Andy Johnson is right. This is a new one.

“That’s probably the first time you’ve seen a coach drag a dumpster out to a garbage truck, right?”

The team was out sailing with assistant Jesse Andrews, leaving Johnson the only person available to take out the trash.

And, no, I’d never before seen a Hall of Fame coach handle that particular task.

If you buy into popular misconceptions about sailing, Johnson’s doing the scut work while the kids just frolic on the water. More accurately, it’s an example of the program’s work ethic and culture as a whole as it prepares for three national championship events over the next two weeks.

One day last week the student-athletes reported to Sand Island at 1 p.m. They didn’t start practice until 3. The first two hours were spent cleaning the less-than-luxuriant boathouse.

“The kids maintain the boathouse, and the boats. When things break, they gotta figure out how to fix ’em,” Johnson says.

The sport is administered by the Intercollegiate Sailing Association, which does not allow athletic scholarships. The team members raise money for travel and equipment by writing letters. Also, Kaneohe Yacht Club has been generous with its facilities and equipment, according to Johnson.

“We get a lot of funding from people who were on the team in the past,” says sophomore Michael Pacholski, an engineering major from Santa Cruz, Calif. “That takes care of travel and new gear. But (nationals at Charleston, S.C.) is a real expensive trip this year, so we probably have to delay buying new boats.”

The boats the team uses for practice and events that UH hosts (generally, host schools provide boats for all competitors) were around $6,500 apiece in 2009. Ideally the boats are replaced every seven years, but the team is still using some from 2002, Johnson says.

With the retirement of volleyball legend Dave Shoji, Johnson is now the head coach with the longest tenure at Manoa (he’s coached the co-ed sailing team since 1989). He’s also the most recent to deliver a national championship, in 2004 (one of two from sailing).

Johnson, 56, is from Minnesota, where he played hockey when he wasn’t sailing on one of the state’s thousand lakes. After a year taking a pounding as a center at Wisconsin-Eau Claire, he’d had enough of ice.

“I wrote letters to (then-Rainbows coach) Ted Livingston about sailing for UH and never looked back,” says Johnson, who graduated from Manoa in 1983 in education.

Don’t let Johnson’s day job as assistant director at the school’s recreation services program fool you into thinking the sailing team falls into the category of leisure activity. These are real athletes, and UH is consistently among the most competitive of around 300 schools in the ICSA.

“In most ways it’s like any other sport,” Johnson says.

Cole Brauer, who crews usually with skipper Pacholski in co-ed competition, is an example of the athleticism required.

She was a soccer goalkeeper, 3,000-meter runner and cheerleader in high school on Long Island, N.Y. Brauer had no competitive sailing experience before UH, but Johnson knew she could be developed into a winning crew in two-handed races.

In four years, she went from novice to two-time All-American headed to her fourth national championships, largely because of her agility and pound-for-pound strength.

“It’s the whole body. Sometimes it’s even cranking your neck a certain way,” Brauer says.

But her ability to read situations during races is her best attribute, according to her teammate.

“She’s learned a lot about the tactics behind sailing, and that’s very helpful when you have a crew who knows what to look for on the water,” Pacholski says. “Different wind directions, keeping track of different boats. That’s a really important quality and Cole definitely has that.”

Says Johnson of Brauer: “On the skipper side of things you need to start young. We do take students with limited experience, and if they have the right size and athleticism we can make them good crew. (Brauer is) a genuinely good athlete, on the ball and extremely intelligent.”

They are a light team, with Pacholski at 5 feet 11 and 140 pounds and Brauer at 5-2 and 98. That makes things challenging in windy conditions like those often encountered in Hawaii waters, but can be an advantage at Charleston, where it will likely be calmer.

Last month, Brauer became the third sailing team member to win the Jack Bonham Award, given annually to the two UH student-athletes most accomplished in “athletic excellence, academic achievement, public service, leadership and character.”

She graduated in nutrition this spring and plans to continue on to medical school.

The ICSA women’s championships start Tuesday. The co-ed team race championships get underway Saturday and co-ed dinghy competition begins May 30.

Reach Dave Reardon at dreardon@staradvertiser.com or 529-4783. His blog is at hawaiiwarriorworld.com/quick-reads.