Ian Walker interview

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

madforsailing: The design programme is clearly well under way and you've brought in Rob Humphreys. Are you already contributing to their discussions from what you are experiencing on the boats?

IW: The only aspect I'd say where we are having an input is in deck layouts. The biggest thing that's struck me about sailing these boats is the communications on board with so many people in such a small place and the noise levels. I think how you lay the deck out has a big effect on the way you sail the boat.

madforsailing: Team New Zealand became legendary for the fight and competitive edge they put into their own two-boat training. Obviously it's very early days but are you going to try to replicate that philosophy?

IW: It's funny, with these sorts of guys, you are always going to have a lot of bite. Even yesterday we weren't even intending to sail two boats at the same time. But for the half an hour we were, we were lining each other up and tacking on each other and even this morning the guys were wrestling on the dock to try to get the best sails on their boats. So I think it will be very competitive and, if anything, the hardest thing will be to try and tame them so we don't end up damaging masts and so on. I don't think we'll have a problem with the competitive element

madforsailing: Returning to the Cup. It's a huge mountain to climb and there are modest aims for this programme - you had a delayed start because of the late arrival of the boats from Japan - what's your feeling about the whole pitch of it at this stage?

IW: We did have a delay. I'm almost grateful that we did because I don't think we would have been ready as an organisation to get running at that stage. I think it's worked just right - the weather was shocking in that month (March) anyway. Now we are out sailing probably three to four days-a-week. It's changing really, really fast but, as I said, I'm really pleased with it. I wouldn't have expected to have made this level of progress so quickly. For instance 52 was only out on the water yesterday and we could easily have had lots of problems with it - we have changed some things in the deck layout - but to have her go through a sea trial yesterday has given us the confidence to have both boats out racing today. It's great and we couldn't ask for any more. The boats are very good structurally and the quality of all the fittings are very, very good.

madforsailing: You are going to be up against some massively-budgeted campaigns in Auckland.

IW: As in any America's Cup, a lot will depend on the design - that's not just the designers but the whole team's input into the boat, the sails, the mast. So until you get the new boat and get to sail that, I don't think anybody can predict how well you are going to do. But it's interesting that some of the other programmes are already having problems. We've already got two boats on the water. Russell Coutts is only just putting one boat in the water and we've all heard about One World's problems - struggling, looking for sponsors and people are not quite sure what's going on. So I think we just keep doing our own thing. If we are sailing the boats really well by the end of the summer, we can then get a good design built over the winter, sort out the sail programme in New Zealand and then manage all the other issues that we don't even know about - the politics, the rules, the legal side. If we can find a way through all of that, which will all be completely new to most of us, we should be alright.

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