By SUZANNE MCFADDEN
Two little girls, one with dark waves of hair, the other with blond curls, will be standing at the end of the OneWorld pier in four weeks' time, waving as their daddy goes off to battle on the Hauraki Gulf. Their father, whose curly black locks are thinner than they once were, is almost certain to have tears in his eyes.
For rugged grinder Andrew Taylor - tough guy of sailing, two-time winner of the America's Cup - this will be reward for the long, hard days at sea over the past two years.
"There's nothing more satisfying than seeing your children waving to you, wishing you good luck when you head off to the race course," he says. "Having my family happy is as important to me as the America's Cup."
The girls have brought a balance to Taylor's life, which has been dedicated to the America's Cup for the past 17 years. And five-year-old Valentina and Rosetta (almost two) don't care that daddy is not sailing on a black boat any more.
Andrew Taylor is the only man to have sailed in every America's Cup for New Zealand since the first Kiwi challenge in 1986. That is until now.
This time, Taylor is grinding for the other side.
When the mighty Team New Zealand empire began to crumble soon after the 2000 victory, Taylor slipped out of the black shed and joined forces with OneWorld, the Seattle-based challenging syndicate of telecommunications billionaire Craig McCaw, two sheds up the street.
It may be easy to point the finger and whisper "defector", but you have to appreciate that Taylor made an enormous, gut-wrenching decision when he jumped ship. This man has been a vital cog in the engine room driving the last five of New Zealand's America's Cup campaigns. His large, powerful hands have grabbed a place in New Zealand sailing history.
This is a man who spilled tears when Team New Zealand first won the Auld Mug in 1995, and cried again in 2000 as, holding Valentina, he described the pride he felt for his team as they successfully defended the Cup.
But today Taylor says he would have found it difficult if he had stayed with Team New Zealand. He had to move on, find a new challenge, so that at 39 he could stay at the top of his game. A good, keen rugby man, Taylor never imagined himself competing under another nation's flag, but then the America's Cup is no longer just a game - it's a profession.
Taylor is the epitome of a true blue Kiwi yachtie, growing up sailing on the Hauraki Gulf. His dad, a jeweller by trade, spent nights and weekends under their Howick house building boats.
He built 9-year-old Andrew his first dinghy, a Flying Ant, and when Taylor was 15, he crewed for his dad on their Stewart 34, Paprika - another boat crafted in the basement. The Taylors raced in the Citizen Cup matchracing series, which was the jewel in the crown of national sailing in the 1980s. The guys on the matchracing circuit gave him the nickname "Raw Meat", and today he is simply called "Meaty". The moniker stemmed from a comment Taylor made about eating raw meat and onions for breakfast on a windy sailing day.
He trained to become a boatbuilder, "but it took me seven-and-a-half years to serve my apprenticeship because I was sailing so much, so in the end they just gave me my certificate."
Taylor made the big leap into international yachting when he sailed around the world with Sir Peter Blake on Lion New Zealand in 1985/86. He says he owes a lot to the late Sir Peter, who kick-started his career. At the end of that round-the-world race, Taylor spent just two weeks at home before heading to Fremantle for New Zealand's first America's Cup challenge. The first day there he met his future wife, Vanessa, an Australian who worked in the kitchen feeding the KZ7 Challenge.
"Three weeks later she was feeding me a bit more than the other guys," Taylor recalls with a wry smile.
Apparently, Vanessa was not impressed with Taylor's fashion sense - corduroy pants tucked into knee-high ugg boots - but she was blown away by his confidence, his humour and appetite.
Vanessa has stood alongside Taylor at every America's Cup since, but perhaps she has supported him more than ever this time, especially when he was faced with the dilemma of who to sail for.
"I really wished he would stay with Team New Zealand - it's easier to live here with two young children than move across the other side of the world," Vanessa says. "But I more or less left it up to Andrew. It's his livelihood, his profession, and there's nothing worse than living with Andrew when he's unhappy.
"He went over and over and over it for days, weighing everything up. But he decided they had the right designer [Laurie Davidson] and the right skipper [Peter Gilmour] and he needed new goals.
"I think he's made the right decision, because he's really excelled in his time with OneWorld. They really look up to his experience and his leadership."
Taylor explains why it would have been tough for him to stay where he was: "I needed a new energy, a new challenge. I guess I'm at the pinnacle of my career and I could stay up there or fall off the edge. I'm about to find out. To defend it again is a big ask. I have a lot of respect for the guys at Team New Zealand, for the team that stayed and the young guys who've come up through the ranks. They will be hard to beat."
