Andy Green talks to madforsailing

Bob Fisher interviews the GBR Challenge helmsman after a disappointing day at the office

At the end of the second day of the Steinlager/Line 7 Cup in Auckland, Bob Fisher sat down with Andy Green, who was skippering a team from GBR Challenge, the British America's Cup team, and suggested that a score line of four wins and seven losses in the first round robin was not as good as Green would have hoped.
It was the last two races that really did us as we were ahead against Jes Gram-Hansen and we had a good chance to beat Cameron [Appleton] in the final race, But it just didn't work our way. We made a couple of mistakes - we were settling down - we have a new team and we need to get it all together. We are not out of it at all, but it is a question of tidying those little things that win races and not losing.

Not downhearted, but you are coming back in the second half?
We have another round robin and we want to do as well as we can in this event, but it's a long haul. We have a whole year of match racing to go and in the end we want to do as well as we can in the America's Cup, which is one of the reasons why we are doing this - putting a new team together with people that we are going to be sailing with in the America's Cup boat. That's an important thing for us to do.

How important do you rate match racing in the whole scheme of the America's Cup campaign?
There are two things about it, one is that you get a crew together with the dynamics and the communications between four or five people on match racing calls, and some of the people who race in the future will not have done so much match racing. The second thing is that you can't win America's Cup races if you start behind, regardless of how quick your boat is, so it is important for us to be on the pace when it comes to the match race starts of the America's Cup.

So what are your plans after this regatta?
After this we go to Australia, and Andy Beadsworth will be steering - he and I are switching around. That will give us another chance to get a different dynamic on the crew, and then we are doing Croatia and the rest of the Swedish Match tour, various other events including the Congressional Cup at Long Beach, which we are doing with a completely different crew. That will get other members of the America's Cup crew sailing in top level match racing. As you can see, there are no easy races in this - it's a pretty amazing line-up.

Most of the other syndicates are putting in two teams, are you planning on doing that?
There are a couple of events this year in which we plan to have at least two teams, probably in Croatia and Bermuda. We don't have the resources at the moment to be able to put in a full set of teams with coaches and RIBs and the rest of the paraphernalia that some of the teams have here. They have a major support system, but in six or nine months, we hope to have that all together, once we have been sailing the Cup boats in Cowes.

The people at whom you are pointing fingers have America's Cup efforts already in place in Auckland and have been or are still sailing boats here.
That's right. They have a huge amount of available support - there are three Prada teams and three from Team New Zealand. They go at it full on. Team New Zealand have been sailing these boats [the Farr MRXs] for the last two or three months and while you never want to make excuses, it certainly helps.

Practice always helps.
And we need to get as much practice as we possibly can, but now we are full-time with the America's Cup team and it's going to be great to go out sailing every day in either the Etchells or the America's Cup boats and I'm looking forward to that.
Because you have some Etchells in Cowes specifically for match race practice?
Yes, we have two that Mark Covell is just buffing up at the moment and we shall use those for some full-on match racing like Team New Zealand did. When we had a match racing team in the past few years, we did as much training as we can but we have been limited by budget, and now we are all paid full-time and we are not limited on our time. We get to go out and sail [the Etchells] whenever we are not sailing the Cup boats.

And you are shortly to have your IACC boats on the water.
At the end of this month we will be ready to sail.

When do the Japanese boats arrive in Cowes?
They are due in a week's time. Then we have two or three weeks to have them ready to sail. We will certainly have one ready in two weeks and hopefully we will have two going as soon as we can.

It will be a bit different from this.
Yes. These are small and manoeuvrable boats, but in the end it is still match racing.

Good luck for the rest of this regatta.