SAN DIEGO – Andrew Gustin, sitting alone at the side of the PACT 95 office building, had an earnest look about him. After all, how many 15-year-old kids from New York get to ride as the only outsider – the 17th crew position – in an America’s Cup trials race?

Was he nervous? “No, just very excited,” said the student from the Buckley School at 73rd Street and Park Avenue in New York City. And then, as if struggling for a vestige of reality, he added: “But I’ve got school tomorrow, believe it or not.”

Gustin’s day sail last week on Young America was given to him by his father Bernie, who is a syndicate donor. Each team is allowed to take one passenger per race, a revered spot for even the most jaded yachtsman. As it turned out, young Gustin sailed in the closest race so far of the Citizen Cup defenders’ trials. Stars & Stripes beat Young America that day by a mere one second.

The PACT 95 group has two more racing series to go to see if it can clinch a spot in the defense finals. Young America broke onto the top of the scoreboard last Sunday, and was tied for the lead at 25 points with Stars & Stripes at the end of Round 2 Friday. America3 is in third with 7 points. It won’t be until the defenders’ semifinals, beginning March 18, thwon’t be until the defenders’ semifinals, beginning March 18, that one of the three boats will be eliminated from competition.

The PACT 95 team, which is based in Bangor, Maine, comes with an accent on youth, both on its crew, and through an ancillary $2-million nationwide school curriculum for Grades 1-12. “I just feel like I am Young America,” said the exuberant Gustin in explaining how it felt to be there.

Success on the race course has buoyed the spirit of a team criticized along the way for lofty ideals but a seemingly disparate agenda. For the first few months of its inception, the syndicate talked more about how it was organizing students than its own sailors.

But its educational effort, which is designed to combine America’s Cup racing with a national schools program, is based on yacht-racing topics related to meteorology, naval architecture and navigation.

“I really wasn’t prepared for the cynicism,” said Kevin Mahaney, PACT’s founder and skipper who won a silver medal in the Soling Class at the 1992 Olympics. “It really took me aback after coming from the Olympics where everything is so positive. It was really a shock.”

More than any other syndicate, PACT 95 has taken a community approach to its sailing. Besides corporate funding, it has raised about a third of its $16-million budget from private donations.

By intertwining sailing with teaching youths in a curriculum tied together with computer links and public television, the syndicate has taken on more than most outsiders thought possible. “We’re making believers out of people by doing what we said we were going to do,” Mahaney said.

But in the end, winning races is PACT 95’s bottom line. Whether or not Young America can continue its momentum will depend on how well the rival America3 team does when it sails its new yacht beginning March 2 in the fourth round of the defenders’ trials. And it will also hinge on whether Conner, who is always known to start slowly, comes back with a modified – and faster – Stars & Stripes.

“They’re faster than we are downwind,” said Conner on Thursday, adding that the boats are getting closer as the trials continue. As for crew work, Conner considers his team the better of the two. “I think their afterguard is going well, but their crew still leaves a little to be desired,” he said.

It hasn’t been easy, conceded Mahaney. “It’s like standing across from a gun fighter,” he said. “You don’t know if he has any bullets left in his holster. Our problem is that we keep shooting ourselves in the foot. But then we come out all right.”

Indeed, PACT 95 has weathered more than its share of ordeals. Still reeling from a major collision with its training yacht last January, the syndicate fell even farther into harm’s way when a mini-tornado ripped through the team’s compound here. The storm uprooted just about everything in its path, including Young America.

The team suddenly found itself rebuilding the yacht it had never raced. With more than $600,000 in damages to the boat and compound, the first race of the Citizen Cup defenders’ trials was more like a dare to stay afloat.

But the turmoil seems over now. “We went through peaks and valleys with the tornado, and we were exhausted,” Mahaney said. “But now we have the confidence to raise ourselves to a new level. We’re much harder on ourselves these days, and there are no longer any excuses.”