Conn., sailmaker, junior, University of Mary Washington.  
CHARLIE ENRIGHT,       22, Bristol, R.I., Brown Univ., sailing coach.  
JESSE FIELDING,        20, North Kingstown, R.I., student Univ. of Rhode Island.   
ROBBIE KANE,           22, Fairfield, Conn., Univ, of Rhode Island, racing sailboat captain.
STEVE MANSON,          22, Baltimore, Md., asst. fleet manager Downtown Sailing Center, sailing instructor. 
CHRIS SCHUBERT,        22, Rye, N.Y., 1/C Midshipman, U.S. Naval Academy. 
KATE THEISEN,          20, Socorro, N.M., junior New Mexico Tech, astrophysics.  
MARK TOWILL,           18, Kahalu'u, Hawaii, senior Punahou School, sailing instructor. 
GENNY TULLOCH,         22, Houston, Texas, sailor, graduate Harvard Univ., Quantum female college sailor of the year.
PIET VAN OS,           23, La Jolla, Calif., senior California Maritime Academy, sailing coach, boat captain. 
CHRIS WELCH,           19, Grosse Pointe, Mich.,  sophomore  Michigan State Univ. 
KIT WILL,              22, Milton, Mass., senior Connecticut College. 
JEREMY WILMOT,         21, Sydney, Australia, St. Mary's College of Maryland international student.