9 June 2004

With a sailing CV that includes victorious campaigns in the Americas Cup, the Whitbread and many other sailing classics, there appears little that Marco Constant still needs to achieve. Yet this South African's desire to compete is as strong now as it has ever been as Stephen Kirker found out.

Sailors of Marco's calibre are quite difficult to arrange interviews with. If not hard at work on a campaign either on the water or off, Marco is very likely to be found honing his skills on a surfboard or scaling a mountain peak. I eventually managed to track him down to his base in San Francisco and caught up with him soon after he had been involved in helping Philippe Kahn set a new record in the Coastal Cup on his maxi yacht Pegasus. I was keen to find out how Marco had originally hooked up with Team Pegasus. "I've been involved with them for a few years and with Philippe Kahn who's the owner of Pegasus and I guess it was just word of mouth. They were looking for some guy to promote their sail programme and get their sail programme up to speed and he asked me to come and sail with him. I knew a lot of people sailing on the boat and at the time I was doing a round the world race, I think, and when I came off it they signed me up to work on their stuff for them. I've done a few events with them, seven or eight, a few Transpac Races and some Puerto Villarta and Cabo San Lucas Races, Mexico races, that sort of thing."

Breaking records is just one aspect of a job that offers more thrills in a month than most get in a lifetime. The Coastal Cup Record added to Marco's long list of achievements and I surmised that things had pretty much gone to plan during the race. "Yeah, it was pretty good. This area from San Francisco down to Santa Barbara, all the way down there, as you go offshore a few miles, it blows pretty hard and if you're going in the right direction it's perfect sailing for these medium-light boats like Pegasus. It was a great race against Pyewacket; Roy Disney's boat and we had a great race until they started breaking their sails. That was the end of that." Pegasus went on to win the TransPac with Mike Joubert on board while Marco sailed on Pyewacket, the last major outing for Roy Disney's 77 foot Reichel-Pugh designed sled.

But how did this Durban native manage to make such a name for himself on the international sailing circuit. We have to go back a few years to Marco's time in the South African navy to learn more about his incredible drive and what seems to be an essential ingredient for top sailors, more than a hint of madness. This was clearly illustrated when Marco decided that he wanted to enter the Vasco Da Gama race in an L26, in those years sailed from Durban to East London.

"It's a scary story actually. I was in the navy at the time and we had all these L26's and, I don't know how, but I managed to con these guys at Navy Base Jalsina, which was where I was based, that I should take a L26 and race it down to East London." He laughed at the recollection. "And so I got a few of my buddies who were in the navy at the time and we got the thing and did the start and started racing We were behind because we were such a little boat. Everybody was trying to get offshore, over the six hundred fathom line, to get to the current that goes down past East London. All these big boats were ripping out there because they were going so fast and it was a howling north-easter and it had been blowing for about four days previously. The waves were massive, they were way bigger than the L26. Then typical of Durban, this buster came in, the southwest buster and it ripped all our gear off so I've no idea how hard it was blowing. I know we were running bare poles for about 8 hours.

"The big boats, because they were so much further out and because they were so much further in the Mozambique current, got hammered really hard and as a result they got washed down. A lot of them got washed down past East London. Anyway, 8 hours later the wind died down and we put up a storm jib and we started going back up wind again, trying to get back inshore. The next thing we look at it. That's the light. We checked the lighthouse and those were the characteristics of East London. Now we couldn't believe that we were there already. Obviously we'd been ripped down in the current, but because we were so small we didn't go as fast as the other guys and we sailed into East London and we basically won the race. We got in and everyone was amazed to see us there. That was how we did that Vasco."

According to Marco his move onto the professional racing circuit was almost accidental. "Pudda Kuttel did this boat called Atlantic Privateer, it was a Farr 82 or something, and there were three of them being built. There was one called UBS, the Swiss guys did and there was a New Zealand one called New Zealand Endeavour and they were three sisters except our boat was a mast head rig and their boats were fractional. We built the sails. I was working for Geoff Meek at Bruce Bank Sails. This guy Padda built this boat to do the Round the World Race and he needed sails but he wasn't going to use what he considered a no name brand like Bruce Banks. So the guys from Bruce Banks in Cape Town said 'we'll change our name, we'll buy another franchise. We'll start a company called Hood Sails South Africa and then we'll build the sails here under their design, we'll use their fabrics and we'll build them here.' So I was involved in that and then the boat was launched and they needed a trimmer and sail guy so I was the guy.

