30 chosen for Disney project

Roy Disney's Morning Light Transpac documentary enters its next phase

The 30 young men and women chosen from among 538 applicants for Roy Disney's Morning Light film project share one quality: unlimited ambition. One typical teenage candidate will enter Yale University in the fall while another is shooting for the stars as she studies to become an atypical female astrophysicist.

But first, Hawaii calls.

The 30 will participate in Selection Trials in Long Beach Aug. 5-13, all expenses paid by Pacific High Productions. The final team of 15 will be announced at the end of those trials and will undergo four months of training on the Transpac 52 Morning Light in Hawaii starting in January. Then 11 or 12 will race Morning Light from Los Angeles to Hawaii in the 44th Transpacific Yacht Race starting July 15, 2007, without professional assistance on board.

The 30, including five females and representing 14 states, plus Canada, Australia and the West Indies, were selected through résumés and personal interviews, but youth was one firm standard. Together they will be the youngest crew ever to sail Transpac.

The average age of the crew will be younger than the seven men who sailed on Jon Andron's victorious Cal 40 Argonaut in the 1969 Transpac that averaged 22.57 years of age. Two of those crew members were 17, but the minimum age for Morning Light is 18, as of Jan. 1, 2007.

It could also be the most diverse crew ever to sail Transpac. The 30 include minorities not generally associated with the sport, including Felipe Lopez, 18, of Friday Harbor, Wash. and Marcellus Wesley, 22, and Omari Scott, 22, student sailors at Hampton University in Virginia, one of the nation's leading colleges and universities for African-American students. Scott is from Antigua, West Indies.

Raiden (pronounced rydun) Hasegawa of Evanston, Ill. is a recent graduate of Evanston Township, a public high school of 3,500 students, who will enroll at Yale in the fall and join the sailing team while pursuing majors in "physics or economics---or both," he said.
"I have never done any big ocean racing, mostly dinghies around buoys on Lake Michigan," Hasegawa said. "I'm looking for all the new experiences in sailing and it would seem incredible to train in Hawaii and sail the Transpac race."

Last summer he and a friend bought a 470- and sailed the class Nationals and North Americans while training with the US Sailing Team. Hasegawa also attended the CISA Advanced Racing Clinic in Long Beach the last two years. "We didn't have the best results but it got us into a different arena of sailing," he said. "I'm new to racing but I was the first person in my family to sail."

Kate Theisen (pronounced tyson) lived on a boat in various East Coast ports with her parents from age 3 and was inspired by another film, as she hopes Morning Light will inspire others. "I saw the movie Wind ages ago and I've always wanted to race," she said. "I've done small boat racing and I grew up on a sailboat."

She attends the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology and this summer is an intern at Caltech, aiming for a career in astrophysics.

Two other of the 30 come from sailboat racing roots. Anna Brun, 20, of San Diego is the daughter of Vince Brun, who has won more than a dozen world championships in various classes. Jeremy Wilmot, 20, has Australian elders who are well established in international ocean racing.

The film, scheduled to be released in 2008, will chronicle the recruitment, training and performance of the crew through the race in 2007. It will be a straightforward documentary not to be confused with the creative format of the current made-for-TV 'reality' shows.

Executive producers are Roy E. Disney and Leslie DeMeuse of Pacific High Productions and Mike Tollin of Tollin/Robbins Productions (TRP). Fred Golding will be the director. The film, to be shot in High Definition theatrical quality, will be distributed by the Walt Disney Co.

Robbie Haines, and Olympic gold medalist and veteran ocean racer, is the sailing team manager.

Finalists for the Selection Trials (in alphabetical order):

*Lindsey Austin, 21, Honolulu, Hawaii
Trevor Bozina, 21, San Francisco, Calif
Chris Branning, 22, from Sarasota, Fla.
Graham Brant-Zawadzki, 21, Newport Beach, Calif.
*Anna Brun, 20, San Diego, Calif.
Chris Clark, 20, Old Greenwich, Conn.
Charlie Enright, 21, Providence, R.I.
Jesse Fielding, 19, North Kingstown, R.I.
Raiden Hasegawa, 18, Evanston, Ill.
Robbie Kane, 21, Fairfield, Conn.
Felipe Lopez, 18, Friday Harbor, Wash.
Steve Manson, 21, Baltimore, Md.
Robert (Max) Moosmann, 19, Newport Beach, Calif.
Colin Ranney, 21, Newport, R.I.
John Romanko, 19, Vancouver, B.C.
Chris Schubert, 21, Rye, N.Y.
Riley Schutt, 21, Trumansburg, N.Y.
Omari Scott, 22, Antigua, West Indies
Parker Shinn, 19, San Diego, Calif.
Andrés Soriano, 20, New York, N.Y.
*Jennifer Stone, 20, Haverhill, Mass.
*Kate Theisen, 19, Socorro, N.M.
Mark Towill, 17, Kaneohe, Hawaii
*Genny Tulloch, 21, Houston, Texas
Piet van Os, 22, La Jolla, Calif.
Chris Vetter, 18, St. Petersburg, Fla.
Chris Welch, 18, Grosse Pointe Park, Mich.
Marcellus Wesley, 22, Washington D.C.
Kit Will, 21, Milton, Mass.
Jeremy Wilmot, 20, Australia.
*---Female.