The champions return

Rob Greenhalgh's RMW Marine team fire up their yellow flier prior to tomorrow's JJ Giltinan Trophy

Taking time off from his new position on Mike Sanderson's ABN AMRO Volvo campaign, Rob Greenhalgh is currently down in Double Bay, Sydney getting his yellow 18ft RMW Marine skiff up to speed to defend his 'World Champion' title in the class' Ssangyong JJ Giltanan World Trophy Championship starting on Saturday.

Greenhalgh, brother Peter and Dan Johnson got out to Sydney at the weekend and are now trying to reacquaint themselves with their yellow flyer. Due to various other sailing commitments and crew getting very un-rock and roll things like proper jobs the last time the trio sailed together on the 18 was when they won the JJ Giltinan Trophy with a race to spare in January 2004.

Aside from reacquainting themselves with the boat they are also having to tune up their rig having fitted a new mast and RMW Sails. "It is far from ideal, but everyone has been busy and that is the way it goes sometimes," says Greenhalgh. The boat also has new carbon fibre wings.

"We’ve done two days sailing. We did some tuning with Howie [Hamlin] yesterday which went well. We’re not off the pace. We’ve got some work to do on the sails. So we’ll be a bit quicker today," said Greenhalgh.

Last year's JJ Giltinan Trophy was fairly thin on numbers with just 22 boats competing. A year later and the championship is looking more tastey with 29 boats entered. Among the new faces in the 'battle of the white goods' [due to the involvement of John Winning, many of the 18's sponsors are fridge/freezer manufacturers] Olympic 49er sailors Daniel Philips and Ewan McNicol skippering Omega Smeg and Club Marine. "Down here the fleet is very keen here now and they are all up a notch on pace. This year we have a big fleet and it is going to be good," says Greenhalgh.

Former 18ft skiff sailor, now better known for racing his ocean going 66ft skiff AAPT Grundig is also back joining in the fun. A surprise entry is Philippe Kahn's son Shark, who famously became the Melges 24 World Champion in 2003 at the tender age of just 14. "His dad paid a bit of money to get a boat sorted out. He’s sailing with Cameron McDonald and a guy called Stretch, both Aussie skiff sailors," says Greenhalgh.

Unfortunately for Greenhalgh this year there has been a clash of dates between the JJ Giltinan Trophy and the International 14 World Championships currently running in New Zealand, where he is also the defending champion. "The choice was doing one or the other, so we obviously chose this one. But the boys are doing well now." After four races (at the time of writing) 49er sailors Ben Rhodes/Stevie Morrison and Alistair Richardson and Sydney silver medallist Ian Barker hold the top two spots also sailing RMW Marine works boats.



This time next year it looks unlikely that Greenhalgh will be able to take part in either championship as he is due to compete in the Volvo Ocean Race as part of Mike Sanderson's ABN AMRO team.

Greenhalgh says he got the Volvo job through Hamble's yacht racing 'massif' - meeting Sanderson via girlfriend Emma Richards. "I’ve been keen on doing a Volvo for years. I spoke to Moose about doing some sailing on Mari Cha a while ago and then this thing came on line for him and he asked me to come along here."

On board the VO70 Greenhalgh doesn't have a specific role. Effectively they are sailing shorthanded so everyone at some time or another will have to do everything, although work on the bow will be left to the nimble Jan Dekker and Justin Slattery. Greenhalgh expects to be helming and trimming most of the time.

"60% of us will drive the boat and 40% wouldn’t so much. We’ll all drive at some point I’m sure and maybe if it is hairy maybe only certain people will drive. Who knows - we’ll wait and see. People may have fortes and weaknesses in certain areas. The whole point of training is to find that out and work it out from there."

From a background racing 14s and 18ft skiffs, Greenhalgh over the last years has been slowly moving into larger boats such as the Mumm 30 in the Tour Voile and in 2004 sailing on Colm Barrington's Flying Glove and having occasional days out on board GBR Challenge . Meeting Sanderson he graduated up wholescale racing as part of an army of crew on board Robert Miller's 140ft schooner Mari Cha IV at the Voiles de St Tropez last autumn. But, he admits: "I haven't sailed anything with a serious canting keel. It is a privilege to be in a position to sail on something like this."

Sanderson obviously got Greenhalgh on board due to his success in the 14 and 18ft skiff in a similar fashion to Grant Dalton getting Australian 49er ace Chris Nicholson to race on board Amer Sport One four years ago.

"I think Moose [Mike Sanderson] has tried to bring in as wide a group of people as possible, people with knowledge and different skill sets," says Greenhalgh. "You don’t want to move away from the guys who have done it all before and know the race, so you have a lot of race experience and a wide range of sailing experience."

In terms of the sailing experience it is a fast yacht, but there the comparison between the Volvo Ocean 70 and what he is used to sailing ends. "You tip them over and go fast that way - you don’t sail them flat. There are some comparisons between skiff sailing and the Volvo 70 but there are not many and it is very much more the big boat side of things and getting used to putting the rope around the winch the right way."

Greenhalgh sees his move into the Volvo as an opportunity to earn a living as a professional sailor, but also a chance to learn from some of his highly learned colleagues on board. "I’ve got to make a living and in the big boats is where the living is to be made and I enjoy it a lot. It is a different sort of enjoyment to the dinghy stuff, but there’s some very good racing and it is a different aspect of the sport which is enjoyable and working with guys who’ve done a lot more and are all from different areas and have all got different things they are good at whether it is boat design or sail design - you can learn from all of them." He is also enjoying learning about big boat technology.

As a performance sailor, Greenhalgh says he doesn't mind racing slow boats if they are competitive, but offshore having a boat that can sail at maximum warp factor makes sense. "If you are going some distance you don’t want to be going at 10 knots. You want to be doing 17-18 or 20 knots."

Fortunately the VO70 is just such a beast. To date the ABN AMRO team haven't really cranked the boat up as they have yet to see more than 20 knots of breeze. But the prospect of racing at 30 knots certainly interests Greenhalgh.

To date his longest offshore passages have been Round Ireland and the Rolex Fastnet Race - 4-5 days. Fortunately thanks to the speed of the VO70 the legs of this year's race will be short - perhaps as little as 18-19 days for the boats to get from Vigo to Cape Town on the first leg. "But we would have done a lot of training by then and it will be just a case of getting into the routing," says Greenhalgh.

After the JJ Giltinan Trophy Greenhalgh will be hightailing back to Portimao to resume his Volvo duties.