I had been training for the world championships in Cadiz, in 2003, when the America’s Cup appeared on my radar once more. Dean Barker, skipper of the Emirates Team New Zealand boat, called me up. He said they were trying to put a team together for the next Cup in 2007, and asked if I’d be interested in getting involved as a member of the afterguard.
It immediately appealed to me, though Team New Zealand had been beset by difficulties since its successful years of 1995 and 2000.
I should explain a little of the history of the team. Sir Peter Blake, a Kiwi yachting legend, and the first to win the Whitbread Round the World race, was the syndicate head who had galvanised Team New Zealand’s America’s Cup team to win it in 1995 and 2000, under skipper Russell Coutts. But that all changed in the ensuing years, for two reasons.
First, Coutts and his tactician Brad Butterworth had decided on a new challenge with the Swiss challenger, Alinghi. Then, in 2001, Blake was murdered by pirates at the mouth of the Amazon in Brazil while documentary-making. Blake’s long-term friend and rival, Grant Dalton, was brought in to take over his mantle. His exploits in offshore racing and particularly in the Whitbread, which he won in 1993–4, had elevated him to celebrity status in his native New Zealand.
Meanwhile with Coutts and Brad Butterworth no longer with the team, Dean Barker had taken over as skipper.
Dean had been involved with Team New Zealand since 1995, when Russell Coutts invited him to train with them. By the time of the team’s 2000 successful defence, he was regarded so highly that Coutts had handed over the skipper’s role to him for the last race.
Unfortunately, in 2003, Team New Zealand, skippered and helmed by Dean, had been defeated 5-0 in the final by the challenger, Alinghi. It was the first time the Cup had returned to Europe in 152 years, and was considered something approaching a national disgrace back home in New Zealand. It led to all manner of incrimination. Coutts and Butterworth also received a barrage of abuse from their fellow countrymen, many of whom saw the duo as traitors.
The team was in tatters. It was totally demoralised and had no funding. But Grant Dalton did a fantastic job in encouraging back the core people who needed to stay in the team. Then he needed to bring in a whole new group of people to help take it to the next level. That was when Dean got in touch with me. He told me that Grant was coming to Cadiz and wanted to meet up.
I met Grant for a drink before the racing started. I was wary and apprehensive, after what had happened with the OneWorld project. I still felt pretty raw after that experience. Yet, there was no way that my sailing career was going to include one America’s Cup, from which I’d walked away, with people saying: ‘Oh, he’s not a team player. He’s never going to be successful at that side of the sport.’
I’d always had it in my mind that I’d go back to the America’s Cup one day, and make a success of it. I wanted to see the positive side of the America’s Cup, for my own sake, to prove that I could do it.
I was relieved to discover that Dalton was a completely straightforward guy. In fact, I’d describe him as a pit bull terrier on speed. Totally direct and no-nonsense, though I also found his approach quite amusing, in a way.
He used expressions like: ‘This is bullshit.’ ‘They f ***** that up.’ ‘This is where the money’s coming from.’ ‘I’m getting these, or those, sponsors.’ And, most pertinent, where I was concerned, was the directness of this issue: ‘I want you to do this job.’
That job was to be the strategist on the race boat. That is the guy who looks for the wind, and basically helps the tactician make the decisions on where to go. He also wanted me to do the match-racing circuit with Dean, as part of his crew, and also with my own crew. And also do some helming on the B boat, the second boat.
To me, that America’s Cup invitation sounded like the perfect scenario. I wanted to be on the race boat, the ‘first team’ boat, and strategist was a good role. That would work for me. But I also wanted to learn how to match-race, and helm America’s Cup boats.
The concept really appealed to me. So did Grant’s character. And his vision. Neither did it escape my thinking that Team New Zealand has so much history in the America’s Cup from 1987 onwards, with the pinnacle coming in ’95 and 2000, when they won the Cup.
Many things drew me to the team. Ever since I was a youngster, and went down there with the Laser Radials, I had been in awe of the New Zealand sailing set-up. Kiwi yachting was the pre-eminent force in offshore sailing, via the Whitbread and the America’s Cup, from the early nineties onwards. I wanted to be part of that.
