Ian Walker interview

GBR Challenge's sailing boss talks to Ed Gorman about progress in the British AC camp

madforsailing: Ian, you've never run a two-boat testing campaign of this scale and nature before - how are you going about it?

IW: It's not two-boat testing as such at the moment but just getting two boats of this size operating. We need a certain amount of people, a certain amount of RIBS and people have got to be in the right place at the right time. They've all got to be motivated. They've all got to know what the goals are and communication is a big issue. But most of what I'm doing is just common sense, just trying to work it through.

madforsailing: What are the limits of this particular part of your programme?

IW: Right now we're learning to sail the boats. It's fundamental. We're learning totally from scratch how to sail the boats. We've got about ten people who trialled for crew places spread across the two boats because we do need to find a couple of people in a couple of positions.

madforsailing: What are you finding are the hardest bits about getting to grips with these boats?

IW: In fact I couldn't be more pleased with how things are going. Up until about a week ago I was still struggling to see how we were going to operate with two boats and get two boats in the water and the spares and the shore crew and the RIBS, and have enough level of experience to operate. We've been quite lucky with the weather in that it hasn't been blowing hard during the last week. But it's worked because we've got good people and people are taking responsibility in their own areas so I'm having to worry about less and less of it.

madforsailing: At what point, if any, do you start fiddling with technical issues in this part of the programme, or is this really just about familiarisation with the boats?

IW: If we do anything - which we have - it's really just to make sure that all the telemetry is working so that when we do get to a two-boat testing programme, we will know that we've got the technical know-how to do it and to execute things properly. But you might as well test in New Zealand where the racing's going to be and it takes time to build the sails. In reality much of the testing's happened with these boats anyway - we know what the story is on these boats. Without cutting them up and making a big radical change, which we haven't got time to do, there's not much we can do on the hulls. So really we are looking at some development sails, mainsails and headsails coming on line this July and possibly small changes to the keel and wings - things that you can do relatively simply. It's enough just to learn how to go about things at this stage and then worry about what you get out of it.

madforsailing: Both the Japanese boats will go to Auckland?

IW: JPN 52 goes to New Zealand at the end of July. JPN 44 stays for the America's Cup Jubilee Regatta (at Cowes 18-25 August) then it will go down at the end of August. So 52 will be sailing in Auckland in October and both boats will be sailing in November and then they'll be working together in December, January, February and half of March - four-and-a-half months with both boats in New Zealand.

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