TeamOrigin status report

We speak to Mike Sanderson about their new appointments and where the road leads from here

Sailing team:

Ben Ainslie	Helmsman/Skipper	British
Iain Percy	Tactician	British
Rob Greenhalgh	Strategist & Traveller	British
Ian Moore	Navigator	British
Andrew Simpson	Aft Grinder & Strategist	British
Neal MacDonald	Mainsheet Trimmer	British
Robbie Naismith	Trimmer	New Zealander
Chris Brittle	Grinder	British
David Carr	Grinder	British
Ian Weighell	Grinder	British
Pawel Bielecki	Grinder	Polish
Julien Cressant	Mastman	French
George Skuodas	Mastman	British
Kevin Batten	Mid Bowman	New Zealander
Justin Slattery	Bowman	Irish
Matt Cornwell	Bowman	British
Nick Bice	Boat Captain / Pitman	Australian

Design team:

Juan Kouyoumdjian	Principal Designer	Argentinean
Andy Claughton	Design Coordinator	British
Stan Honey	Technical Director / Navigator	American
Mickey Ickert	Aero Director	German
Bruce Thompson	Senior Rig Designer	New Zelander
Rodrigo Azcueta	Performance Analyst	Argentinean
Gonzalo Kouyoumdjian	Static Analyst	Argentinean

TeamOrigin's crew announcement on Friday at Southampton Boat Show was the best indicator to date as to the calibre of Sir Keith Mills' campaign for the next two America's Cups.

Prior to the announcement, there had of course been strong rumours, hopes perhaps, about Ben Ainslie getting the helmsman/skipper role on board and we were not to be disappointed. Other rumours suggested that the sailing team would be a BMW Oracle Mk2 with less than 50% British. In fact the crew announced to date has been slightly more than 50% British - again good news. While TeamOrigin is trying not to be overtly flying the red ensign it is clearly a British campaign and it would be shame not to use some of the UK's considerable home-grown talent.

All the sailing team appointments at present are solid ones, although there appears to be a couple of holes. At present there is a shortage of trimmers and the feeling among several observers we have spoken to about the line-up is that there is also a lack of deep America's Cup experience with top teams - only Robbie Naismith and Kevin Batten are what might be termed 'career Cup sailors' and only Naismith was a regular on the A boat.

While the Brits involved sailed with +39, Victory Challenge, Mascalzone Latino-Capitalia Team or Areva Challenge in Valencia this year, the non-Brits are largely from BMW Oracle Racing, where Mike Sanderson was a mainsheet trimmer in 2003. So it would be good to see some A-boat crew from Luna Rossa and/or Alinghi added to the mix and it is still possible that this may come to pass as Sanderson says there are still around five slots to be filled in the sailing team and these will be finalised by the end of the year bringing the sailing squad up to 24. We suspect this will include at least two more trimmers, another afterguard person and probably a pitman.

However while we make these observations, Sanderson points out that their approach to recruiting was not simply a case of picking the most qualified man for each job, it was much more about relationships between the individuals.

"We wrote down everyone who was involved with the Cup and then created what we called a ‘realistic shortlist’, a list that we thought was achievable and would work well together and went from there," says Sanderson of how he began the recruitment process for the sailing and design teams. "We worked really hard on creating a team that is going to work well together. I am a big believer in getting nice people, that are going to get the most out of each other and that comes sometimes before just getting the best of everyone, based on what they have done in the past. We wanted to make sure they had some chemistry and get the best out of everyone."

So was this Sir Keith Mills' suggestion? "To be honest, it was an approach I had to explain to him before I got the job, but he was on the same wavelength," states Sanderson. "In so many ways my thoughts about how TeamOrigin should be put together was very similar to lots of little bits he’d picked up from other people which I think is one reason I got the job."

Looking at the list in terms of past relationships, then suddenly the sailing team line-up makes more sense. Many of the Brits from the grinders forward to the bow worked together at GBR Challenge. Similarly Ben Ainslie has been saying for years now that he would like to have his Olympic buddy and fellow Gold medallist Iain Percy at his side if ever he were to get to steer a British AC yacht.

Into this mix is Percy's +39 strategist and Star crew Andrew Simpson, also an old Team GBR Olympic squad mate of Ainslie's, while Ian Moore sailed with Ainslie on the B-boat at Emirates Team New Zealand. Odd man out in this mix is perhaps Rob Greenhalgh, unquestionably most capable and who has obviously proven himself to Sanderson on board ABN AMRO One,but who doesn't come from the same Olympic stable as his fellow afterguarders. One definitely gets the impression this is the next generation afterguard following on from the Ian Walker, Andy Beadsworth/Andy Green, Adrian Stead, Jules Salter type line-up at GBR Challenge.