There were still people involved from those earlier Team New Zealand campaigns, so they had a lot of experience. There were great sailors like Tony Ray, a lovely guy, who had won the Whitbread Round the World race a couple of times and the America’s Cup twice; the vastly experienced Joey Allen, who I’ve mentioned before, a character who’d been around for decades. There was the afterguard coach, Rod Davis, an American by birth, but who had married a Kiwi. He had sailed with Team New Zealand in America’s Cups since ’92 and was also an Olympic gold medallist, with a gold in the Soling class at Los Angeles ’84, and a silver in the Star at Barcelona ’92 . It was a great attraction for me to work with him.
Meanwhile I had qualified for the Athens Games at the world championships in Cadiz. That October, Grant Dalton rang me to see if I was still interested in his proposal. I said I was. We talked about money. He also said that Dean Barker was due to take part in a match-racing event out in Bermuda – one of the big five regattas of the year – and did I want to go out and crew for him in a four-man boat? I agreed, went out there, and we got on really well. Other members of the crew were Tony Ray, who was on the mainsheet, and James Dagg, who was trimming. I was on the bow, which was quite a new position for me, and doing the tactics as well. It all came together, and we performed well in the event – despite my terrible work on the bow!
Anyway, I agreed to join the team once I’d finished with the Athens Olympics the following summer. Nothing much would happen for twelve months.
My relationship with Dean Barker started off well. We talked a lot about the Olympics, and that actually encouraged him to do a Finn campaign in the year before Athens. The next thing, he came over to Europe and trained with me, at La Linea in Spain, together with the Spanish Olympic representative, Rafael Trujillo, who ended up winning the silver. Dean qualified for the Athens Olympics in the Finn, but had a tough regatta finishing outside the medals.
After the Olympics, I joined up with Team New Zealand. The team competed in a number of preliminary regattas throughout Europe between 2004 and 2007. They are known as the ‘Acts’. They were very useful, allowing us to race and fine-tune the team, and also counted towards the seeding for the challenger selection series, the Louis Vuitton Cup, which followed. I got my chance at the helm of the race boat in the final event, Act 13, and got on really well with the majority of the team; certainly the Kiwis, who were all great guys.
The afterguard on the race boat – the first team, so to speak – consisted of Dean, who was steering and skippering the boat (he concentrated on working with the trimmers and looking forward); Terry Hutchinson, a very successful professional sailor from the US who was the tactician, and with whom I would have to work closely; and Adam Beashel, the guy who went up the rig and looked for wind. I knew Adam quite well already. He’s brilliant sailor and we got on fine. Kevin Hall was the navigator and had also been at OneWorld.
I should explain, at this stage, how the roles work. Much is self-explanatory, but the helmsman steers to get the boat moving as fast as he can. He works with trimmers to get the sails trimmed properly. Things happen so quickly that a lot of it is intuitive, to get the right position and best start you can. He works with the rest of the crew about manoeuvres that are coming up, with the mark-roundings and approaches to the marks. He also takes information from the tactician, who is responsible for where the boat is on the course, and what he thinks is the best manoeuvre compared to the other boats, and with the prevailing wind conditions.
He works a lot in tandem with the strategist, who looks for wind – together, often, with a guy up the mast who searches for dark water, and cloud, which are key signs. It’s a crucial area. There is a weather team on shore who, before the race starts, give an idea of what the wind will be doing.
The afterguard also includes a navigator, who uses a computer display of the course. That group at the back of the boat all work together. In a major event, there can be a lot of stress and tension on board. It has to be a very tight unit. Everyone must get on very well together.
Our schedule was split into match-racing and fleet-racing. We proceeded to go through the match-racing series, and that all went very well. We won that; then went into the fleet-racing series. As I’ve said, I was the strategist on the race boat for those Acts, as they are called. It wasn’t an auspicious start. In the second race we were over the start line. So, we had to go back. We were at the rear of the fleet and had a really tough race. I mentioned something to Terry at what must have been the wrong time. He then spent the whole race in my ear complaining that I had put him off his game. I thought we should have just focussed on the race and discussed the issues afterwards. It was clear our styles were different.