Brad Butterworth interview

James Boyd talks to the former Team New Zealand tactician about life in Switzerland

His faultless tactics on board Team New Zealand in the last America's Cup and his regular presence as a mouthpiece for the home team made Brad Butterworth almost as well known as skipper Russell Coutts during the last America's Cup. Although he has sailed two Whitbreads, with Peter Blake on board Steinlager II and then as skipper of Dennis Conner's Winston, Butterworth is best known for his role as tactician in the last two winning New Zealand America's Cup campaigns. To date he has taken part in that event four times. Controversially last year Butterworth and Russell Coutts left Team New Zealand and were instantly signed up to Ernesto Bertarelli's Swiss America's Cup team, recently re-christened Alinghi. Word on the dockside was that Coutts and Butterworth had been wooed to the land of gnomes and cuckoo clocks by the prospect of telephone number salaries simply not available in New Zealand. Butterworth spoke to madforsailing's James Boyd about his new life, his popularity down under and how this well-financed, but fledgling America's Cup team is getting on.

On the money side Butterworth says that Alinghi are not up there with the teams supposedly brandishing $100 million budgets like Larry Ellison's Oracle challenge and, once upon a time, Craig McCaw's OneWorld. Alinghi merely has around US$55 million including recent sponsorships from Infonet and UBS, Switzerland's largest bank - known in yachting circles as the backers of Pierre Fehlman's Whitbread maxi in the 1985/6 round the world race. Together he estimates these make up about one third of the Alinghi war fund. "It's a huge difference," says Butterworth. "With Team New Zealand they spent about 55-60 NZ$ million (roughly US$25 million) I think." Interesting use of "they", but more of this later.

To average mortals, spending these huge sums just on yachting is inconceivable. Short of dumping notes by the truckload into the sea where does it go and do the extra millions really make a difference? "People are a large expense," says Butterworth. "We have 60 people working for us full time - maybe around 85 including people working part time. With Team New Zealand we ended up with around 75 people, but the wages were less and everyone lived at home. Here we had to relocate." He adds that the cost of living in Switzerland is also a lot higher than in New Zealand and this is also true of running the campaign. "Everything is more expensive here. You pay twice as much for a tender for example and we've got four of them running around."

Then there was the cost of starting an America's Cup campaign from scratch. The team had to buy a training boat. They purchased Be Happy campaigned by the Swiss team in the last Louis Vuitton Cup. Be Happy has been extensively refitted and her unusual underwater appendages made more conventional and the internal structure modified. The work on her is now complete and the boat is in the process of being shipped down to Sete in the south of France where Alinghi are setting up their training camp.

The team will be training in Sete for two to three weeks every month. At the same time they will also be sailing in a series of match racing regattas around Switzerland. Carried out in small keel boats the idea is for local yacht clubs each to hold their own match racing championships. The winner from each is then pitched against one of the Alinghi hotshots such as Coutts, Butterworth or Jochen Schueman. The prize of the top club match racer will be to go to the Louis Vuitton Cup, but if the campaign uncovers any new talent then Butterworth warns that they may be signed up by Alinghi.

Butterworth says that Russell Coutts approached GBR Challenge's General Manager, Kiwi Dave Barnes about the possibility of the two teams training against each other. "We asked them but they declined. Barnes told Russell he didn't know if would be worthwhile for them. We would like to sail them."

Meanwhile the design team are working hard on the creation of the two new Alinghi IACC boats. The team is led by Rolf Vrolijk and includes Dirk Kramers and Carol Vernon both formerly of America3, America's Cup vet Grant Simmer and former Team New Zealand designer Glyn Davies. There are representatives from four 1998 campaigns in the design team but one particularly interesting point is how much Team New Zealand know-how, whether it is design or technology, will end up being used in the Swiss boats. "What we took was what we knew," says Butterworth on this point. "We sailed the boat. As far as the sailors knew - that's what we have. You can't walk away with CAD drawings. If you did you'd be out of the regatta." He does admit that all Alinghi's designers looked at all the boats competing in the last America's Cup to examine their differencies (in particular their beam and sail areas). "We have a lot of experience in terms of what we think is fast. With a lot of talking you come to a consensus."

Alinghi's build team at Decision SA is gearing up to start work on the construction of their two new boats. Butterworth says that the schedule is being dictated by their wanting to have the first boat in New Zealand ready to sail in December. They will probably start construction in about one month and he confides that the design of the first boat will be quite surprising, although he will impart no more than that. Will it have Team New Zealand's cathedral rig, we wonder?

Over his and Coutt's departure from Team New Zealand he says he is disappointed there was resentment there. "We tried like hell to make it work with Team New Zealand. We didn't say anything to the board until they'd secured the right to carry on. I just couldn't do it again particularly seeing the way it was going to be set up and with the way we had to deal with that set of sponsors." Butterworth says the crunch came when there was a dispute over Team New Zealand's debts. "It was tough to understand where the money went last time. We wanted to know what the debts were." He adds: "It never worked out. I thought, I don't need this. I can go somewhere else. Russell had had enough as well. It could have been quite simple, but in the end it wound up being very complicated. In reality they (the Team New Zealand board) didn't want us to be in control of it this time anyway."

Reports at the time suggested that he and Coutts had been poached by Bertarelli, with offers of telephone number salaries, but Butterworth refutes this. "When I quit Team New Zealand I didn't have a job to go to."

Butterworth says that the resentment in New Zealand remains. "If we sneeze in Geneva they hear about it in Auckland." While resentment is one thing, it affecting their challenge for the next America's Cup is quite another. "We've run into a lot of problems from our old mates in New Zealand," he claims. "One problem was that we couldn't enter. Our entry was put into the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron at the same time as the Swiss last time. But this time it took five months to be ratified. If you're not entered you can't do a lot. We'll have to wait until the Louis Vuitton Cup happens to see how that time lost has hurt us."

Removing the old guard from Team New Zealand will open up the playing field, but many America's Cup pundits feel that the Kiwi team may benefit from having some new blood in the form of Dean Barker and his new crew, who may be hungrier for victory in what is lining up to be one of the most competitive America's Cups ever.