GBR Challenge to sail in June

In Valencia Derek Clark and Leslie Ryan brought us up to date with the latest in the GBR camp

This article follows on from our insight into last week's America's Cup meeting in Valencia. Click here to see this article

Derek Clark says that the team are currently planning to relaunch GBR70 in Cowes on 28 June. Once afloat the first job will be to assess the developments currently being made to her, but is an indication that a sailing team of some description will have to be in place by then. Clark says that he is expecting roughly 70% of the previous sailing team to return. The hard bit will be the exact make-up of the afterguard.

"We’ve talked to Iain Percy an awful lot," says Clark. "We've talked to Ben [Ainslie] and a lot of foreign people and we are very keen to have a talented and experienced afterguard. We have got experienced people because we have been through it. People like Ado Stead, Iain Percy, Jules Salter... - they are all world class sailors. So we want either world class sailors who have demonstrated potential outside of the America’s Cup arena or successful America’s Cup sailors. That is where we are pitched. We know that if we want to compete at this high level, this is not a school. This is an environment where people have got to show their talent. They can’t learn how to sail. They have to learn how to use their talent."

With regard to this year's regattas there is the matter of a clash with the Farr 40 Worlds and the Maxi Worlds as well as the dates being close to the end of the Olympics. Because of this Clark predicts that the afterguard this season will not be the final choice in the long term.

They are also talking to overseas talent for work outside of the sailing team. "At the moment we are very comfortable with the people we have got," says Clark. "We would expect to look hard in the sail design area. At the moment what we are looking at is our mast work and some fundamental issues with hulls. The next stage is to raise our game on the sail design side and we have been looking for experienced America’s Cup sailmakers and we have a number of people in the frame."

Clark says that this time around he feels more enpowered to go out in search of more overseas talent. "If you look at the successful groups, they benefited from the dispersion of the Team New Zealand members. There is a direct correlation between success and the number of ex-Team New Zealanders you have in your side."

Clark and Ryan spend a lot of time talking about the make-up of the management side of the team and the importance of how it should be more of a team than a collection of individuals, albeit talented ones. In rebuilding GBR Challenge upwards from just the two of them a year ago they now have 28 actively working on projects for the team.

Timing is also vitally important says Clark. While Oracle BMW Racing are in full swing with their sailing team as Prada were at this stage of the Cup cycle last time, Clark feels this is too early although he admits that they are ramping up to double the activity they have had over the last 12 months. At present there are 28 people actively working on projects for the team. Ultimately there could be as many as 100.

The structure of the team which is divided into a number of groups and their sub-sets with cross over between the groups. "There is a group called the Sail Team that comprises Tim Corbyn, Stephen Fry, Ian Budgen, Andy Heming and myself and also co-opted on to that are the mast designers," Clark cites as an examples. "When it forms like that it is called the rig team and the sail team that is a sub-set of it as well. They are basically discussion groups that get given projects from the designers. That is something which came out of our look at our organisational structural." Tim Dean is mast manager, while John Levell is handling their mast design and former Prada man Will Brooks is handling the structural engineering of the hulls.

A significant change will also see the team allocating more resources to areas of the boat other than just the hull. "So the rig team will have an equal weighting to the hull line team," says Clark. "Say you discover your mast isn't very good and 'what a surprise - we’re not very fast'. Then we have to spend a lot of time catching our mast up, we can’t do the mods to the boat because we have only so much resources and we weren’t planning on that."

That was the scenario last time but Clark intends that GBR Challenge v2 will be set up so that there is enough slack to accommodate such eventualities. "Before we were fully stretched and we got more and more stretched and in the end we could not accommodate some of the things we wanted to do. And that happens to everyone. Take Prada - all the money in the world and yet they couldn’t sail between round robins because their boats were in the shed. Even Team NZ missed some of the fundamentals - a reliable boat that will get you around the course. They took a risk with the hula and they did both boats like that. Where was their fall back? NZL60?

While there remains the outstnading issue of finding the cash to match Peter Harrison's 50% commitment to the war chest, currently GBR Challenge is going full steam ahead and is in good shape compared to other teams at the Valencia meeting a majority of whom have no cash, no base, no design and build facility and no boats.