In recruiting the afterguard Sanderson says he put it together around Ainslie. The early appointments took quite a long time to get passed by Sir Keith Mills and his personnel team led by Viv Jarvis who worked with Mills in compiling the team that won the London 2012 Olympic bid. In fact one of the most impressive things about Friday's announcement was not so much the sailing team but the large number of admin staff already recruited to handle everything from HR to marketing to sales. At present 57 people are on the payroll at TeamOrigin - although Sanderson points out that all of the 13 or so people at Juan Yacht Design are also technically working for the team bringing the tally closer to 70.

"After we got Ben we started to talk about sailors," says Sanderson. "Very quickly after talking to Ben it was clear that he wanted Iain Percy and that they were keen to work together. I was really pleased to get Neal Mac on mainsail, maybe that was one of the surprises from the announcement."

A real coup for the sailing team was in getting 'Battler' aka Robbie Naismith who is decidedly a career Cup sailor, with five behind him, three with the Kiwis (including winning campaigns in 1995 and 2000) and two with BMW Oracle. "So with Neal in the middle and Robbie down to leeward and me at the back, we have some depth, and Ben and Iain and the guys can work away at their match racing skills," continues Sanderson.



So what will Sanderson's role be on board? At Oracle BMW Racing in 2003 he was on mainsheet, but he is also obviously himself a capable helmsman/skipper. "I am going to fulfil a role in the afterguard at the back of the boat, a runner-type of role," he says. "I definitely want to be on board and have to make sure I am fit enough and strong enough to participate. I think there is a place for me back there and I think I can bring something to the table technically and I definitely want to be in the front line with the troups. It is my only style of leadership, so I have to do it that way. Ben is totally okay with that - that’s how he did his last campaign with Dalton on board. And I think it is good - it takes the heat off him. It means they can really get on with racing."

When it comes to career Cup designers, the line-up announced at TeamOrigin really has no shortage of past experience. Following Sanderson's time working with him on their winning ABN AMRO campaign for the Volvo Ocean Race, Juan Kouyoumdjian and his team in Valencia have been employed as Principle Designers. Juan K has been with four Cup programs including BMW Oracle Racing and Prada in 2003. He is obviously known for his rather extreme approach to yacht design however this will be more than tempered by both Sanderson and Andy Claughton, TeamOrigin's 'Design Coordinator'. One of the unsung heroes of America's Cup design, Claughton held this similar role at Emirates Team New Zealand, where he has worked for two campaigns, but has been involved with Cup projects in a design capacity all the way back to the 1970s.

Mickey Ickert is also another great appointment having been one of the leading designers at North Sails New Zealand for many many years, where once upon a time he was a colleague of Sanderson's. "Mickey and I have worked for a long long time back to the late 1980s at North Sails NZ," says Sanderson. "He designed all the downwind sails for us at Merit, then at Team NZ and I played a big part in getting Mickey into Oracle (in 2003). Then he designed all the downwind sails for ABN AMRO and Mari Cha. So I have worked with Mickey more than any other sail designers. So I am very pleased to have him, also because I know lots of other people that wanted him."

While a sail designer by trade, Ickert's role is as 'Aero Director' where he will head not only the sail program, but also the rig program, led by Bruce Thompson. The two worked together at BMW Oracle Racing for this last Cup, another of the 'relationships' Sanderson says he wants to keep on the boil. "I can see Robbie Naismith and Neal Mac working well and I know Robbie works well with Mickey and Bruce Thompson. And Ben and Iain work well together and Ben and Ian Moore. I know I can work well with Juan K and we can really get something good going there. Structurally we’ve made sure that Juan K gets who he wants. So I think nearly all the vital relationships we’ve nailed. That’s a big deal."

For Sanderson personnally, one of his biggest roles within the team, and one which doesn't feature in his job title of 'Team Director/Afterguard' is his position as the 'Coutts' or the principle interface between the sail team and the design team, the person who says "the boat is slow in xyz conditions or doing xyz, this might be because of xyz, what's the solution design team?" This is something he has proven most adapt at previously with Robert Miller's Mari Cha III and IV, the Pindar Open 60 and most recently with the ABN AMRO Volvo boats.

This is a role Sanderson admits he enjoys and will be all the more crucial this time with a new generation of boats to tackle, two boat testing banned within teams, but more inter-team informal racing planned, perhaps even on a weekly basis in Valencia. "There is going to be a lot of that this time," confirms Sanderson. "We are going to be out there racing and looking and I think I have a good eye for looking at what other people have got, so I am really keen to do that. So I am going to be able to get a pretty good feel for what is going on and that would be perfect for keeping that relationship between the sailing and design teams going."