"So I went around the world and actually at that time, the Vice-President of Hood in USA was a guy called Robbie Doyle. He left Hood to start his own company and make Doyle Sails. We were in New Zealand at the time, going around the world and he came down to New Zealand and said he needed some people up there in USA) to get his programme up to big boat standard, big boat speed. We were going pretty well at the time and we were very fast, So he invited me up there and that's where it all started. So I went over there, started making sails there, doing a lot of sailing, racing with all the customers over there and different programmes. I got on the fifty foot circuit and went from there and did another couple of Whitbreads and a few America's Cups amongst everything else." "It's the best sailing and the worst sailing you ever do in your life."

And it is the Whitbread Races where Marco has found what he considers sailing nirvana: the Southern Ocean in a Whitbread race. "In terms of pure sailing you can't beat that. It's the best sailing and the worst sailing you ever do in your life. It's great sailing down there. It's very predictable and actually, apart from the icebergs and stuff, it blows, it's safe. It depends on how you position yourself in the low-pressure systems. Basically in the southern Ocean, you get these low systems coming through all the time. It's like clockwork. It comes through, it passes you, the wind starts heading and backs off again and then it dies down and then the next system comes through. It starts heading again, it starts blowing up, piping up, it frees you up and the next thing you're hauling in the mail for the next forty eight hours and then it starts dying down an that system passes you and the next one comes. It's like clockwork down there."

Marco has a burning desire to compete at all levels in sailing and thrives on the pressures that this entails. "For me the competition is the big part. What drives me to the whole thing is the competition, racing against the other guy. You go and do match racing and it's a fantastic format and it's a great way to race. And then you go and do the Mumm 36 Worlds for example and that is another fantastic challenge, a fantastic event, because the boats are all one design, they're all the same and the racing's so tight."

"I'd have to say some of the earlier Whitbreads were really extreme." Having faced the rigours of the Southern Ocean in various Whitbreads as well as the vagaries of the North Atlantic it comes as something of a surprise to hear that Marco's most extreme experience came on a South African boat.

"There's a guy called Bertie Reed in South Africa. He's a nutter. A great guy but a piece of work. The navy built this 60 footer, called at the time Vortrekker II and we raced that thing to Uruguay when it was brand new. Then we wanted to basically test the boat coming back and of course Bertie Reed said 'Oh keep going south, keep plugging south.' There was no wind there and we went down south. I don't think we were that far south. We were at about fifty-four degrees south or something. Nothing extreme but we got completely annihilated, hammered, basically rolled the boat flat, bent the rig, bust the pedestal. We slipped sideways on about three waves and it was outrageous. It was pretty extreme.

One thing that struck me was the immense enjoyment he clearly gets from his job. I had been interested to read that he is usually the instigator of the on-board betting pool during off shore races that predict the finish time. When I asked him about the betting pools and when they were closed on board he laughed. "How do you know about that? It depends on the race. The Transpac's Two thousand miles and basically it depends on the race and it depends on the conditions. If you're in trade winds and it's pretty easy to predict, you stretch it out a bit. You do it at like twelve hundred miles or something otherwise it gets too easy."

For someone who has made a name internationally with his knowledge about sails and is in demand for his expertise in helping prepare sail programmes I was a little surprised when Marco expressed his interest in getting onto the multi hull circuit, where these skills are less crucial. "Basically monohulls are lead mines and the reason sail development is so critical is because it makes such a difference on slower boats. Once you get into planing its not as critical anymore and I'd just like to get more into that mode where you can work on development where you start planing earlier and multihulls is where I'd like to be eventually."

The obvious question concerned Marco's possible involvement with the defence of Alinghi's Americas Cup in Valencia in the new turbo charged Americas Cup boats. "I'm not sure. We'll see. They've signed a lot of guys up but I'm just waiting a little bit. Between you and me I wouldn't mind going to sail with Team New Zealand." He did give me permission to publish that however. "I like to wind things up a bit." A little cagey when asked about the Coutts-Alinghi rumours he was much more forthcoming about a potential South African entry to the cup, enthusiastically grilling me for information.

The Alinghi campaign was Marco's second involvement in the America's Cup following the Abracadabra campaign of 2000. The rules concerning crew nationality have now been changed but when Marco committed himself to the Alinghi campaign, long-term residence was part of the requirement. Despite the fact that success was not a certainty it is clear that Marco made a very shrewd decision when joining the upstart team initiated by Ernesto Berterelli and led by Russell Coutts.

