Paul Cayard - Part 1

In Rio Andy Rice discovered the round the world and America's Cup guru has a strong view on almost everything sailing related

It must be a strange feeling for Paul Cayard not to be master of his own destiny. Sidelined from the Oracle Racing America's Cup syndicate for reasons that are not obvious even to him, the multi-talented professional yachtsman has been spending some down time with his family in San Francisco.

Not a bad way to be earning a living for some, but Cayard thrives on challenge. He jumped at the chance to get back into the Volvo Ocean Race, although he did have to get Oracle boss Larry Ellison's say-so first. "I'm an employee of Oracle and I was given permission to do this leg."

For Cayard, this was the dream leg. While many of the hardened ocean sailors were saying "Never again!" as they hurtled through the unexpected iceberg alley of leg 4, the temporary tactician aboard Amer Sports One was loving every minute of it. He doesn't understand how anyone could feel any other way.

"A lot of the people go in this race and almost resent it - the discomforts, the cold, the damp clothes. Me, both times I've done this, I hardly notice that stuff. When I get on deck and the waves are just huge, and the boat's just flying, it's awesome. I guess I appreciate the machine. I grew up sailing dinghies as a kid, which plane nearly all the time, and this is a boat that you can take long distances and get the same sporting senstations that you have when you're a kid. I look at three weeks and say it's a flash, it's a nanosecond, for all the experiences you get in that time."

Asked what his favourite moment was, Cayard has no hesitation in replying: "There was one wave in particular we took on that was just goddam huge. We got up on to this wave that was at least two or three boatlengths to the bottom. It was like this giant runway that was angled at 30 degrees.

"When we were going down, Grant was looking at the GPS because when you're going down those waves the knot meter comes out of the water and the speed doesn't read right. So he comes out of that and says: "That's the biggest wave I ever went down." It was a good ride. To me those are the things I cherish most."

If you haven't read Cayard’s emails from the last leg, then make a point of doing so. Go to www.volvooceanrace.org and dig back through the 'boat emails'. They make for compelling reading - in fact - you could almost turn them into a book, just on their own merit. And yet Cayard says the words still don't come close to the reality of what it's like down there, launching through the world's biggest waves in a boat that is unfeasibly small for the purpose.

"It's tough for us to describe these things for you. The other thing that's indescribable is the motion of these boats. When you're inside the boat, to feel the violence of the boat. It's skipping across the waves like a rock. The sound that makes is like a drum, you know, with the Kevlar. It sounds like someone is beating on the side of the boat with a drum, it's amazing. I mean, they don't make rides like that in Disneyland."

The shame of it was to give away second place after having held it for most of three weeks. It happened just a few miles from the finish at Rio, when Amer was dumped in a windless hole while Tyco, Assa Abloy and particularly djuice sailed away from them. "It was bitter-sweet at the end. But regret is the poison of life. It was an awesome experience, we raised the level of the game on this boat and the guys are going to come back stronger."

As well as bringing his wealth of sailing knowledge to the Nautor Challenge, Cayard was more than happy to do the talking with the outside world. We didn’t hear a thing out of skipper Grant Dalton for almost three weeks. Dalton explained: "I'm not huge on communication, so if someone else wants to do that I'm quite happy to let them. He loves doing that stuff so I let him."

Click on page 2 to get Cayard's radical vision of a brave new world of professional sailing...