In this respect another critical appointment is that of Sanderson's ABN AMRO One navigator Stan Honey, who is well known as one of the world's top big boat navigators. Less well known about Honey is that his career on land has been based on the creation and development of telemetry systems and tracking and it is for this reason that his name appears in the design team line-up rather than the sailing team. As Sanderson puts it: "People have been trying to get Stan to do the AC for 30 years."

"With a brand new rule and all of the uncertainties, the Technical Director job is a fascinating one for me," says Honey. "That’s kind of what I’ve done throughout my normal career - working in remote sensing and navigation technologies, with boats on the side, but mainly on military systems and vehicle navigation and more recently in sports, tracking race cars and athletes and baseballs and hockey pucks and horses and you name it. Sailing, and this job in sailing brings together my technology tracking career and sailing interests, so it is fun."

With no two boating, the chance to use Honey's expertise and technology to monitor their performance and those of their opponents will be crucial. "That is a huge challenge in the absence of two boat testing," agrees Honey. "On the other hand with a brand new rule, the differences you are testing for may be somewhat larger, like they were in the first year of the Volvo rule."

Honey admits his first love is for offshore racing, but he also has considerable experience racing inshore. He has also previously been employed as a consultant on data processing by Cup teams. "The navigator’s job in a high end program is more feeding information to the strategist and tactician and not so much being the strategist. It is more keeping the instruments and data perfect and making sure everyone has it.

"It is always important in a sailing program not to be distracted by too many science projects. It has got to make a difference and it has to be something sailors and designers have confidence in. The first thing I did at ABN AMRO was to stop a bunch of technology projects that I didn’t think we could get to the point where we could count on when we needed to. I think here you have to use judgement and not set out to do stuff that is going to use up time and money and brain power and it is not going to address an important problem or address it in time."

While Ian Moore will be the regular navigator on board the race boat, Honey will certainly be on board too from time to time as, he says "because I can’t do the Technical Director job without being on the boat some of the time because your intuition gets out of calibration."

With the new 90 footer for the 33rd America's Cup at a conceptual stage at present there is not a great of work the design team can launch themselves into. Instead in the immediate future they will be working on Alinghi's old SUI75 [now GBR75] ready for the Acts next year.

The new rule is to be published at the end of October and Andy Claughton reckons that its framework will be based largely on the present class rule, but with some of the numbers changed (the present rule is well regarded among designers for having had most of its loopholes removed). Already Alinghi have stipulated the length of the new boat and that it will have a drop-down keel with a maximum draft of 6.5m. Brad Butterworth has spoken in a frighteningly casual way about "unlimited sail area" but Claughton suspects there will be a fixed mast height and hopes that the box will not be too open as if this will make it hard to have good competition in the 33rd America's Cup.
While the wording of the new rule may be based on the old one both Claughton and Sanderson point out that it is unlikely to promote another generation of unusual looking slab-sided boats. As Sanderson says: "It is not that rule that typeformed those boats, it is the fact that they have all ended up in that corner of the rule. There are many aspects of the rule that could be used again - they have to do that, otherwise they’ll run out of time. If they made it 90ft long and kept a similar concept rule but made the maximum weight 21-22 tonnes then we’d be into a totally different boat. If you look back to the 1992 generation boats they were more like Open 60s and the guys were sitting with their legs out..."

As to why Alinghi/ACM have said that teams can build two boats when in the short time-frame prior to a Cup in 2009, most teams will be hard pressed to design, build and tickle up one, Sanderson has some interesting observations. "I think the two boat thing is to make sure the class develops quickly," he says. "Two boats is going to make the racing more even, certainly between the big teams and I think that is what they are worried about." If a team builds one boat and it is clearly off the pace, then they will have the opportunity to get it right with their second boat. "If we are sailing our first new boat by this time next year for example, we are going to have to commit to the second one also about this time, but by then we would have seen other people’s first generation. So the chance of all of the top teams being stuck in four different corners of the rule will be much less likely. Personally I think that is why they’ve done it."

With the next Cup in 2009, there are supposed to be two Acts in 2008. One Act is to be in Valencia, however a venue is still to be decided for the other one. There is a strong possibility that this might be in the UK. Sanderson cannot shed any more light on this and one gets the impression that 'this is not his department...' "It would be wonderful if it was. It would be a fantastic thing to try and make happen. Unfortunately it is not really in our hands, that is ACM’s deal. We’ll certainly do everything we can to help it along. But I am trying to make sure I stay well away from this!"

So, a promising start for TeamOrigin, and personnally we cannot wait to see them out on the water in Valencia lining up against the opposition.

Audio from Friday

Listen to interviews with

Sir Keith Mills -

and Charles Dunstone -