"Alinghi was a fantastic experience. Ernesto's a great guy and has a great vision for the sport and where he wants it to go. It's a pleasure working with him actually. He really projected a lot into the programme. He wasn't there all the time but you knew he was there. Everything that we wanted was what he wanted." While other Americas Cup campaigns may have been hampered with team owner participation this was not the case with Berterelli, an accomplished sailor in his own right. "It's also a mentality thing. There's many accomplished sailors like Hasso Plattner. He steers the boat pretty well but you'd never want the guy on the boat. He'd be completely disruptive. You'd be chaotic. So a guy like Hasso, who I actually like a lot because I think he's very colourful and I like his temperament, but on a cup boat he'd be just horrific. A guy like Ernesto is the complete opposite: he's very mellow. He doesn't make any comments on the boat and if he does it's a very subtle comment and everything will come out in the debrief. If he feels very strongly about something he'll bring it up at the debrief which is the correct time to do it and not disrupt the whole boat. So he's very professional that way in terms of sailing and he knows how to deal with people."

Marco Constant is one of South Africa's most succesful sailing exports, having tasted success in both Americas Cup and Whitbread campaigns as well as sailing in just about every other race or regatta that counts. In part 2 of this Sailing exclusive, we start where we left off last month and look into the incredible success that was the Alinghi Americas Cup campaign.

The most important person that Berterelli managed to employ for his attempt to win the Americas Cup was Russell Coutts. Marco is in no doubt that Alinghi's success owed as much to Coutts management and strategic nous as his skills on the course. " I think the biggest thing that came out of the cup for me was Russell's ability to trust and delegate and I think the biggest part of our success was the strength that Russell had to trust people."

Russell and Marco go back a long way." I've known Russell through the circuit for a long time and racing against him in the match racing circuit, sailing with him in a few events on different boats. We actually shared an apartment in San Francisco for a few years - not that either of us was ever there. We were always racing against each other or with each other. We've become pretty good friends."

Alinghi whitewashed team New Zealand in the Americas Cup final but Marco ascribed this as much to self-destruction on Team New Zealand's part as Alinghi's pace. So what went wrong? Marco has a clear explanation that sounds all too logical, especially when he compares it to the Alinghi campaign. "I think they probably had the strongest design team, they had a fairly strong sailing team, however the project was a design driven programe. The cup is a design competition but Russell knows where he wants to balance the percentage of design, the balance of boat performance to boat handling. Basically you've got to be able to sail the boat.

"You can put on a rudder that's twenty percent smaller that will get you around the course fifteen seconds faster: it'll be a metre per minute faster but you won't be able to pre-start. Getting off the start line in a good position is absolutely critical in a match race so this is where Russell's strength was. He could say to the designer: 'we think we're going too radical here, we need to cut that back.' And you knew he was concerned about it and we'd sit down and renegotiate everything and re run tests. We'd say: 'okay, we're going to give up half a metre a minute here by doing this but to be able to steer the boat, or to be able to sail the boat correctly, that's what we need to do.'

"Team New Zealand came out with some really innovative ideas but there was a point where they basically overruled the sailors. The designers' ideas overthrew the sailors. They couldn't sail the boat to their optimum performance. The boat was very fast, make no mistake about it. I think that in some areas it was quicker than Alinghi. They had some incredibly strong ideas and very powerful execution of their ideas but I think their sailing team was maybe a little inexperienced in how to deal with the designers and how to manipulate them to ensure that they got what they wanted to sail the boat."

Russell Coutts has a perfect record in Americas Cup races and is clearly at the very pinnacle of his sport. "What people see him as is undefeated reputation but I believe he's better than that. People have to realize what the guy's done. Russell Coutts has to deal with the media (and his departure from New Zealand was a sore point) then he's got to pull the team together from a bunch of freakin' scoundrels and win this thing." Money is a critical component of any Americas Cup success and while Alinghi was a well-funded campaign, it was smaller than One world's and Oracle's so Coutts had a delicate balancing act to perform. "Russell basically went in and put the team together, delegated eighty people into the marketing and media aspect, the sailing aspect, which is the biggest part of it, coordinated the crews and the design. What he's achieved is humungous. It's absolutely amazing. It's quite unbelievable in any sport. I think he's way ahead of guys like Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods, what his ability is and what he's achieved."

One day of course everyone has to retire and Marco is very certain about how he wants to bow out. " I hope I don't have to be forced out. I think you know when you're ready to stop. I think you start getting interested in other areas or other things. Other parts of your life become more important and you just start phasing it out I'd imagine. I think a lot of it is how driven you are. Your vision is what people see and what people want in their projects."

So is there any particular way that Marco keeps himself in decent physical shape to face the rigours of top class sailing? "No, I'm very active anyway. When I'm not sailing I get the hell away from the water. I do a lot of climbing, surfing and I'm into this kite-boarding thing now. So I do a lot of that all the time. I'm pretty fit. I run a lot. I've always been fit which is a huge assett." Most of the Christmas period was spent away from the pressure of top-end yacht racing and indulging in these toys.