Taylor would like to think that little has changed between him and his old sailing buddies at Team New Zealand, even though there was some acrimony when many of the veteran crew members left.
"I have some long-lasting friendships down there. I would hate to think that because I'm not there now, that's changed. We just sail on different coloured boats now. They're still my friends, and I would like to think that any hour of the day I could knock on their door and have a beer with them."
Would that still be the case if OneWorld and Team New Zealand square off in the America's Cup proper next February?
"If OneWorld is fortunate enough to get to the America's Cup match, I'll cope with that then. It's a matter of doing my job well. That's what I'm paid to do - I'm a professional sailor," Taylor says.
He has already been given advice on how to handle the situation by Sir Michael Fay - who first took New Zealand to the America's Cup - when Taylor visited him in Geneva soon after he had made the switch.
"We were standing over the barbecue and Michael said, 'Meat, when you hear the sheepdog whistle I want you to jump'. In other words, if he sees me out there racing against Team New Zealand he'll blow a whistle and I have to jump overboard, get out of the race. I said, 'Get me another beer and I'll think about it'.
"There's still some good stirring out there, but it's about having big shoulders."
Taylor is not alone. Four other key New Zealand sailors went with him to OneWorld - Richard Dodson, Jeremy Scantlebury, Matthew Mason and Craig Monk. In fact, walking on to OneWorld's base is like visiting an old New Zealand team, there are so many familiar Kiwi faces. To be exact, 35 per cent of the OneWorld team - including designers, boatbuilders and shore crew - are New Zealanders.
Of course there has been much legal discussion about the Kiwi connection in OneWorld - spy scandals and missing documents - but the sailing crew have left that to the men in the office.
"There have been a lot of stones flung, but the strength of a team is how they brush those stones aside and get on with the job," says Taylor. "The engine room has been allowed to get out there and do what we do best: sail."
In the "engine room" of the OneWorld boat, where the big boys wind the winches and jump the sails up the mast at the beck and call of the trimmers, Taylor stands alongside Monk, an Olympic bronze medallist and standout grinder in his own right.
"Meaty is still the master and I'm his apprentice, even after almost 10 years," Monk laughs.
The "master" has faith in his new crew, whom he describes as a mix of young, old, experienced and eager.
"Okay, we haven't been together as long as I was with Team New Zealand, but that was special. Having said that, we have got a good team of guys here. I'm really enjoying it."
At Team New Zealand, Taylor was infamous for his "inspirational talks" to the crew on the tow-out to the course. Nowadays, he keeps those speeches in his head to gee himself along: "The older you get, the more you have to focus on yourself than the others."
Age may be creeping up on Taylor, who will be 40 next July and is feeling a few aches and pains. Apparently I've caught him during a bad week. He admits he's struggling - a bit tired and sore after days that start at 6am on his bike ride from Orakei, stretch through at least an hour at the gym, six hours on the water, and then a cycle home after 6pm.
"My body provides a real challenge these days. But I truly believe that in this game experience counts for so much. I'll be on the boat and we'll be in a situation that I remember being in 10 years ago, and I'll know what to do."
He is adamant, however, that he has another America's Cup in him - although he might look at a less physically demanding role.
Taylor's adult life has rolled from one America's Cup to the other. It has been rewarding, emotionally and financially, so he intends sticking with something he knows as long as his body holds out. When he retires from this career, he plans to retreat to his new holiday home at Pakiri, an as-yet unspoiled beach north of Auckland, and go surfing. "Not that I can surf, but I'm sure I could teach myself," Taylor says.
He will never be far from the water - he wants to spend more time with his "three girls" on the sea.
"I've already taken Valentina sailing on a Hobie Cat and she's really good," he says.
"One of the things I really regret is that I brought Vanessa from Sydney to live here and I've never taken her cruising around the Hauraki Gulf. I blame the America's Cup, of course."
In the meantime, his goal is to stay awake to the end of the fairytales he reads to Valentina and Rosetta every night. The girls think it's hilarious that Daddy falls asleep before they do.
ANDREW TAYLOR
ONEWORLD CHALLENGE
Crew role: Grinder
Nationality: New Zealander
Born: July 22, 1963
Family: Wife Vanessa, daughters Valentina (5) and Rosetta (22 months)
Cup career:
1987 New Zealand Challenge
1988 New Zealand Challenge
1992 New Zealand Challenge
1995 Team New Zealand
2000 Team New Zealand
Other sailing achievements:
Two round-the-world races (1985 Lion New Zealand, 1989 Fisher & Paykel)
nzherald.co.nz/americascup
Taylor relishes the daily grind
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