Business as usual

Prior to leaving on leg five yesterday Grant Dalton gave some brief comments from the dockside

Q: How do you feel about the state of readyness of your campaign now that the two southern ocean legs are behind you?

GD: I mean we were always late, we always knew that, but it can't be late forever. And I thought we sailed a pretty good leg last leg, it's just that it all turned pear-shaped right at the end. I wanted all our new sails to be on before Auckland, but we really weren't quite ready for it, we weren't quite having a handle on everything. But we are now! So at some point we've got to stop saying we're late and that's our excuse and I think that's now.

Q: Given though, that you did start late, would you have settled for this position, second place in the fleet, seven points behind the leaders after four legs, before you started in Southampton?

GD: Well, everything's clouded for me at the moment, based on coming here fifth when, you know, fifty miles out of here we were packing up our wet weather gear for a second place. You know, that took me out at the knees a little bit. I'm happy still being second, but I'm filthy that we got beaten coming in here. If we had maintained that, illbruck and our boat would have broken away and been well in front of the fleet now. It's very important to us that we don’t look too hard over our shoulder yet, because I still see us as in a better second than we are. I've got a good feeling about this leg - we'll see, maybe I'm wrong, but I've normally got a fairly good handle on these legs before they start and have a feeling at where we're going to come out.

Q: Why have you got a good feeling about this leg?

GD: Well, we're playing musical chairs now on some of the boats with guys flying backwards and forwards. We've got high stability in our team. There's only three teams to meet that have still got stability and that's illbruck, Tyco, and ourselves, and, to a certain extent - Assa Abloy. I think their stability is increasing. I'm just watching a shore crew working harder - still working harder than any other team and their attitude is just great. I just think we're coming together as a team. We've got good sponsors, we're OK money-wise, and nobody is giving us any grief. It just feels OK at this point.

Q: It might be a slightly odd question, but I asked it to some of the others - are you enjoying this race?

GD: If any of them were honest, I'd say they'd tell you that they're probably not, if they were to be a hundred per cent honest with you. Well I'm not NOT enjoying it, but I'm seeing this one more than I ever have as business. Normally, I don't see them quite as business. And actually, that's not such bad thing: I'm sensing I'm a lot more mechanical going about this race; I'm not emotional about Saturday. I'm emotional about doing it well. To me, whether I'm enjoying it or not to me is almost not the issue. To me, the fact is that business is going OK, business is good and that's what I'm in: This is a business.