All this action has meant little time to start putting down any roots and starting a family. "I have to say that's one aspect in my life that hasn't been great." When I pointed out that there are many sailors such as South African Jonathon Swain, Paul Cayard and Grant Dalton who manage to combine life on the water with family he pointed out that: "Grant has a little different deal you know. His focus is basically finding sponsorship for another Whitbread programme or the like, and that's how Grant lives his life. He takes a cut off that and that's how he lives. I get involved in so many different programmes and I'm all over the place all the time. Not so much since the last cup, but there was a point where I was sailing three hundred and twenty days a year. I was just burnt you know. Completely burned out. That definitely doesn't leave any space for anybody. It's one regatta, you're on the plane and you're in the next regatta." Phew!

Marco's experience as a sailmaker has been put to good use in the years that he has been sailing professionally and it is something that makes him a vital cog in most of the teams he sails with. Taken in by team Pegasus to work on their sail programme, I asked him about the sail development process. "While the designers know what mould they want to design and as a sailor I know basically what kind of profiles I want to see on the boat, so I work with the designer to get the shapes we want; the aerodynamic shape; the chord shapes. The profiles are pretty much left up to how we sail the boat so I get a really good feeling for that and we'll start a sail programme based on that. We might go through a few development sails in the process to get where we want to be ideally."

Wind conditions and the limitations on sail numbers in certain races affect planning a comprehensive sail wardrobe. "You're trying to create a sail that gives you the best overlap. Each sail has to overlap with the next sail. Basically, as opposed to one-design sails or cup type sails where your overlaps are a lot less, there's a lot deeper overlap."

In the last Volvo Ocean Race (ex Whitbread), Amer Sports One had been leading the fleet towards Cape Town but Illbruck simply steamed past them in the final sprint. At the time it was felt that Grant Dalton and his crew had been missing something in their sail wardrobe, a reflection on their rather hurried preparation for the race. Marco agreed that they would almost definitely been more competitive had their sail programme been up to speed. Illbruck had a massive advantage in this area, apart from the extra preparation time they enjoyed. "Illbruck actually went and bought our last programme, the EF programme so straight away the bought into the top in technology from the previous race. And that was all the stuff we'd developed in the one before that. There were a few rule changes the last time which actually made it a little easier with for the last Whitbread with regard to the Code Zero spinnakers and stuff like that."

Marco was with Paul Cayard aboard EF Language when she won the 1997/98 Whitbread race, totally dominating the fleet. It was up to Illbruck to take this proven programme and make it even better, a programme itself that had been based on a previous campaign. "The development had been done and now it was just a matter of refining it and refining it and refining it to get the overlaps correct." Getting what you want in specific conditions does not just come down to speed. "The other thing with the Whitbread boats is that stability is a big part of the game so you've got to have sails that are not going to lay you over on your ear all the time. You have to figure out how you're going to get the most optimum drive out of your inventory."

The Code Zero sails formed a crucial part of most campaigns since their first appearance because of the advantages they offered. Marco was one of the people involved in the development of the sail. "The Code Zero's go way back to three Whitbreads ago. A Code Zero is a spinnaker and we tried to build this thing as flat as possible to make it go upwind because in the past the Whitbread boats never had any masthead sails so in light air, 12 knots and below, they were a complete dog. They weren't going anywhere. So basically we tried to build a spinnaker that would go upwind and that we started on Instrum Justitia which is a Swedish Whitbread boat that I did the 93/94 race on (EF was indirectly a continuation of Instrum Justicia). Lawrie Smith is actually responsible for the code zero. It was his whole big brain wave you know. 'We'd take a jib and sew spinnaker cloth on the back to make it legall.' EF was originally run by Lawrie Smith. It was his programme." Smith left to join Silk Cut because he wanted to do something for an English team while Magnus Olson, who was running the EF programme invited Paul Cayard to join EF. In hindsight Cayard must be incredibly satisfied with the decision.

"And then, although we weren't allowed masthead sails, this was a spinnaker which had a huge overlap and spinnakers are controlled by their girth, which at the time was a seventy five percent girth. In the ninety-seven/eight race when I was with EF, we developed this Code Zero and we started building it out of kevlar and just made it heavier and heavier. This ended up being one hundred kilos and then we finally got it back down to eighty-seven kilos but it was extremely effective and we went up wind like a freight train. In eight knots of breeze we were doing ten knots of boat speed. But the problem was, it was still a spinnaker and it had seventy-five percent girth and this thing was flapping out the back. We had to convince the measurers that this was not a cheater sail...was not a concept to beat the rule."

