One World Diary

Mark Chisnell reports on his role in the One World navigation team

A busy few weeks down here, with the Volvo Ocean Race departing these shores for South America. The prize giving for the previous leg was held the night before the restart, just before a huge open-air concert at a city centre park called the Domain. It was a great evening, though when I saw Neal McDonald just before Assa Abloy went to pick up the chocolates for their leg win, I reckon he was more nervous about the prospect of giving a winner's speech in front of a hundred thousand people than he was about a couple of weeks back in the Southern Ocean.

And summer has finally arrived in Auckland. The in-bound low-pressure systems have lost their sting, and more sailing days are now missed due to a lack of wind, rather than an excess of it. But we've had some kind of breeze most of the time, and the Gulf has been busy, with all the syndicates in the Viaduct Basin getting in as many hours on the water as they can.

Informal racing between the teams is becoming more common. While much is made in the media of prickly relations between the teams, the reality at 'street level' is different. Leaving work on Friday evening I bumped into Paul Standbridge, Chris Mason and a crowd of their GBR Challenge teammates - they were all heading up to the Oracle shorebase, where they had been invited for the evening. The sailors all know each other and get on well, and that's what's making the informal racing work.

The latest gossip is that the Swedish team used their new boat to take on Team New Zealand. Word went around Halsey Street quicker than news of a teenage pregnancy at a high school that the Swedes had been on the pace and had taken a race off the Kiwis. It's no mean achievement for a start-up team to get their first boat on speed with the winner of the previous Cup.

More evidence of the strength in depth of the competition in this upcoming Louis Vuitton came a few days later. We were out checking a rig in the mouth of the Rangitoto Channel, and a mile or so downwind the British were racing Prada. Even a casual observer could spot the fact that the Brits were doing a great job, and appeared to beat the Italians. Meanwhile, on a course next door, a second Prada boat looked to be taking another race off Team New Zealand - there are going to be no easy days in this Cup!

Otherwise it's been business as usual for our navigation team. I share the job with Kevin Hall and Ed Smyth - both of them talented and highly successful sailors, and both down here for the last Cup in 2000. Kevin was coach with AmericaOne and Ed navigated for Jimmy Spithill and the squad on Young Australia.

They also share a background in the skiff classes: Ed has won the 49er World’s, sailing with Chris Nicholson. Kevin posted three third places in that championship with Morgan Larson, before narrowly missing out on Olympic selection to the McKee brothers, all of whom - Morgan, Charlie and Jonathan McKee - are also now with OneWorld.

With complimentary strengths (youth, fitness and speaking to large groups of people being among those not on my list), we've tried to play to them, taking responsibility in one particular area, while still contributing to the overall effort across the board. Kevin has taken on the role of representing the navigation team in the testing process. The navigation station is the axis around which the two-boat testing program revolves aboard the yachts, as this is where the data comes in and the results are seen in real-time.

Inevitably, the navigator is inextricably wrapped up in this, and Kevin has stepped up to the plate. He does a fabulous job of organising the testing program with the design team, running the debriefs, rounding us up for the meetings and generally keeping us honest in our analysis and results - skills not entirely unconnected to those required by a good coach.

Meanwhile, Ed has the unenviable task of splitting his time between the traveller/heads up weather role (which I think he actually wanted to do all the time anyway), and rotating in to the nav station to back-up Kevin or I when we're taking a sicky - or otherwise engaged in a project ashore. It's hard work for him, as he has to keep pace with all the software development, while not getting much practice with the systems before having to do the job. Fortunately, Eddy had plenty of experience navigating with limited resources aboard Young Australia, and can keep the show on the road with just a hand bearing compass and a hunch.

That's left me to concentrate on the development of the instrument systems and software - a topic that I'm sure I will bore you to death on over the next few months