14 May 2005

Team Shosholoza, the South African Americas Cup team has relocated to a brand new base in Valencia, Spain, the site of the 2007 Americas Cup. The team's brand new boat was officially launched in the middle of May, but the boat only hit the water for the first time early in June. The team has not been idle however, grappling with numerous logistical challenges on shore while some team members have been making an impression on the Swedish Match Tour. Stephen Kirker recently talked to key members of the team.

It has been frustrating in a way for Team Shosholoza having a brand new boat, the first of the version 5 class of Americas Cup yachts to be launched by any team competing in the cup. Having been training out on the water very intensely for months, the team had to focus on doing all they could to get the new yacht ready for action. Paul Standbridge, the Sailing Manager of team Shosholoza explained that, despite the inevitable setbacks, the spirit in the team was still excellent:

"Team spirit is great, as always I might add. Yeah, we're a little bit behind now putting the new boat together. Of course that is compounded by being in a new country with a foreign language so that does slow things a little bit. But we're in good shape. We hope to be sailing on Monday for the first time, which is tomorrow, the 6th, which I must say, for the sailors, is a little bit late but not to worry, that's life. We're finishing the build, which is putting on all the deck gear, which all takes time. It's got to be done very precisely. We've only just finished putting on the trim tab, which is like a second rudder. And the crew are very much involved now with the build team, finishing off building the boat."

When the boat was finally launched Jason Ker, the Team Shosholoza Head designer was thrilled to finally see his teams creation out on the water, but there's still no letting up:

"We're certainly starting to get on a slightly more even keel on things. We've had the big deadline of the official launch on the 19th. That was really a presentation event, in effect showing the boat and floating it for a big T-Systems event. Since then we've been really trying to get the boat as race ready as possible and we'll be starting to do a bit mores structural testing and a bit more preparation for the event starting in 2 weeks time."

Although with the computer aided design facilities now available to naval architects, and little is left to chance, Jason remarked that RSA 83 floated just as expected but there was still much to be done after her first trip around the marina before he could breathe more easily:

"We did some structural testing and we've brought her back in, de-rigged her and we're checking through, making sure everything is what we expect to see at this stage. The mast is a particularly critical part of these boats. It's made of high modulus carbon fibre. The construction quality is paramount and the design obviously is critical as well. So we have to check that it's behaving as we expect. The keel areas are also critical areas. We have to make sure everything is behaving as we expect in the keel area and that we're safe to go out in the increased seas and so on. So we gradually build up confidence. Initially we only go to half the head stay load and we take a look around. We creep it up a bit more and take a very good look at all the fittings and then dismantle everything, take a close look inside, etcetera, and carry on."

There were some problems stepping the new mast, but Paul Standbridge said that these were soon overcome:

"It's just very time consuming and we're just finding a couple of errors of tolerance, let's say. We're just making a few minor modifications, which again, just take quite a long time especially trying to get things machined in a weekend in Spain is quite hard to do. So nothing major, just a few technical problems."

Team Shosholoza's skipper is Geoff Meek, a man who has spent years in the sail making trade and his contribution is critical in this arena. The sails are what power, the yachts and once again, although Computer Aided Design takes most of the guess work out of sail design and fabrication there was much to be done:

"We've had a bit of a setback. You know, we were hoping to launch in South Africa to sail the boat, test sails and re-design for our next batch of sails. Now we've had to design those now and send them off to be built now, in time for the Acts in 2 weeks time. So it's good. I'm very happy with the sail design and our programme but we've lost one step due to the boat being launched late. We'll sail with them (the sails) and we hope, and we want, to re cut all the time. You know, that's one way of going forward. Some syndicates have many, many, many sails and they may not do as much re cutting but more designing, buy new, but with our limited budget we want to do lots of re cutting. So, you know, we may even try ideas that slow it down but we've got to try different ideas to get our route correct. You know, where we want to end up in 2 years time."

The fact that the team has had little time on the water of late is obviously not ideal, especially as the new boat will be competing for the first time on June the 16th, but they have not been inactive:

"We still train every morning, train for an hour and a half. We've got all of our own gym equipment but our gym isn't quite ready at the moment. So basically we have to forklift them all into position outside, do our training and then forklift them all back inside afterwards. So it's all a bit time consuming and not ideal but in some ways it's kind of fun because we are ad-libbing."

While most of Team Shosholoza has been busy at the new base in Valencia, other team members have been taking part in the ultra competitive Swedish Match Tour, an invitation only series of match racing events across the globe. Ian Ainslie, an Olympic Finn sailor and recent Western Cape Finn champion has been chosen to be Shosholoza's helmsman at the Americas Cup in 2007, a massive honour:

"It's a massive responsibility but will also be a lot of fun to be helming the boat in all the match races for this year. Geoff Meek is the skipper and I'll be the helmsman so basically my responsibilities are to get a good start and then to sail the boat fast around the race course."

