SAN DIEGO – Ken Read says the crew of PACT 95’s Young America “is at the bottom of the learning curve” as far as knowing their boat is concerned.

“We’re always in the process of trying to figure out where our boat is good and where it’s bad,” says Read, the strategist on the boat.

One thing Young America’s crew learned Thursday is it has a rocket ship in light air.

Trailing Stars & Stripes by more than a minute after a series of breakages and mistakes in the first half of the race, Young America caught and passed Dennis Conner’s boat on the fifth leg upwind and eventually won by an astounding five minutes.

It left America (4-0) with the only unblemished record in the America’s Cup defender trials. Stars & Stripes is now 1-3, as is America3, with its all-women’s crew, which will race Young America today.

Young America’s comeback wasn’t entirely a measure of boat speed. The boat’s four-minute gain on the final leg was due to Read’s and tactician John Kostecki’s success in persuading skipper Kevin Mahaney that the way to go on the final leg was to the right side of the course, even if Stars & Stripes chose to go the other way (as it did).

Young America went far right, found more breeze, and came home at a faster breeze-aided sailing angle, while Stars & Stripes went a lot slower in the other direction.

It was an astounding comeback for Young America, considering what happened earlier in the afternoon.

Young America was flagged for a foul at the start – luffing beyond head to wind, the umpires said – had to do a 270-degree turn and lost a full 30 seconds to Stars & Stripes by the time the crew got the boat squared away.

On the first downwind leg, Young America made a gain, but threw it all away with a bad rounding of the leeward mark.

“We blew the layline, blew it badly,” Mahaney acknowledged. “We probably lost five or six boat-lengths there.”

On the second windward leg, a shackle holding the jib halyard exploded, the sail came down, and the boat sailed without a headsail for more than a minute until they could run the jib up on a different halyard.

Trailing by 1:22 at the second weather mark, Young America should have been hopelessly out of the race. But the wind was getting lighter and as it lightened Young America went faster and faster compared with Stars & Stripes.

Young America found the right angle to get maximum speed out of its asymmetrical spinnaker on the next downwind leg and narrowed the gap to 31 seconds at the fourth mark.

This time Young America took the leeward mark with little reduction in speed.

“We only had to be hit on the head once and we got the idea,” Mahaney quipped.

On the fifth leg of the course, with the wind down to perhaps six knots, Young America had a definite speed edge, closing up and eventually passing Stars & Stripes three-quarters of a mile from the mark.

Mahaney stretched his lead by taking a long tack out to sea into a better breeze and when he came back to round the top mark, he was comfortably in front.

Stars & Stripes flew a red flag in protest against Young America’s 17th man: Bill Berolzheimer, president of the Duraflame Corp., taking still pictures of Stars & Stripes from the stern.

Paul Cayard, who steered Stars & Stripes for the whole race, said his boat had filed the protest “just to set the record straight, as a reminder that still pictures weren’t to be taken when another boat was within 200 meters.”

“We didn’t need to go to the protest room. In a one-point race it wasn’t worth it,” said Cayard. “They probably forgot to tell their 17th man not to take pictures.”