Turbo Kingfisher for Dalts' big brother

madforsailing talks to Graham Dalton and designer Merf Owen about their new Open 60

One would think that there would only be room in the yacht racing community for one member of the Dalton family. Yet news has recently filtered through from New Zealand of Graham Dalton, Grant's elder brother, who is embarking on a rather different project to his more famous sibling.
While Dalts Jnr has recently started his seventh round the world race and is known as a sociable fellow who has always sailed with a full crew whether it is in the Whitbread, Volvo or on Club Med, Graham Dalton's circumnavigation will be his first - singlehanded in next year's Around Alone race.

Graham Dalton, who aged 48 is four years older than his brother, says that the seeds for his round the world voyage were sown when Sir Francis Chichester made his singlehanded circumnavigation in 1967. While he, like his brother, started out sailing dinghies, he cut his teeth sailing with Chris Bouzaid, one of the figures who helped forge New Zealand's present success in yachting, taking part in events such as the 1969 One Ton Cup. He also trained as a sailmaker and spent much time sailing and diving in the Pacific.

While Grant was getting involved with Whitbreads, Graham was trying to get a campaign together for the second BOC Challenge in 1986/7. He failed to raise the money and tried again for the 1990 race, but a messy divorce forced him into a situation where he had to sell his boat. Even if he still remained adamantly resolved to do the race, this did bring about a reality check and made him aware that he lacked some essential skills to achieve his goal. "You need to be at home in a boardroom situation," Dalton told madforsailing. "You need marketing skills to be able to leverage proposals. You need to attract a top team around you. When I finally realised that I retrained as a journalist."

He became a sports journalist for the national Sunday Star and championed youth sports, setting up a special award scheme. Ultimately this led to him publishing a magazine called Sports Action. Most poignant about this magazine was the way it encouraged young sportsmen and women to fulfil their goals, a philosophy which has clearly helped him to his current position and has a strong ring of the Ellen MacArthurs to it. "We wanted to make it look cool to go out there and achieve," he says. His belief is so fervent in this that when he decided to take on his latest project he closed the magazine rather than sell it. "I couldn't see someone lower its standards," he says. "It meant too much to me. I sweated blood for it."

However his goal remained racing singlehanded round the world and to raise money for his Around Alone campaign he enlisted some powerful sports sponsorship help including a former marketing manager of Nike and another who worked on the Edmonton Commonwealth Games and 1987 Rugby World Cup. He had a meeting with the Deputy Prime Minister and scored a coup by getting the government to assist with his team's flights and accommodation when he went to pitch to the CEO of what is now his as yet un-named sponsor. Did his training help? "I've been in the board room of an extremely large multi-national company and I was successful with my team in nailing the deal," he says. "There were other big names trying for the same thing, including the America's Cup." The name of the sponsor will be revealed in around 3-4 weeks, but is a company that even his seasoned professional brother was impressed by.

There is the inevitable criticism that being the brother of one of New Zealand's most famous yachtsmen helped his cause, but he adamantly refutes this. "If anyone has the perception that I got this sponsorship because of Grant, that would be totally incorrect. It doesn't matter who you are. It is down to your abilities and whether you can cut the mustard and commercially whether it makes sense." It seems that the brothers remain wholly independent of each other and although he has sailed a lot, little has been done with Grant. "We've never really sailed together. When we were youngsters, we sailed dinghies and when I was moving out of one class just when he was moving into it."

What does seem common to the two Daltons is their drive and energy, almost more so in Graham because he lacks the track record of his brother and so must work all the harder.

As a sailor he has covered a lot of miles and estimates that he has 8-10,000 miles of singlehanded racing under his belt. It should be remembered that while New Zealand is top dog when it comes to most forms of yacht racing, singlehanding isn't one of them and precious little racing of this kind goes on over there. However singlehanding has always been Graham Dalton's prefered form of yacht racing. "I've always found I do things better by myself than in a team environment. I just love the challenge for being at sea by yourself and in a competitive situation."

See page 2 to read about the Turbo version of Kingfisher....
See page 3 for Dalton's grips over the Around Alone's rule changes...