News Around the World
They hung on and hung on but in the end there was just nothing left in the tank; nevertheless, the previous Vrolijk-designed Bella Mente was into her sixth season when finally retired in favour of this immaculate Botín design. Itʼs an interesting side-benefit with mid to large IRC designs – the fact that they take a while to hit the rating-vs-performance sweet spot extends the competitive window for their predecessors. Then again if you jump into a boat-for-boat fleet like the TP52 youʼd better hit the ground running bloody fast
Rafa and enjoy the sailing – she loved it. That is the sort of guy you need. Australian Sailing were looking for a Finn coach, and so I said I was prepared to contribute by bringing him from NZ to Australia, so he will sail with us occasionally. SH: You are an amateur sailor, a very good amateur sailor – what can you say about this sport where you can compete alongside athletes such as Tom [Slingsby] and Rafa? MB: We’re so lucky on my boat. Tom is easy, but Rafa… he’s a brilliant sailor but half the time I can’t understand a word he’s saying! But he is a lovely bloke!!! I think that is one of the great things about this sport. I will never win an Olympic medal, but to be able to sail with these guys as an amateur... I am only going to improve by sailing with and against people better that me – and that is true about life too.
I tell my managers to employ people better than them, they will still get the credit because the people they employ will do the work. The same on the boat and obviously it is not hard to pick crew who are better than me... The other thing is you need to race one-design. If you don’t sail one-design boats you don’t learn quickly enough. I don’t want to do any more Hobart races, I want to do regattas, here [in Sydney] in the MC38s. We have done seven races this weekend – that is like seven weekends for the average club sailor and if they have one dud race, well, that’s their weekend buggered… SH: And all this keeps you sharp, Marcus – they say health is the new wealth… MB:Well, I think it’s just commonsense really. There is no question that wellness is a question of movement. As our ex-PM John Howard keeps telling me, ‘Marcus, you have to keep moving!’ He is 79 and walks every day and is as sharp as a tack. You also have to use your brain. It is no different from the rest of your body and so use it or lose it.
Nature cannot cure anything in the body without circulation. I trained as a naturopath early on in my career and it became clear to me back then with things like walking or running or yoga, anything that improves circulation will help in the fight against diseases. Only nature can cure things, our job is to give the body the tools to help nature do its work.
26 SEAHORSE
SH: People are aware of the skills of Tom Slingsby – what can you say of 470 sailor Will Ryan who also sails as your tactician? MB: Will has the potential to be one of the best tacticians in the world. He has that remarkable ability learnt on Lake Macquarie that I have already spoken about, but added to that is the discipline he has from working with Victor Kovalenko. We had a regatta overseas and we had an altercation, just a small one, with a competitor. We got back to the wharf and I said let’s not worry about it, but Will went over to the other tactician and just made it very clear what the rules are. A lot of people were impressed by the way he handled that situation, calmly but very clearly. SH: You spoke at Hamilton Island of setting up an Australian TP52 series? MB: I did and the first event is in November in Sydney, then one in Pittwater and one in Newcastle. Terry Wetton is organising it after speaking to 13 owners of TP52s here in Australia. How this all started was I was chatting to a TP52 owner, and asked him if he was going to Hamilton Island and he said ‘no’. So I said why not? And he said ‘because you are going…’ Then he said there is no point in us taking our boat up there if we can’t win, so I phoned Terry and said let’s get something sorted here. We looked at this when I had my last TP52, where we wanted to introduce a Corinthian division for the boats; to assist that one of the things we planned was to introduce a gate in the windward-leeward course which forced you back to the middle to keep the racing tighter. We wanted to race IRC and introduce an extra handicap to try to bring the Australian TP52s closer together. Then we proposed a penalty of one click for every professional you had onboard. When Terry ran the numbers on previous regattas it came out
very accurate, so we discussed using this system with IRC but they declined, saying we were modifying the rule. My enthusiasm for this comes from the Farr 40s, where what’s important is to help raise the standard of the ‘B teams’ – there we ran seminars on sail trim and set-up to help things stay more equal on the water. Sailing is mostly owner-drivers, the Farr 40s are entirely owner- drivers. If you don’t keep the owner-drivers happy you lose the class. Blue Robinson
AMORY ROSS
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