Mark Chisnell's Diary

The OneWorld navigator has returned to Auckland

The summer in Seattle is over, but fortunately, summer in Auckland has begun. We were last down in New Zealand in late May and early June, on another visit from our home base in the USA. Since then the sailing team have either spent their time working with the designers, or been out racing on the regatta circuit.

So getting the full sailing team together again in Auckland has meant quite a reunion, and there's been a few stories to tell, some of which I definitely can't repeat here and not just for reasons of team confidentiality ...

There's been so much going on these past few weeks, it's a little difficult to know where to start. But the most obvious thing to any outside observer strolling the Viaduct Basin waterfront is the construction work on both ours, and the other shorebases. And since the shorebase is the priority project that we want completed before we recommence full sailing operations, it's as good a place to start the Auckland section of this diary as any other.

It's been Kimo Worthington's thankless task to organise the transformation of the old Young America compound into a sailing base that will take America's Cup operations to (as we like to say around here) the next level. Kimo is one of a handful of sailors (Peter Blake is the only other one that springs to mind) to have won both the Whitbread/Volvo ( EF Language) and the America's Cup ( America 3) - so he knows a bit about sailing operations on a project of this scale.

But Kimo's not done it alone, everyone has had input on their department area, which is very much the OneWorld way of doing things. Our ex-TNZ pitman, Jero Scantlebury, was adamant that we had to have two travel-lift runways, so that the two IACC yachts can be launched from their separate 'pit-garages' at the same time. This will save us up to an hour a day, getting the boats in and out of the water.

And Craig Philips' sail loft is a masterpiece, much of it built by the fair and loving hand of his own sailmaking team. One of the details I can tell you about (since its construction is going on in full view of the outside world) is the sail drying and washing area. It's always been Craig McCaw's mission to use the OneWorld programme to bring attention to environmental issues, but we figure you gotta walk the walk as well as talk the talk to get anybody to listen. And so we've tried as much as possible to incorporate practical action into our daily operations.