CRANSTON – As the southwesterly breeze freshened and ripples began moving up the Providence River from Conimicut Point toward the mooring field off the Rhode Island Yacht Club in Edgewood, Leo Costantino smiled. There would be sailing and racing on this first Wednesday afternoon in May.

Boats are emerging from hibernation in yards on both sides of Narragansett Bay, but Costantino and his Moses Brown School sailing team have been on the water for more than a month. So have the other 14 high schools in Rhode Island that offer sailing as a varsity or club sport in the spring. These students are always among the first to enjoy the bay, which offers some of the best sailing on the East Coast.

The shorts, T-shirt and flip-flops weather of mid-summer are still two months away, and a capsize means a plunge into 40-degree water, so the uniform of choice for Moses Brown and St. George’s sailors on this sunny, 60-degree afternoon is waterproof sailing pants, jacket, boots and gloves, and the mandatory Coast Guard-approved personal flotation device in the event of an unintended swim.

“It’s always interesting to see the look on a freshman’s face when he hits the water for the first time,” said Costantino, the Quakers’ coach.

Sailing requires a commitment unlike most high-school sports. Forget about walking out of the locker room to a field or court. Sailors have to get to a boat yard or yacht club. For St. Mary Academy Bay View, that means a ride from East Providence to East Greenwich and the Greenwich Bay Sailing Association. For Mount St. Charles Academy, it’s a trip from Woonsocket to the Providence Community Boating Center at India Point. For Providence Country Day it is a drive to Battleship Cove in Fall River. For Moses Brown, it’s a short hop from the East Side to Edgewood and the RIYC.

“It’s a big time commitment, pretty huge,” Dan Eichler, an MB senior, said before heading out to race against undefeated St. George’s, the 2008 team racing national champion. “You don’t get home until 7, and you have to shower. It’s pretty nasty after all this. I think it takes a lot more time than other sports.”

And there’s weather. Rain is not a problem –– the Quakers were out in it Tuesday afternoon –– but sailors need wind for their boats to move. Calm may be great for land-based sports, but it is death for sailing. So is too much wind because the danger of capsizing increases.

“We’re always dependent on weather and wind . . . no wind or too much wind. Neither is fun,” Eichler said.

Most high school teams sail a boat known as the Club 420, a variation of a two-person monohull dinghy with a centerboard designed by Andre Cornu of France 40 years ago. A 420 is 13 feet, 8 inches long (420 centimeters, thus its name), 5 feet, 4 inches wide, and weighs 230 pounds. A fully rigged new 420 costs about $8,000. Most high schools buy used boats from college teams that are upgrading their fleets, or they make arrangements to use yacht club boats.

St. George’s, known nationally for its sailing program out of the Ida Lewis Yacht Club, owns 24 420s, the largest fleet in the U.S.

A few schools also sail Flying Juniors, designed in Holland in the mid-1950s and popularized in the U.S. in the 1960s. The FJ is 13 feet long, 5 feet wide and weighs 220 pounds.

Costantino said the FJ is more difficult to handle than the 420, which is more stable. Moses Brown has seven of each. In either boat, racing, not cruising, is the name of the game. Most of the time, the skipper and his crew are leaning back outside the boat, known as hiking, to keep the boat upright while sailing as fast as possible. They are constantly sliding from side to side as the boat changes direction, or tacks. All that maneuvering demands strength and conditioning.

”You’re hiking on your thigh muscles. Your hands are cold. The spray is hitting you in the face,” Costantino said. “Sailing doesn’t require a burst of energy like baseball and football, but it requires endurance in uncomfortable conditions for extended periods.”

Competition is either fleet racing, in which every boat is on its own, much like a horse race, or team racing, in which a team of three boats works together against another team of three boats.

“It’s a complicated game. It’s fun to watch, if you understand it. If you don’t understand it, it looks like chaos,” Costantino said.

Jeff Maidment, Moses Brown’s director of athletics, gained an appreciation of the strength and skill necessary to race when he spent an afternoon on the water in Costantino’s small power boat, which serves as committee boat and launch.

“I didn’t think of these kids as athletes, but when I saw how they maneuvered those boats . . . Those kids are in good shape,” he said. Some, as it turned out, are multi-sport athletes. Eichler sails year-round, frostbiting in winter in Newport.

Sailing, like ice hockey and football, is expensive. Moses Brown spends $25,000 a year on sailing, which covers fuel for an old Boston Whaler that MB owns and fuel for Costantino’s boat, transportation, rental of the RIYC facilities, officials, maintenance, repairs and dues to the New England Schools Sailing Association, the governing body of the sport in this region. By comparison, MB spends $50,000 on football, $8,000 on tennis and $4,000 on cross-country.

“Sailing is an expensive program, but having seen a race, I’m more convinced how important it is,” Maidment said.

Costantino, who looks like an old salt with his leathery tan and cropped white beard, relishes the competition – MB will race this weekend  for a wild-card slot in the New England team championships May 16-17, and a chance to compete in the nationals – and the opportunity to teach.

“Sailing mimics life,” he said. “Sometimes I wonder if I’m teaching sailing and racing or teaching life situations. How you conduct yourself on the water is an indication of how you conduct yourself in life, if you play by the rules or exploit every advantage.”

Moses Brown, which sent a team to the nationals about 10 years ago, almost dropped sailing five or six years ago for lack of interest. Costantino returned to coach, there was a surge of interest, and now the Quakers put varsity and junior varsity teams, a total of 18 kids, on the water.

Other varsity programs in Rhode Island include Bishop Hendricken and East Greenwich out of the East Greenwich Yacht Club, North Kingstown out of the Wickford Yacht Club, Portsmouth Abbey out of the Bristol Yacht Club, Rocky Hill School on the Greene River, and Rogers out of the Newport Yacht Club. Matt Gowell, a tri-captain at East Greenwich High School this spring, won the Rhode Island single-handed championship last fall in Newport.

Club programs are at Barrington and the Barrington Yacht Club, Portsmouth High at Sail Newport, the Prout School at Camp Fuller on Point Judith Pond in Wakefield, Westerly at the Watch Hill Yacht Club and Mount St. Charles, PCD and Bay View.

“What has changed over the last 10-15 years is the explosion in the public schools,” Costantino said.

What has not changed is his smile when that breeze picks up from the southwest and those ripples make their way north from Conimicut Point to Edgewood.