Mark Rudiger interview - part 2

Assa Abloy's navigator describes lessons he learned sailing with Cayard and Dickson

...continued from yesterday's article
Rudiger (seated right in the photo) learned a great sailing with Paul Cayard. "Paul used to lead by example. He would be up on the foredeck. He would grind. He would help put a reef in." Some of the other 'name' skippers in the race he says are not so willing to take part in such menial tasks.

A lesson he learned from both Cayard and Chris Dickson, with whom he has sailed extensively on Larry Ellison's maxi Sayonara, is not to treat long races as a whole. "On the long legs you've got to break it down into little legs. You have to be the first boat to a certain point. It is a step-by-step process." For the first leg from Southampton this might be aiming to be the first boat out of the Solent, the first out of the Channel, the first past Finisterre, and so on.

In the last Whitbread Rudiger believes that coming to the race without preconceptions actually helped him. "I wasn't burned with preconceptions from other Whitbreads. The weather always does that here. That sort of thing. I was looking at what there was and how I would deal with that. I was dealing in the short term."

He also attributes it to his relationship with Cayard. Both Cayard and Rudiger come from California and so there was a natural affinity. "After the last race I heard a lot of stories of skippers and navigators not having a good relationship. There was no cultural barrier between me and Paul." Saying this Rudiger is now sailing with a Dutch skipper, but he points out that Roy Heiner is quite Americanised and his own upbringing was quite European.

One aspect of Rudiger and Cayard’s approach which amused some of the Europeans on board last time was their talking constantly in percentages: percentage reliability of weather forecasts, percentage likelihood of achieving a tactical plan, percentage possibility of getting chicken curry for dinner, etc. But on a serious note this was a method which really helped them communicate.

Rudiger says he has an open approach to navigation. While some navigators like the rest of the crew to perceive their job as something of a black art, he sees the crew as an integral part of the process. "They (the crew) have to understand the strategy. You have to say "here’s what’s happening with the weather. If you can’t aim this point err towards this to get a little more speed."

Since the last race, Rudiger says that there have been some developments in round the world navigation. On the weather forecasting side computer models have advanced more and the computers the boats will carry on board are much faster. Access to the web from on board has also changed things and at present the rules state that teams can each nominate 10 of their favourite websites and these will be published so that any boat can use them. So if there are eight entries, each boat will be able to access 80 websites.

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