While town officials wrestled with ways to rid their oak-lined streets of rabid raccoons, sailors competing in the 10th Marion to Bermuda race needed to be on guard for a wily, silver-thatched fox by the name of Ron Noonan. Noonan once again made the 645-mile trek to Bermuda which began on Friday, the seventh time he's signed up for the race and Wildflower -- the boat he's owned for 19 years -- is the the pride of Marion and one of the remarkable success stories of this 18-year event. If championship banners were hoisted on the rafters of the Beverly Yacht Club, Noonan would own more pennants than any other sailor. The Harvard graduate and ex-navy officer entered the race as defending overall first-place champion and was seeking his third title, having won the coveted prize previously in 1983. Noonan has also finished first in his class three times. He is considered one of the pre-eminent sailors in the Eastern USA, and anyone competing in the race would be wise to ferret out the speech he delivered at a recent Massachusetts Institute of Technology symposium which included his secrets and strategies for winning the Marion race. "It's in a thick, blue binder,'' Noonan whispered, a slight crease of a smile forming on his handsome, seaworn face. "If anyone wants to look at it they've got to buy me a beer.'' Noonan was busy reading last week, too, but the material was not to be confused with a great Russian writer. What he referred to as his "check-off'' list was quickly whittled down to three pages, in an attempt to get Wildflower in ship-shape condition for Friday's launch in the choppy waters of Buzzard's Bay. "Even though I've done Marion to Bermuda six times, the amount of preparation required for the race remains very, very large,'' said Noonan, his pink shirt splotched with a coffee stain -- a testament to all the last-minute running around he was doing. The Monday afternoon before the race Noonan was a half hour's car drive away in Falmouth, dealing with some instrumentation problems aboard Wildflower , but there was also emergency repairs and a complete overhaul of the propane gas and travellers' systems. "She has a lot of miles, but she's in good condition,'' Noonan said referring to Wildflower , as a caffeine quiver seemed to remind him of something else that needs to be done. "For a month it seemed as if my list was getting longer and not shorter,'' he said. "But I think it's now under control.'' What's not under his control, Noonan acknowledged, is the ability to win first overall in this sometimes gruelling race, even though he's the only person to accomplish it twice. "It's really out of your hands,'' he said, plunging his left hand nervously under a cushion on a blue couch in the living room of the yacht club. "What I tell the crew is the only reasonable goal we can have is to win our own class. That's because the boats run from about 65 feet down to 35 feet or whatever and we tend to be in the smaller boat section. The larger boats may be 90 miles to 100 miles ahead and they can be in an entirely different weather system. "But I've had situations where it has worked to my advantage or my disadvantage. A couple of times I remember being right off Bermuda and being able to count the lights of the hotels and drifting. "Then there's been times where the big boats run into light air and we carried heavy air in like last time.'' Later he added: "Winning overall you need a lot of help from that guy upstairs.'' And a good crew. For the first time Noonan, however, was without his "good luck charm'' -- his son Rick was unable to make the trip because he had a new job. But Noonan was again accompanied by his fiancee, Kathy Reed, who was co-navigator (Noonan is skipper and navagitor), while his son-in-law Jon Pope and John Flood, Ken Ackerman and Dennis Kloc served as helmsmen. "Rick has won more Marion to Bermuda class titles than anyone alive,'' Noonan said proudly.

"He's won three times with me and the two years I didn't race he won with two other sailors. So I'm sort of going to miss him. "I think the crew is extremely important,'' he added. "I feel you can't really do well in this race unless you have four top-notch helmsmen. John Flood, who will be a watch captain, has done this race five or six times and he skippered his own boat once. So I have a pretty competent crew.'' As a sobering rain and cool temperatures lashed the area early last week, Noonan, his eyes faintly asparkle with the optic fireworks of fear, remembered the first time he competed in the race. That time almost turned out to be his last with Wildflower 's crew stung by three consecutive days of frightening storms in the open Atlantic. "I was an officer on a destroyer for three years and the navy sort of imbued in you pretty much Murphy's Law, that if something's going to wrong it will and at the worse possible time,'' he said. "And having done the Bermuda race in 1979 when we had three tough days that gave you a little religion about Murphy's Law.'' Of that race in '79 he said: "We weren't in a survival storm, but we were in a front where the winds were blowing about 30 knots continuously and, of course, in the (Gulf) Stream they were blowing much stronger. The seas built to 15 to 20 feet and the boat was over on its ear. We almost went electrically dead because the boat was heeled so much. "It was such a challenge and we really took a pasting that year, but it's like childbirth I guess, after it's over you say it wasn't so bad, right? "In fact, the crew was so high and we did reasonably well in the race, I think we finished 12th overall, and everyone was ready to sign up for the next time.

"But I think if a helicopter went by on the fourth day out and they asked for volunteers to leave I would have lost half the crew.'' Two races later Noonan was the toast of Marion and Bermuda, finishing first overall and winning class for the first time. "Did I come back as hero? Not really. People here in Marion are pretty laid back.'' Noonan took class honours again in 1985 and captured the Town of Marion Trophy and returned to the winner's circle in a big way in 1993. Last time he grabbed first overall, the navigator's trophy and class honours. Noonan runs a high-tech electronics firm in Waltham with the same automatic, methodical manner of a child working on a loose tooth.

That appears to be the same way he approaches a major sailing race. "I would think people would describe me as a competent sailor and a good seaman with a good sense of what it takes to make a sailboat perform,'' he said. Noonan's firm designs digital equipment for the professional audio industry "and I've been in the computer industry most of my life.'' Later, with a loud laugh, he added: "I use more physics racing a boat than I do running my company.'' Noonan first became involved in sailing as a young boy but didn't begin to race until he was in the navy -- "I took to it right away.'' While he believed the odds may be stacked against him for an unprecedented hat-trick, Noonan tried to convince his crew "that we're in this for the fun. If things are going well and the weather isn't misbehaving then we're going to have some fun. "I tell the crew my grandmother can sail this boat to its numbers on a good day, but you're going to win or lose this race in bad weather and at night. That's when you have to have high morale.'' Noonan almost made the decision not to compete this year, which would have deprived the race -- already at a record low 77 entries -- of one of its prized entries. Then, like a hammer blow loosening all the windows of his imagination, he remembered what it was like win his second title two years ago. "It's such a high to win overall because it's such a big event in Bermuda,'' he said. "Plus I'm a member of one of the host clubs and my kids have usually always been in the crew and there's lots of parties. It's a fun time. After all the work and preparation and to have beaten 120 boats or whatever is such an amazing thing.'' PHOTO RON NOONAN -- "After all the work and preparation and to have beaten 120 boats or whatever is such an amazing thing.'' MARION RACE SAILING