Team NZ go TP52ing

Skipper Dean Barker talks about a season on Bribon and his plans for 2009

Many one time America's Cup sailors are lurking around in Portimao this week for the final stage of the 2008 Audi MedCup, the Portugal Regatta.

Among them is Emirates Team New Zealand skipper Dean Barker who has this season taken over from Bouwe Bekking as helmsman on board Jose Cusi’s Bribon when the King of Spain is not on board. Bribon led the early part of the 2008 Audi MedCup before being overhauled by Terry Hutchinson’s Quantum Racing. Going into the final races of the circuit Bribon looks set (barring disaster) to secure second place overall in the 2008 championship.

“The 52 has been really good for us,” says Barker who is supported in the afterguard by the likes of Star Olympic medallist and World champion Ross MacDonald and navigator Marcel van Triest. “When I first agreed to sail with these guys, I wasn’t sure how we’d go with all the new boats coming into the class and I’d never sailed with any of the guys before. So it was quite a step into the unknown. But the boat has been pretty competitive and we’ve done a pretty good job over the year to slowly increase the performance. We feel that while we’re not the fastest boat out there we are certainly closer to the pace than we were earlier in the season. If we can finish the season in second we’d be really pleased.”

This performance is particularly impressive considering that Bribon is a 2007 generation design from Judel/Vrolijk. “The class is getting to the top of the development stage,” says Barker when we point this out. “There is the opportunity for small gains in different areas, but I think what we are seeing now is a class with a number of different designs and even different generations are still very competitive in certain conditions. That makes the racing interesting and it makes the decision of where you position a new boat for the next season quite a tough one. You don’t necessarily know the venues when you start building and even then we all know how fickle it can be. So you need a very good all-round package just to be able to be competitive even when your boat is not the quickest one out there.”

So how have they upped their game this year? “Hartwell Jordan and Victor Morino - have both been very active in the sail design,” continues Barker. “We have definitely gone down a couple of different approaches with our overall sail program. We have really worked at trying to develop that compared to where it was last year and that has been pretty beneficial. Because we don’t have a new toy - the boat is a known quantity and we go out and sail it and that has been a pretty good approach for us, because we started the season well but had a bad event at the Breitling Regatta in Palma. Other than that we have been reasonable consistent through the season.”

However they have been outstripped by Quantum Racing. “If you look at that program from the outside, it don’t look like they have any glaring weakness. Quantum has done a very good job with their sails. Their sail program looks fantastic. The boat is very competitive across the board and never seems to have a weakness. The team on the boat is very strong right across the board. They are a pretty good operation from start to finish and that is reflected in their results. They sail the boat well and they have avoided the bad regatta.”

Throughout the season Bribon has benefited from having a regular crew with only one change being made throughout the season. “The King and Jose [Cusi] jump on and off depending upon when they are in town, but generally we have the same group of guys and it does help. It is hard when you are chopping and changing because the crew work on these things can cost you a boatlength here or there and suddenly you get caught up by the pack and it is hard to escape again.”

The King has competed in half the regattas this year. “He is a great guy to have on the boat,” says Barker. “He is very relaxed, very laid back. It is good for the circuit and certainly good for the media interest that is going on.”

So Bribon this year - but next year the big news is that Emirates Team New Zealand are to have their own TP52, which has just started building at Cooksons. “We have just started building. For us it is tough: We have been sitting on our hands this last year, hoping that this AC mess will sort itself out, but it hasn’t yet and we know that for the survival of our team we actually have to be active otherwise all the momentum that we had in Valencia will be gone and we’ll be starting again almost. So we have been talking about the TPs. We were hoping to do one this year, but we ran out of time. So we are going to give it a decent crack next year.”

Part of the reason for the exercise is in keeping members of their team active - both sailors and designers. As a result Botin & Carkeek are likely to become flavour of the month once again (their sole new boat in 2008 is the series leader Quantum Racing) as Marcellino Botin is one of the leading lights of the Team NZ design department. “We are trying to utilise our resources as best we can from the Cup structure so that it gives the guys an interest right across the team as to what’s going on and something to keep interest levels up. The TP is becoming a one design class now more than ever before, where it is hard to make gains. It is not a development class like the AC90 might be, but at the same time it does gives everyone an interest.”

The boat will be crewed by the Kiwi Cup team sailing squad, with convenient timing, since Peter de Ridder has thrown in the towel with his Mean Machine TP52 program which was principally crewed by Team New Zealanders led by Ray Davies. Barker warns that we might even see the occasional guest appearance by Team NZ grandees Grant Dalton and Kevin Shoebridge. “It is good for those guys to get out of the office. They slave away down there while we are up here enjoying the sunshine.”

Considering the present hiatus in the America’s Cup, one can imagine that Dalton would be have been contemplating a Volvo Ocean Race campaign as a substitute. Barker says that this was the case but the timing didn’t work out and they hadn’t expected the Cup debacle to continue for so long.

However they have the newly announced Louis Vuitton Pacific Cup to fill the void and given the take up by challengers this week this event is being fully embraced by Cup teams. “The level of interest that has been received already - it is a fantastic opportunity and who knows where it will lead to in the future? So many of these Cup teams are busting a gut to go and do some sailing again and it is a pretty good environment to go and do it. In the end it is going to be a tough decision for Louis Vuitton as to which teams to invite because we only have the two boats and as you start adding more and more teams it just ends up with more down time and more time to get through the racing.”

If there is enough interest, then surely it wouldn’t be so hard to ship a few more boats out from Valencia from other teams?

As to the equalness of their 2007 generation V5 Cup boats that will be used for the competition, Barker says that they have a mode which makes them almost identical which they used when they were two boating. “You wouldn’t know which boat you were on because they are so even in performance and it would be perfect racing.”

He adds that the boats will simplified further with some of the tweaky bits removed. “Given that it is going to be raced inside the harbour on short courses and the fundamentals of the boats are going to be very similar, I don’t see it as a huge advantage for us and a huge disadvantage for another team. The boats will be simplified a lot so that they won’t be reliant on all the mechanical systems and things on board. It won’t be one design sailing, but it will be pretty close to it . The sails will be mixed up evenly between the two boats and part of the entry fee will be buying a heavy weight genniker which will be pretty resilient so that we don’t have too much down time with sail problems.”

For the rest of this year Barker is getting involved with Torbjorn Tornqvist, owner of the TP52 Artemis, who Coutts has persuaded to step into an RC44 program.

As to the World Match Racing Tour, Barker says they haven’t made any plans yet, however he is contemplating the Monsoon Cup in Malaysia. “You get all the top teams at that one because it is the last one of the season and it is a good change to go and racing against the top teams. And we’ll do the NZ Match Racing Nationals again which is nice because it is at home and then late January/early Feb we’ll be out on the Cup boats.”

So, no rest for the wicked, even when there is no America’s Cup.