SAN DIEGO – Kevin Mahaney hasn’t gotten much respect as an America’s Cup skipper.

It’s his own fault. As cofounder of the Maine-based syndicate PACT 95, Mahaney assembled a team of superstars to help him win. The strategist is Ken Read, perennial J-24 world champion and one of the world’s hottest young sailors; the tactician is John Kostecki, with six world and more than 30 national and international titles; the navigator is Robert Hopkins, who at 24 was the youngest head coach of the winningest U.S. Olympic sailing team in 1984, then was navigator of challenger Il Moro di Venezia in the 1992 Cup final.

It’s heady company for Mahaney, who took a silver medal at the 1992 Olympics but never sailed the Cup before and freely admits his sailing expertise is no match for some of his advisers. He’s taking it with a smile. “I just do as I’m told,” he said. “If I lift my head to say something they say, `Shut up and drive.’ ”

Mahaney and PACT 95 are off to a rocky start at the International America’s Cup Class World Championship races. They bought one of the old Il Moro di Venezia boats from the defunct 1992 Italian Cup camp for something to practice on until their new Cup boat arrives in time for the start of racing Jan. 12. The old boat, renamed Spirit of Unum for a team sponsor, is off the pace. “This dog won’t hunt,” Mahaney said of the boat after its first competitive outing last week.

It’s an understatement to say that a Cup skipper with a self-effacing sense of humor is refreshing. This is the event in which Dennis Conner usually will find a way to remind you he’s “the world’s greatest sailor” or refer to himself as “Dennis.” And 1992 Cup winner Bill Koch, now backing a women’s team, rarely forgets to mention he spent $60 million or so of his own money to win last time.

By contrast, Mahaney, son of a wealthy fuel oil distributor in Bangor, Maine, says his personal financial contributions to PACT are small by necessity and concedes that improving his own helmsmanship is a key goal for the next two months before the Cup begins.

If Koch’s philosophy three years ago was to spend, spend, spend, PACT 95 goes the other way. Said mainsail trimmer Andreas Josenhans, who trimmed the main on Koch’s America in 1992: “I went out of my way to join this (PACT 95) team this time. I guess it’s my New England roots; you like to see something done efficiently.”

With a $15 million budget – one-third of it yet to be raised – PACT 95 is a no-frills affair with one new boat coming and a 16-person sailing team, with substitutes (including Mahaney’s brother Lance) scratched up as needed. They pack their own lunches, stay in communal housing at Mission Bay, where costs are lower than downtown, and they aren’t going to spend an extra nickel at this week’s worlds.

“They knew that much going in,” said general manager John Marshall, who has been involved in every Cup since 1974 and was design chief of the 1987 Dennis Conner effort that won the Cup back from Australia. “This is practice for us. We’re not buying one new sail, so they’d better get used to it.”

The one area where Marshall won’t scrimp is boat design. The Cup is a speed-driven event, where the fastest boat nearly always wins, and there is room aplenty for advancement in hull, sail and keel design this time, he said.

Marshall enlisted technology giants Cray Research, Science Applications International, Boeing and Ford Motor Co. to run the programs and tests needed to create winning shapes, and he has the top Cup boat builder, Eric Goetz’s yard in Rhode Island, making the hull and deck.

The boat will be delivered in December and christened in January, by which time the team – and its long-suffering skipper – should be up to speed on boathandling after two months of workouts on the Spirit of Unum.

Mahaney reckons that with a band of superstars telling him where to go and how to get there, he can knock heads with the best match racers in the world if he gets a fast boat. But he’ll take some abuse along the way.

When race time cropped up last weekend and visitors had to be taken off the PACT boat, Mahaney was still eating his lunch and one of the guests was steering in his absence. “Well, guys,” said Mahaney to his mates, “somebody has to go. Do you want me to steer or,” gesturing at the guest driver, “him?”

“That’s easy,” Read said without missing a beat. “See ya, Kevin.”