PRESS RELEASE
June 28, 2006
Morning Light crew to be selected from 538 applicants
LOS ANGELES---Crew applications for Roy E. Disney's Morning Light film project
have closed with 538 young sailors, including about 50 from foreign countries,
hoping for a position on the team that will sail a Transpac 52 in the 2007
Transpacific Yacht Race.
Candidates for "the youngest crew ever to sail Transpac" are already being
pared down to the 30 who will participate in selection trials on Catalina 37s
in Long Beach Aug. 5-13, all expenses paid by Pacific High Productions. The
final team of 15 will be announced Aug. 12 and will undergo four months of
training on Morning Light in Hawaii starting Jan. 1. They'll race the boat from
Los Angeles to Hawaii on their own in July.
"We really must have touched a nerve out there," Disney said. "It's going to be
really hard to pick the best of a really outstanding group of people. There
wasn't a turkey in the lot. It made our job twice as hard as we thought it was
going to be. I feel bad for the kids who won't get to go. We would have loved
to taken them all."
Aside from being the youngest, it probably will be the most diverse crew ever
to sail
Transpac.
Sailing team manager Robbie Haines said, "We're looking for diversity, a crew
totally inclusive concerning race and gender."
About 200 of the applications were from young women, many others from
minorities. Hampton University, one of the nation's leading colleges and
universities for African-American students, is located on the water of the
Virginia peninsula and hopes to have its sailing team represented, as do the
nation's maritime academies.
The aim is to have a crew younger than the seven young men who sailed on Jon
Andron's 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
will be 18.
"Any applicants who will not be 18 by Jan. 1 of 2007 will not be eligible,"
Haines said.
Applicants will be notified of their status on or before July 4.
Disney recently purchased the Transpac 52 Pegasus from software developer
Philippe Kahn.
The film, scheduled to be released in 2008, will chronicle the recruitment,
training and performance of the crew through the race in 2007. None will be
actors. There will be no script and no preconceived outcome.
Executive producers are Disney's Pacific High Productions and Mike Tollin of
Tollin/Robbins Productions (TRP). Leslie DeMeuse will be co-producer. The film,
to be shot in High Definition theatrical quality, will be distributed by the
Walt Disney Co.
More information: www.pacifichighproductions.com/
MEDIA CONTACT
Rich Roberts
(310) 835-2526
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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