The Newport Bermuda Race, starting today, is one of sailing's most distinguished events.

It blends many of the world's top professionals with some of the sport's most ardent amateurs. It's like the Boston Marathon: steeped in tradition.

A big deal. A very big deal.

Unless you've done it 26 times. Then nonchalance tends to set in.

It's hard to imagine anyone more nonchalant than Jim Mertz as he lounges in the cockpit of Symphony , the 42-foot Beneteau he owns with a friend named Schubert, but not Franz.

Mertz took part in his 27th Newport-Bermuda Race. He began sailing in 1936.

Since 1993, the 86-year-old from Rye, New York, has raced to Bermuda annually, alternating between the Marion-Bermuda Race, which starts in Massachusetts, and the Cruising Club of America's event with its start in Newport.

What's the attraction? "Everybody asks that one,'' Mertz leans back and smiles. "I don't have an answer.'' The most memorable race? "Probably 1950, my first year on Argyle ,'' he says. "We happened to win that one. I was the watch captain.'' From 1950 to 1972, he made 12 consecutive Newport-Bermuda passages on Argyle .

"In the '72 race,'' he remembers, "I was the navigator, and Bill Moore, the owner, was the skipper. One night, just before darkness, I told him that if we stayed on the same course all night, in the morning, we would be 80 miles east of the rhumb line.

"So we tacked. And that was the wrong thing to do. We should have gone that 80 miles east of the rhumb line and then tacked. That's what the winner did, just by chance. He was the only one guy. And he won.'' Mertz's quickest passage to Bermuda? He shakes his head and says: "I don't keep track.'' Many of the skippers and navigators on the starting line of the race study satellite images of weather patterns and the Gulf Stream for weeks.

Jim Mertz? "I'll wait until we get out there,'' he says, "and see what it's really like.'' The secret to a successful passage? "I don't push anything,'' Mertz smiles. "Maybe that's it.'' Sailing with Symphony is a crew of six: David Schwartz-Leeper, James Brickull, Andrew Bonney, Ian Dunn, Peter French, and Kevin McCabe.