Geoff Meek, while remaining skipper, will exchange roles with Ian during fleet racing events:

"Well basically I'm doing a little bit of what I did last year, which is steering for the fleet racing. Because we're only a single boat campaign, we can't have 2 guys steering and 2 guys doing tactics so what we're doing is, sort of halving our roles in each discipline. So because we're not using a foreign tactician I'm a tactician for the match race and Ian will steer and then we'll swap roles and he's tactician for the fleet race and I steer. So we both, sort of stay in touch with steering and tactics in case there's injury to either of us, you know, we can make a plan far better. And Ian's good at it and I think, with a lot of sailing like he can do around the world, he will get up there. You know, it may take a year but I've got confidence that he'll get there."

Taking part as helmsman in the Swedish Match Tour has been a real eye-opener for Ian and he says that his approach has changed since the first event, the Elba cup, in Italy.

"It is quite different, you know, it's quite different to fleet racing and there are a whole lot of little tricks that you've got to pick up along the way and it's got to become…I think initially we could beat some of the good ones just because we were so unorthodox in our approach. Everything was just purely reaction. They did something: We reacted in some way but we were too inconsistent. Now we've become much more consistent, in that we understand all the basic moves. It's no longer a reaction. It's more a thought out plan amongst the team so the communication amongst the team has still got to come a long way but we're getting there"

SK: "Have you developed a more aggressive approach?"

"You know, each situation warrants a different response and sometimes it's good to be super aggressive and sometimes you've got to, if you're on the back foot a bit, you've got to come out so that you get an even start. So if you then become very aggressive you could then go into the start quite far behind. So, you know, it really depends on who you're sailing against and what the situation is. You know, if you feel you're fast or if you feel you've won the side that you want, then you can be less aggressive but each situation depends on how you have to react to it."

Crew work is critical in such close racing, something that every man in Team Shosholoza knows. Ian had observed the importance of this aspect on the Swedish Match Tour.

"Yah, what we've found is that all the guys on the Swedish Match Tour are either Americas Cup teams or there are a couple of really good ones that are just professional match racing teams and they obviously have the same crew all the time and some of them, like the guy who's leading, Peter Gilmour, they've been together, I believe, for 10 years or so, the same guys. So you know, you're up against a lot of basic team work in the other teams. So we will rotate a bit because we've got to try to raise the level of the whole team, our whole Americas Cup team. And Salvatore Sarno has employed Chris Law for June and July, hopefully to raise the level of the whole team."

While the results have not been outstanding in any of the 3 consecutive events in which he and his crew of Alex Runciman, Mark Sadler, Charles Nankin and David Rae have sailed in they certainly made a very good impression and scored some memorable results, notably taking a race off Russel Coutts.

"Look, our ambition is not to become highly rated match races but just to train for the Americas Cup so we went there to learn as much as possible and I think we achieved that goal and we are quite happy with the way we did actually. We went in with a lot of respect for all the other competitors and we found we could take some races off them. Obviously we still have a long way to go. Each time we go out we are learning a hell of a lot and our match racing team is coming on very nicely so we feel very positive about it all."

With a new boat to sail and a bunch of crew who have been fine tuning their craft against the very best in the world, Team Shosholoza are eagerly looking forward to the pacing themselves against their opposition in the next Louis Vuitton act that starts on the 16th of June. All of the South African crew will be hoping to make it a memorable day for South Africa on such a historically significant anniversary. While more time to set up RSA 83 would be preferable, Ian, Paul and the rest of the team is not looking to make any excuses:

"I mean it's quite a proud moment to be launching an Americas Cup boat. We hope to have been sailing already but all the guys, actually, on the match racing tour, the said 'ah, you're launching a new boat: good luck, you're going to have a bit on for the next few months.' And that's proved to be the case. We haven't actually got out sailing yet so we're all a bit nervous, you know, taking a new boat, got to iron out a lot of little bugs before we can actually get them going but obviously we're going to go out there and give it a huge bash. You know, we obviously want to try to do well and to prove ourselves early on."

Paul pointed out that the time left would also be eroded by other commitments:

"Well we obviously have to sail as much as possible but in amongst sailing we're going to have to devote at least four days for the measurers to measure the boat so we suddenly lose four days and then there's one day of official receptions and parades so we miss that day. So the time on the water's going to be very limited but again I'm not too worried: we all know how to sail. I'm more worried about the mechanics of the boat working properly than the sailors' ability to sail it. And don't forget we're 2 years away from the Americas Cup, which is why we arrived here early, which is why we got our new boat early, so in the big scheme of things we're in good shape. In the immediate future we've got our backs against the wall but it's fine and everyone else has to go through this process, a new boat, at some stage."