The old campaigner

Grant Dalton talks about Amer One's progress and clears up a few rumours about the girls

So why does Amer One have a speed problem? Is it because it is Frers not a Farr design? "It's not the crew, it's definitely not the crew," he maintains. "I think it is the hull or it could be the appendages or a bit of everything. I don't know. I still don't think I would have changed my decision about the boat [opting to take the Frers rather than the Farr boat].

"I still see things in this boat which I like. It is quite a kind boat. It is a nice boat to sail which is a very Frers thing. And we took a shot. Put it another away round - if we'd taken our other boat would we be beating illbruck and the answer is no, so why shouldn't we not be doing what we're doing? Will anyone else beat them? No at this point. So whether you come second or eighth - to me it doesn't make any difference." (expletives removed).

"If you look at the boats that did well on this leg they are boats that are doing well. I've always thought Assa was a really good boat. They've found stability and stability is really important in a campaign," says Dalts refering to campaign harmony as demonstrated by the small number of crew changes being made by the top campaigns. "We have high stability, but we had a bad leg".

So it looks likely that for the next leg at least, Amer Sports One's crew will stay the same. He says it is possible Paul Cayard might rejoin the boat, but at the moment this is not in their plans.

So what is he going to do about their speed problem? "Where we seem to be strong is when we can mix the cards up a bit. Tactically we sail quite strongly. I've always felt sure we were going to be quite strong because we've got a good afterguard. I don't think I'm in revolution mode, but I am in evolution mode. But I could get to revolution quite quickly if we don't perform well on the next leg. So at the moment I'm not going to do anything".

Dalts says he can't change the boat and he has spent his sail allocation, so all they can do is tinkering - recutting existing sails. "We've got new sails to come fo course, but in terms of conceptual sail changes - we've played our cards."

Continued on page three...