Matt Humphries - a madforsailing interview

Former Dolphin & Youth skipper is now watch leader for Team SEB

For someone who is just 30 years old, Matthew Humphries has a great depth of experience in previous Whitbread races and is currently watch leader for Gunnar Krantz's Team SEB campaign for the Volvo Ocean Race. His first race was on With Integrity (formerly Chay Blyth's Great Britain II) in 1989 and in subsequent races he has skippered Dolphin & Youth and crewed on board Swedish Match.
madforsailing: How has the race changed since your first race on With Integrity?

Matthew Humphries: In those days it was an adventure. At 18 years old, I felt like we were on a death-ship and it was a bit of a mission. When we did it on Dolphin & Youth, as a skipper at the age of 22, it was half adventure, half yacht racing, in the opinion of the crew and myself. The race developed for me on Swedish Match and got more and more competitive. This race is more like a round-the-cans race than a round-the-world race. Everything we take on the boat is taken as though we were going to sail the America's Cup.

madforsailing: It's a refined race from what it was?

MH: Each time that I have done it, it has become more and more refined and now it is Formula 1. Certainly in the way that we are looking at it and the way we are setting ourselves up, it is a Formula 1 yacht race. I don’t believe there is any adventure attached to it today for the competitors, although from the outside it is still seen that way. For us, it is absolutely full-on. I don't think we would have treated, 12 years ago, an inshore race as seriously as we are treating this race. That's how refined it is.

madforsailing: You are a watch leader, essentially number two to Gurra [Krantz]?

MH: My position on board is a watch captain. I was also watch captain on Swedish Match and my role is to bring in as much experience as possible from the three races I have done and to back up Gurra whenever I can. We are not running a hierarchical system - we selected a crew who we think can win the race and we have six of us back from Swedish Match. Because of that we are all very close and we know where our strong and weak points are, and with Glen (Kessels) and Marcel (van Triest) - I did the race with Glen on Dolphin & Youth and Gurra did the race with Marcel on Intrum Justitia, so really eight of us on the boat have sailed round the world together. Look at any other team and you just don’t see that. This is a close team and my role is to back-up Gurra and try my hardest to win this yacht race.

madforsailing: Is there anything missing from this campaign?

MH: Sanity probably, but that got flushed away a long time ago. It's hard to explain, even for the fourth time, just what it is like and how enormous the whole event is. Missing? I'm only looking at the race from a professional perspective and I think we could claim that we are not missing anything.

madforsailing: You, however, appear to have done very little since the last Whitbread. So, how do you live in the interim period?

MH: I finished with Swedish Match in 1998, and since then I have lived in Sweden at Nacka Strand and I've had to make sailing work for me. In last couple of years, I've been running my own business with Toshiba from the last race and that was sponsored by a coffee company in Stockholm and we won the Gotland Runt last year, in fact we won all the races we entered. We've kept busy sailing this type of boat: every year from 1993 until now, I have been sailing Whitbread 60s or Volvo Ocean 60s. Such experience as I have has been in these boats, so I feel I have a lot to offer. My company tried very hard to get a project together for this race, but that failed last August. We were close to being sponsored by a Swedish telecom company and it didn't quite work. At that stage, Gurra was asking me to come back aboard with him.

madforsailing: There are still two places left on this boat and last time you and I were talking together, at the end of the Gotland Runt, you had been very impressed by the man who had driven your boat, Cameron Appleton, would you be thinking of trying to get him this time?

MH: If I could have Cameron sail any yacht race with me, I'd have him immediately. He has a tremendous amount of talent and if I was a betting man, I would say that he will be the next Russell Coutts. Cameron is tied up with Team New Zealand, and while we were talking initially about my own project, we were thinking of a partnership with Cameron, but that didn't work out. With the structure that we have now, and with Cameron's commitment and him not being able to do the entire race, that doesn't fit with Gurra's campaign. What Gurra wants is 12 guys the whole way round the world.