Japan Going All Out To Win America's Cup

GAMAGORI, Japan - The crewmen, landlubbers for the most part, are still a bit prone to seasickness. And falling overboard. Which is what happens when you go about recruiting a world-class yacht-racing team through newspaper ads carrying the tag line: ``No sailing experience necessary.''

Communication aboard the yacht Nippon - Japan's great sailing hope - can also be an dicey proposition. The skipper is a New Zealander and orders are barked in English. A language, alas, that none of the Japanese trimmers, mastmen, grinders and sail haulers speaks with any great facility.

``It is sometimes confusing, we use a lot of sign language,'' said physical trainer Nozomi Gotoh, who also allowed that greener members of the crew have had a difficult time gaining their sea legs. ``Sometimes they slip off the boat.''

So it goes out on the choppy blue waters of Mikawa Bay, where the Nippon, a 24-meter racing yacht whose design details are swathed in secrecy, is putting spinnaker to wind in its first sea trials.

The Nippon's hull and keel were designed by computer, and the vessel carries nearly as much advanced electronic gear as a Soviet spy trawler. A less high-tech approach is being taken to its crew - a hodgepodge of former office workers, factory hands and university jocks.

These hearties are being hammered into seadogs of the first order by a team of seasoned Kiwi yacht racers, including the legendary sailing coach, Roy Dickson, 58, and his son Chris, the world's No. 1-ranked sailor on the match racing circuit.

Chris, 28, will man the helm when the Nippon seeks to snatch the America's Cup in 1992.

For that is what this is all about: the America's Cup, the Holy Grail of the yachting set. The United States possesses it, the Japanese want it - an all-too-familiar tale, but this time with a nautical twist.

``We have Columbia Pictures. We have Rockefeller Center,'' said Kaoru Ogimi, the jolly vice commodore of the Nippon Ocean Racing Club. ``Why not the America's Cup?''

The baroque silver chalice is yachting's most prestigious prize as well as a talisman of blue-blooded American pride. The United States has lost it only once since the race began in 1851.

In 1983, an Australian yacht breezed off with the cup. The defeat stung, sure, but at least the Aussies were proper salts, sporting sorts, with a long yachting tradition. (The San Diego Yacht Club restored U.S. honor by reclaiming the cup in 1987.)

Now comes Japan, casting covetous eyes on the big goblet. And never mind that this archipelago nation boasts a yachting tradition in a league with that of, say, Botswana or Oklahoma. For centuries, the Japanese have been going down to the sea mainly in clumsy fishing craft.

``Japan is surrounded by the sea and Japanese have always made their living from the sea,'' said Emili Miura, spokeswoman for the 30-corporation syndicate bankrolling the Nippon challenge. ``But for some strange reason we have never been very good at sailing sports.''

Until recently, that is.

After coming up empty in 18 successive international yachting events over the past three years, the Japanese entry won the Danish Open in September 1989 and then took the prestigious Congressional Cup last April in Long Beach, Calif.

Thus inspired, the Japanese are going after the America's Cup with a vengeance, employing the old triple whammy - cutting-edge technology, limitless yen and the single-minded chutzpah that has become a national trademark.

``At first we dreamed only of the great honor of merely participating in that famous race,'' said Tatsumitsu Yamazaki, chairman of the Nippon Challenge committee. ``Now we've come to think we must win the cup. Our motto is, `There is no second place.'''

The corporate syndicate backing the Nippon won't say exactly how much they expect to spend. ``It will cost a minimum of $20 million and a maximum of who knows what,'' Miura said. In international yachting circles, it is generally reckoned the Japanese will put nearly $100 million into the effort. The 30 official sponsors, heavyweight corporations all, have kicked in roughly $666,000 in cash apiece - but that doesn't count the far more valuable donations of research, materials and manpower.

``We've got Japanese technology, the Japanese economy and the Japanese samurai spirit and will to succeed,'' said Chris Dickson. ``What once looked like a long shot is beginning to seem more and more like a good shot.''

Money, of course, is a key ingredient to success for any America's Cup team, and no one is begrudging Japan its deep pockets. What has raised a few hackles, both in Japan and abroad, is the ``Kiwi factor'' - the all-important sailing experience brought by the two Dicksons and five other New Zealanders.

America's Cup rules allow multinational teams, but the Nippon is almost embarrassingly top-heavy with foreigners. Four Kiwis will serve with the 16-member crew, and only one Japanese - veteran yachtsman Makato Namba, 39 - will occupy a truly critical post, that of tactician.

This has prompted grumbling among the country's yachting nationalists who would prefer to see a Japanese at the helm and fewer New Zealanders at the sails. But muttering aside, few really dispute the hard fact that the Land of the Rising Sun is woefully short of skilled young sailors.

The Nippon team is being whipped into shape with a punishing regimen of physical exercise, sea training and ``mental conditioning.'' Plus English lessons.

Gamagori, a quiet fishing village three hours to the west of Tokyo by train, was chosen as the base camp because sailing conditions on Mikawa are similar to those off San Diego, where the 1992 race will be held.

The day begins at the crack of dawn with one-handed pushups, weight lifting and sweaty labor pushing the spring-loaded levers of a Universal workout machine. Next comes breakfast - raw egg on rice seasoned with seaweed for the Japanese. Cornflakes, sausage and lots and lots of coffee for the Kiwis.

Then anchors aweigh, in fair weather or foul. The 30 recruits (the final cut of 16 will not be made until shortly before the race) hone their nautical skills in two sailing craft, a 12-meter racing yacht as well as the first prototype of the Nippon itself.

A sleek beauty measuring 24 meters with a 35-meter mast, the Nippon was launched last April to the accompaniment of a Shinto purification ceremony, the beat of religious drums and the symbolic smashing of sake casks - the Japanese equivalent of cracking a bottle of champagne across the bow.

The design of the keel is a dark secret, ditto for details of hull construction and the array of electronic gadgets that track everything from the sheer of sails to the angle of rudder.

Visitors are not allowed to approach close to the craft.

The Nippon slices smoothly through the waves. Most of the crew members have two years of practice under their belts and have more or less mastered basic sailing techniques. They are still a tad rough coming about, and a demonstration of hoisting the spinnaker after making a tight tack around a racing buoy proved a disaster - someone was too slow on the halyard and the billowing sail with its defiant Rising Sun logo splashed in the drink.

``I feel I have come a long way, but I know there is still a long way to go,'' said Matsuyoshi Nishikawa, 25, a former university rugby player who had never set foot aboard a sailing craft before signing aboard the Nippon. ``At first I was nervous when the boat heeled. Now I am more confident.''

The Japanese are among 15 challengers from 11 nations seeking the ``Auld Mug,'' the oldest trophy in sport.

Typically, the challengers for the America's Cup have hailed from clubs in France, England, Australia and Denmark. But now glasnost has touched even the yachting world, and the 1992 event will see entrants from the Leningrad Yachting Club and the Odessa Arcadia Racing Yacht Club. Other challangers include Switzerland, Scotland, Yugoslavia, Germany and Spain.

There is no money at stake. The America's Cup is a match solely for sailing glory and national pride.

Japan also sees it as a way to present a new face to the world.

``We want to show we are not just a nation of workaholics, people chasing only after money,'' said Yamazaki of the Nippon Ocean Racing Club. ``We want to be seen as a red-blooded nation that loves sports.''

He paused, then added: ``And we want very badly to win.''