madforsailing visits GBR Challenge

Ed Gorman is impressed by the team's progress

Ian Walker has been working hard on the set-up for months and is looking forward to the chance from now on to get back out on the water to refresh his skills at the back of the boat. Perhaps overawed at times by the scale of the task Harrison has set him, he seems to be genuinely enjoying himself now as new appointments come on stream and people under him take responsibility for more and more areas of the programme, freeing him up to concentrate on the on-the-water aspects.

Our brief glimpse of the two Japanese boats underlined just what a superb deal Harrison struck with the Nippon challenge, securing two state-of-the-art IACC yachts plus a third from 1995 and seven container loads of spares and associated kit. Not only are Idaten and Asura in excellent condition, they, and all the bits with them, were packed away immaculately and everything, right down to the last Black & Decker, was thrown in.

The upshod has been that the syndicate has been able to get the boats sailing again with minimum fuss and has already been able to make alterations to the deck layout on one of them, changes which will be replicated on the other in due course. The name of the game at present is two-boat training rather than testing. Walker said that a number of development sails will come on line from North Sails UK in July, but the main sail programme and technical development will await winter training in Auckland and the arrival of the team's new boat in April next year.

Harrison, like others we saw, is encouraged by the way things have gone, though he confessed to gulping rather heavily at the size of some of the cheques he has had to put his name to over the past few weeks. At the launch he said he would initially be prepared to spend £6.4 million to get the challenge off the ground and thereafter look for a commercial backer to help make up the remainder of the estimated £17 million he thinks the team will need.

This week he revealed that he has, in fact, already spent £7.5 million and he stressed that he is now actively beginning a serious hunt for sponsors. Harrison said he would happily grant full naming rights to a sponsor who came in with a substantial investment, though at this stage he thought it was hard to envisage that happening. But the man's heart is in the right place and he made the point that it would be much easier for him to play a "kick-starting" financial role for a second or third campaign - by which time there might be realistic chances of actually winning the Cup - if a commercial sponsor came in alongside him this time round.

Among his worries at present is that the design team - recently boosted by the appointment of Rob Humphreys - may fall in between two stools as it settles on the lines of its one and only new boat. "The question is how radical you try to be and that's a risk and, on the other hand, not pushing the limits too much, and then the boat doesn't perform - that's the balance we have to strike."