The newbie World Champions

We speak to Hamish Pepper about his recent Star World Championship win

Hamish Pepper has come a long way since he suffered the humiliation of losing his navigator's spot in the Team New Zealand afterguard to Bertrand Pace at the black boat's lowest moment of the last America's Cup. Last weekend Pepper and his crew Carl Williams were crowned Star World Champions joining a venerable list including Tom Blackaller, Dennis Conner, Buddy Melges, Torben Grael, Paul Cayard, Mark Reynolds, Colin Beashel and more recently Freddie Loof, Xavier Rohart and Iain Percy. It is not quite as good as skippering a winning America's Cup boat, but becoming a Star World Champion is not far off this in the pro sailing credibility stakes.

Now 35, Pepper has had a strong affliliation with the Cup having sailed with Team New Zealand in 2000 and 2003. With Cup moving to Europe he signed on with the Italian Mascalzone Latino-Capitalia Team as strategist. However amid the shake-up that took place at the end of last season in the Italian B-team, Pepper had his contract terminated following what was politely described in the New Zealand Herald as a 'philosophical dispute with the management'.

With no Cup commitment, this January Pepper returned to Olympic sailing. Like Robert Scheidt, Mark Mendelblatt and Diego Negri, he too has stepped up to the grow-up's Star keelboat for this Olympic cycle after a long tenure in the Laser. In the Olympic singlehander he has represented New Zealand at both Atlanta, when he finished tenth and in 2004 in Athens when he was seventh.

Going from the as-basic-as-it-gets Laser to the complex Star is by no means an easy transition. A Star boat has as many bits of string and tweakable items as keelboat several times its size (see Mark Mendelblatt and Mark Strube's video guided tour to their Star here) and the set-up and tune of the rig takes some getting used to.

"I don’t think it is easy," says Pepper when we speak to him in San Francisco. "The Star is a lot more complex than the Lasers. There is a lot more to deal with. You can get as tricky as you want to get really. I think the easiest thing is probably the tactics and even then it is quite a lot different to the Laser. You can certainly be punished a lot for mistakes in the Star whereas in the Laser you can easily get out of them in the Laser. I think the reason why some of these Laser sailors are doing well is that they have had some history in keelboats, so they understand a little bit about the boat already, so they can combine the two." The tactics sailing a Star in fact, Pepper concedes, have a marked difference to a Laser. For example you simply can't afford to tack as often.

While he has not been Cup sailing this year, Pepper has been very active sailing other keelboats in the Farr 40s, where he has sailed on Nerone and Ichi Ban, to the Mumm 30 class and Swan 45.

Most impressive about Pepper and Williams' World Championship win is just how short a time they have been in the class. While Pepper only stepped on board in January this year, his crew Carl Williams has sailed the Star for a mere 35 days. Williams was also with Team New Zealand in 2003 and is currently performs pit/mast for BMW Oracle Racing.

One of the secrets to the duo's success lies in their highly experienced barrel-chested Australian coach David Giles, previously himself a Star World Champion when he sailed with Colin Beashel and who went to the Games four times between 1984 and 1996. On occasions this year when Williams had Cup commitments, Giles took over as crew.

Equally impressive as their World Championship win has been Pepper's scorecard in the Star this year. His first regatta in the boat was the Rolex Miami OCR where he finished fifth and prior to the Worlds had sailed six other Star regattas including Holland Regatta (formerly SPA), Kiel and Travemuender Weeks, winning Travemuender and his worst result being a 9th at the Star Eastern Hemisphere Championship in Naples. "It has been quite a good year," says Pepper modestly. "We are pleased with how it has all gone. We still realise we have a lot to learn about the class."

Last week's Star Worlds on San Francisco's famous Berkeley Circle was an unusual affair. The venue is traditionally mid-to-heavy in its wind range and has strong currents. However the regatta was generally an uncharacteristic light one. Pepper doesn't feel this particularly benefitted them. "I think we are pretty consistent in all conditions. I wouldn’t say we are a rocket ship in anything, but we are consistent in most things," he says. ""We obviously sailed the regatta pretty well and had reasonably good speed and half way through the regatta we took a little bit more of a conservative approach to make sure we didn’t get a black flag or an OCS."

Boat-wise Pepper and Williams have been sailing a two year old, secondhand Lillia, they acquired. However they have a new Lillia on order due at the end of the year and while they will keep their present boat in the States (the Star fleet are now heading en masse to Florida for the North Americans in Miami next month), they will keep the new boat in Europe ready for the 2007 season. Both Pepper and Williams have Valencia as their base. In terms of sails, for the Worlds they used a Quantum main and North jib.

As ever the problem remains funding and a Star campaign is far from cheap. Pepper maintains that while funding for New Zealand Olympic sailing teams is better than it was and their World Championship title should help their cause, it has a long way to go. "It is still one of the most expensive sports and you still have to secure all the funding. We still need to find a sponsor."

Pepper and Williams will be a team to watch in 2007.