The Fremantle Doctor has arrived and Dennis Conner and Tom Whidden know they made the right call, risking getting a powerful high-prismatic ‘big’ 12 Metre through the more mixed conditions of the Louis Vuitton Cup – now they are on the cusp of taking back the Cup itself in 1987. Whidden was Conner’s ally and tactician through 20 years of America’s Cup racing


did a fantastic job in 2013 so it would have been very short-sighted to count them out this time. As you know we were closely involved, their guys had fantastic ideas and we were really happy to help them with that. Southern Spars gave ETNZ a fantastic plat- form to work with, I believe it was the only minimum-weight boat… With so much talk of foils it is easy to overlook how critical the work was in creating that platform. I know only too well you have to do


with sail cloth to keep it out of the landfill. SH:How are your different divisions doing? TW: Spars have never been the most prof- itable market for us, though rigging is pretty good. But spars and sails are converging, now it’s all about the ‘aero combination’, the package of masts and sails and rigging and wings, so I think the acquisitions we have made in sparmaking will help us there. That said, we’re pretty excited that after


years of working at it we are now able to make Dacron 3Di sails, which we call 3Di Nordac; for the person who would rather not have the carbon or black sails, they can now buy Dacron sails that are way less stretchy than before and at a pretty good price. We don’t have the same margins there but it’s a neat thing if a sailor can get more performance out of a less technical boat and improve their Wednesday night racing pack- age without spending much more money than they would on Dacron sails. Credit to our engineers because there are a lot of things about Dacron that make the spread- ing process with the 3Di tapes very difficult. SH: Thirty years at North Sails and a recent induction into the Sailing Hall of Fame… TW: Being inducted into the Hall of Fame makes you think about the things that are important. Like engaging young people and trying to promote community sailing, with people who wouldn’t have had a chance other wise. Encouraging clubs to be more inclusive outside their membership – and a lot are doing this now. Programmes like the one Brad Read runs at Sail Newport, they serve thousands of people who’d normally have no chance of going sailing. Those are the kind of things exciting me right now – and which we need to support as a sailing company. SH: The modern J Class is remarkable. Who are your key people in that world? TW:Certainly Ken [Read] has led the way. I sail on Svea and I have learnt a lot from Kenny. He has put a lot of effort into Hanu- man, which is where I started before I asked Ken to take things to the next level; he’s done a fantastic job developing sails and systems. And the J Class is a great place to push stuff forward because those boats are really hard to sail effectively. Big, heavy, with ridicu- lously high loads – something in the region of 180 tons at the base of the mast and from


memory around 38 tons on the headstay. These high loads are perfect for 3Di


because without a modern solution the sails would just be ridiculously heavy. So that is a class that is good for North, because if we concentrate we can dominate it. Smaller boats are harder – you go into the TP52 class with much lower loads and there is much more room for the competition… There we have a real fight on our hands, as you know! SH:What work have you been doing so far around the new America’s Cup class? TW:We’ve been involved with Team New Zealand on the technology being developed for this Cup. Having said that, my feeling as a longtime Cup sailor and someone who cares for the sport – and here I don’t want to sound like I didn’t like the catamarans, because they were spectacular – is that I really didn’t think they kept with the spirit of what the Cup is supposed to be about. This is only my opinion, but having done


it before I think there was a loss of the true match-race skills seen in the past. I also bemoan the fact that there wasn’t much crewing; to have four guys moving hydraulic oil and two guys sailing the boat didn’t seem to be what it was all about, so I am happy to see a return to crew work and sail handling. But I would not want to see the Cup go


back to a slow boat, so it’s great what they are aiming for, canting foils and a big, pow- erful – slightly crazy – monohull. The rig is still to be finalised but I can imagine some- thing that is wing-like or more sail-like that looked like a wing. It sounds exciting… I also think there was no trickledown


from the cats; this time I think there will be significant trickledown and the sport will benefit. With all the conversations I’ve had with Grant Dalton I think he really gets this, he wants to help the industry and the sport and increase viewers in the America’s Cup. I think he is doing all the right things. SH:You’ve been involved in the Cup for a huge part of your life. What were your thoughts on ETNZ before the last event? TW: There is no guy more relentless that Grant Dalton so I had a lot of confidence in him; and I must say I felt really sorry for him the last time, when they were one race away for all those races in San Francisco. Considering their budget last time they


many things exactly right to win an Amer- ica’s Cup. Speed always helps, but you have to get around the course and the America’s Cup is a game of life more than a sailboat race. You have to handle a lot of things, massive ups and downs and plenty of things that go wrong along the way, with key deci- sions to make that are threshold moments in your development… and if you get one wrong it can set you back a long, long way. And what incredible talent on the boat.


Glenn Ashby, Blair Tuke and Peter Burling… cool under pressure. Man, Burling looked like he was driving a go-kart around against a bunch of his mates. SH:Glenn Ashby was pretty empty by the end of it all. TW: I know the feeling. Having won and lost the Cup, as ETNZ has, the irony is it takes every bit as much energy and work to lose the Cup as it does to win it. And you are just as wrung out at the end when you win it. It is such a high level of performance, then the next day there is nothing, so you need a good family with a strong partner at home. SH: Southern Spars look set for a busy time over the next 18 months. TW: I hope so. Honestly, we had to do a lay-off not that long ago through not enough work. Believe me, there is nothing I hate more than having to lay guys off. I am a business grower, not a business shrinker, as is Peter [Dubens]. It was the right thing to do at the time but he and I suffered. SH:On a personal note, you have done a huge amount of sailing in 2017… TW: I’ve had one of my better years… We have been on and off winning the Wally Championship on Magic Carpet, I have won every superyacht regatta I have entered this year… which is amazing, don’t ask me how. If anyone thinks all this is down to skill, it’s not! But as you get older you do get better sailing these bigger boats – things happen a little slower but it’s very rewarding sailing. The other thing is I sail in so many classes,


some go 7kt upwind and some go 13kt upwind, and some go downwind at 7kt and some go 25kt. So it’s amazing how disparate it all is. Today I even love sailing the classic boats… I definitely had a bad attitude about them when I first started but now I love it. Racing is racing, right?


q SEAHORSE 53


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