Man in charge

Anne Hinton gets an update from Emirates Team New Zealand boss Grant Dalton

Grant Dalton confirmed that he is likely to remain sailing on Emirates Team New Zealand in his current position as both a member of the afterguard and a sewer rat, packing sails down below.

“I’m enjoying it [sailing on the boat]”, he said. “It’s helping me to understand the way the guys think, act, how decisions are made and mechanisms.” Dalts pointed out that this is particularly important “for when budget decisions are made and we want to do this or that”, saying that in this situation he’d be completely on the pace. Dalton said that he was setting the campaign up so that he could sail, with putting in devolved responsibility so that people could take his “load” onshore enabling him to go on the water every
day.

In terms of the current personnel, Dalton said that Rod Davis is the coach and Kelvin Harrap is the ‘B’ boat driver. Referring to Ben Ainslie, he said that Ben would be given every opportunity to develop within the team and ultimately to be an America’s Cup skipper. Dalton also described Ainslie as “probably the biggest talent since Paul Elvström”. Ainslie will go on the match race circuit.

“The key is to put together an afterguard that works, that functions, that spends time together”, said Dalton. “If the afterguard doesn’t work you might as well stay at home. Getting that right combination… is the key.

“Dean is skipper designate and it’s his job to stay there. His job is to sail. To his great credit he came out of the last campaign, got into the Finn, made the selection [for the Olympic Games in Athens, where he finished 13th]. I thought that he did bloody well from a standing start. Top ten, in my view, would have been the best he ever would have
done. So he’s going to be match racing. He’s now back in the saddle and it’s his job and he has to stay there,” said Dalton.

In terms of training both the crews and the afterguard, Dalton commented that “there’s not as big an opportunity for match racing has there has been in the past because we’ve got all these pre-regattas. So there isn’t that huge downtime. How we’re going to manage that I haven’t got my head around yet. We only just raised the money and got here!”