The approach that the EF campaign used in the 97/98 race was one that set the bar according to Marco, especially the use of sail cards and the stopover ports to optimize the 15 sails permitted on board per leg. "We'd besailing on the leg and we'd be talking about our sails and our inventory and we'd want a little refinement to, say for example, the A5 which is a masthead reaching spinnaker. So we'd order the next sail from the boat using e-mail. So by the time we got to the next stop we already had these sails that we'd already developed new and waiting in the box for us. We'd hit the dock and we'd load the sails on and we'd just carry on sailing for another three days and go sail testing. While the other guys, Grant Dalton and his guys for example, they'd be back at the dock and on the piss all night."

It is surprising to hear about the constant sail tweaking, especially since the EF programme spent 15 months on sail development alone, Marco and the other members working almost every day. "When you're testing you just motor up wind at night to get upwind and then the next day, during the day, you go through your polars and your sails and you just sail downwind all day from sun up to sun down. You turn around and motor up wind again all night. You'll be out there a week. In our case we had two identical boats, EF Language and EF Education which was a perfect testing platform. If we were doing any reaching we'd reach off to Iceland or something, go to Greenland for lunch in ten days time, turn around and come back. We had eight code zero's for example before we got to the one that was on."

In his years of sailing on the international circuit Marco has worked with sailors whose achievements are massive and financiers whose riches are seemingly endless. EF was a very successful campaign but what was it like working with one of sailing's more colourful characters, Paul Cayard? "He's an interesting guy. Actually I like him. He's very flamboyant and he's talented. He has a huge ego, which probably drives him. It's a lot about Cayard. He always talks about himself in the third person. In most of the cases you compare him to a guy like Russell Coutts: it's a completely different ball game."

Marco was forced to miss the last Volvo Ocean Race due to his commitment to the Alinghi Americas Cup campaign and the Swiss residency that it entailed at the time. However he has not been left out of the loop, especially with the development of the new Volvo class for the next race. "Magnus and those guys sent me a draft and said they wanted my opinions when they were formulating a lot of that." The last Volvo Ocean Race was not the massive event that it had been, something that Marco ascribed to its proximity to the Americas Cup on the calendar as well as the nationality issues involved. He also pointed out that the event might have got too elaborate, the extra ports of call adding to the cost. With a new fleet of boats and a back to basics approach there is a chance that he may yet be seen back in South Africa on the next race. "I've got my ear to the ground and I'm looking at a few different things. There's not a whole lot of big projects that have come up yet but if they start butting up and we start getting some good skippers in there and stuff, I'll definitely be interested in working with a programme or two."

If he were to become involved, Marco's role would be even more complicated than before. The new Volvo Open 70 rules allow fewer sails than before. "With the smaller inventory, and actually its quite a lot smaller, your overlaps have got to be so much better which in a way makes it in a way, a little frustrating. You get a jack of all trades; you don't get a thoroughbred of a sail. The advantage of it is it's a pretty challenging project. How you're going to make this thing go all the way down to that bottom range and all the way up to this top range and still be effective compared to what the other guys got." And it is working on new projects that really motivates Marco. "That's really what my interest is. I really enjoy that. I like the new technical aspects of any new project."

The knowledge that Marco has about sailmaking and his experience on the racecourse is invaluable. I asked him which aspect was more important in sail development. "It's a little bit of a combination actually. As a sailmaker you only start understanding the dynamics, especially now with these moulded sails, as to why sails behave the way they do. If you see something and you want to change that, you know why, what its doing and with the materials we're using these days its so sophisticated and there's so little stretch relative to what we were using, its pretty easy to predict how its going to come out."

It is to the progress in sail technology that Marco moved to next. "I'd say in the last ten years the biggest technology jump is moulded sails and then fabrics. I'd probably say cuben fibre has got to be one of the ones right up there. I think it's a pretty innovative material although it does have its downfall that it stretches so much compared to Vectran or Carbon. But its used in such a wide spread of the sailing industry it's got to be one of the more versatile, user friendly fabrics. It covers the Grand Prix cruising boats all the way into the raceboats. One World actually had a few cuben fibre mainsails last time that actually looked very good. I thought they looked incredible actually."

Marco does not get home as much as he'd like and as is his way, he is involved in various projects on an ad-hoc basis. He was quite keen on the idea of doing the next Cape to Rio race in one of the new Maxi's that Hasso Plattner and Roy Disney have been developing. "Actually it would be fun to do the Rio Race in those things." And with a South African Americas Cup Campaign underway....?

Let's hope he makes it.