Big projects in the pipeline

Paul Cayard gives us his views on the TP52 circuit and his Star sailing

Rumours have been rife for the last couple of months regarding the prospect of Paul Cayard becoming skipper of the Pirates of the Caribbean boat in the forthcoming Volvo Ocean Race. If this does come to pass it will be a superb coup for the race. When we met him in Valencia recently Cayard was unable to confirm or deny his role in the event he won at the helm of EF Language in the 1997-8 race. It is believed the Pirates of the Caribbean campaign will be announcing their skipper in early August; their Farr-design Volvo Open 70, The Black Pearl, to be launched by Green Marine later that month.

Cayard is also in partnership with Russell Coutts in a new high profile international grand prix fleet racing circuit, but like Coutts he is unwilling to discuss this until such time as the details are finalised.

In the meantime Cayard is sailing with Greek owner George Andreadis on board the latest Atalanti, a TP52 in the Breitling MedCup. Atalanti is racing in today's Breitling Regatta, the third event on the circuit where she is currently in fourth place overall after their fifth place in Valencia. He can talk about this.

"It seems to be a good all round boat," says Cayard of his new steed. "The surprising thing to me is that even though everyone is in varying states of preparedness and even though there were several designers designing boats and there are differences in the beam waterline by up to 3 inches all the races are really close, very competitive, so it looks like it is a good box rule, a good formula. It produces tight racing, it allows the owners a chance to customise their boats a little bit but without the wide openness of just simply saying you’re going to have an IMS boat. So somewhat constrained. So far the indications are that it produces good racing."

While many top skippers around the world have been involved with IMS racing, Cayard says he never got involved with this or the professional racing scene in Spain due to his commitments to other events and classes such as the Whitbread, the Cup in 2000, Oracle and then the Olympics.

In addition to the competitiveness of the racing, Cayard has been impressed by the performance of the TP52. "They are fun boats to sail," he says. "They are pretty light and tender, so even in 7-8 knots of wind upwind you are fully powered up and everyone is hiking and downwind you are fast all the time. In 20 knots of wind we've been going 17 knots. They just flat out plane."

Cayard believes that there is still much development work to be done with the boats and although the class has been in existence in the USA for around five years, now there is much closer head-to-head competition in the Breitling MedCup much more work will be put into refinement of the boats. As the past has shown in other classes of this type such as the IOR 50 or more recently the IMS 500, Cayard anticipates owners having to get new boats every two or three years. "The one thing remains to be seen is that it is not cheap..." he warns.

It is possible that some owners will opt to have two TP52s either for the purposes of two boat testing or simply, as has been seen with several Farr 40 campaigns, to have a boat to sail in regattas on either side of the Atlantic. Cayard thinks this is particularly likely if an America's Cup team enters a boat in the circuit. Already many of the Mascalzone Latino crew for example sail with their skipper Vasco Vascotto on the Italian/Chilean boat Leche Pascual, current leader of the Breitling MedCup.

"An America’s Cup team might get involved in this as a way to give the crew some more training," Cayard says. "When I did Il Moro we had Abracadabra, the 50footer and a maxi. I think talking to some of my friends at the different teams it is tough to hang and just do the America’s Cup for four years. It gets pretty stale."

Having passed through Valencia during the Trofeo SM La Reina, Cayard had an opportunity to see the set-up for the 32nd America's Cup, an event he has sat out since his OneAmerica team was beaten after a tough series losing to Prada in the final of the Louis Vuitton Cup challenger series in 1999 and his subsequent sidelining by Oracle for the last event in Auckland.

"To be honest with you I am not missing it too much," admits Cayard. "I wouldn’t want to come and live here for four years. Part of it is my family situation. My kids are teenagers at high school. I am balancing my professional career and my need to have a big project against being away from the family permanently for four years. So I have a couple of good projects in the pipeline and I’ll find a good balance for that for me for this period of time. And my kids will graduate from high school in 2007 and the last one in 2008 and maybe after that... And my wife, she doesn’t want to travel and leave the kids. So the things which seem like great opportunities are actually hassles to us now but maybe three years down the road it might be fun to pick up and move to some other place."

Aside from the TP52s the only other sailing Cayard has been doing is in the Star, a boat he says he loves. "I got back in the Star when I got sidelined with Oracle and I found I was doing pretty well. So I put in a big effort and I enjoyed it all and it was very satisfying and it was a good experience. And that too was cool to share with my kids. They went to Athens and were at the opening ceremony and all that. I sailed this year in Nassau, I won the the Spring Championship there and I’m going to stop now for a while and we have got the World Championship next September in San Francisco. So I’ll get a boat for that and that’ll be fun. And then we’ll see. In the US we are going to have the trials much earlier than we have had in the past - in the fall of 2007, so one year after the Worlds in San Francisco. So I might have a little shot at that..."

It seems certain we will be reading much more about Paul Cayard in the forthcoming months.