KEY POINTS:
When you are at an America's Cup regatta, you often think that the 24m, fantastically sleek yachts are as big as it gets and that skippers such as Dean Barker and Brad Butterworth have the heaviest responsibility of all.
Nuh-uh. Meet Khushla Draffin of Gisborne, one of the
thousands of Kiwis who can be found around Port America's Cup.
Draffin drives something a wee bit bigger than an America's Cup class yacht - BP's oil and gas tankers, which are 200m-300m long and which can weigh up to 250,000 tonnes.
So Dean Barker might win the start against Draffin but she'd spank him on the upwind beat.
Draffin, 32, is a second officer in BP's fleet and is in Valencia to drive one of the inflatable boats that zip media photographers out to the course for action shots. It is a welcome change from her long and sometimes lonely life on board the tankers, where she is often the only woman in a sea of men.
"It's not easy sometimes," she says. "I usually work three months on the ships and two months off but it can be a lot longer than that at sea."
Like the time when she spent five long months without seeing another woman. She says the men on board can be difficult - some of the older guys are more traditional and sexist; the younger men are better in that regard but sometimes try to take liberties in other directions.
"Yes, that can be difficult too," she says. "They fall flat on their faces and they don't like it. What happens then is that they get all bitter and twisted and then they make life difficult for you."
Most of the officers are British, but she also sails with Australians, Kiwis and Poles and about half her crews are Filipino seamen, whom she loves for their sunny natures. "It's pretty easy, really," she grins when asked how you steer an oil tanker. "Don't hit anything. It was scary the first time - this huge ship moving through the ocean and you are in control. But it's also a buzz."
Draffin's main function on board is navigation, charts and weather avoidance but she does also have to helm the ship. Most of the time at sea it is on auto-pilot.
"The only time you take over manually is when there is a lot of traffic around you or a fleet of fishing boats or you have to make some sudden alterations.
"They are actually quite responsive really, particularly when they are unloaded. People tend to think that they are really ponderous and slow but they're not." But hang on a moment. What is this farmer's daughter doing behind the wheel of such leviathans? Particularly someone who was terrified when, aged 4, she was taken fishing by her father in his boat, her first time on the water.
As an adult, she became involved with the Spirit of Adventure after her grandfather bought her a 10-day voyage and she loved it so much she got her commercial inshore launch master's certificate and then her mate's certificate.
However, her qualifications were New Zealand-only and she began a cadetship with Silver Fern Shipping, learning her trade for three years and emerging qualified for international shipping.
Then came the BP job and four years of assignments with different tankers and different crews all round the world. So much so that she spent only two months of last year in Gisborne. In 2007, she hasn't been there at all. "It is the hardest part of the job," she nods when asked about the loneliness. "That time in Singapore when I hadn't seen another woman for five months, I was just so blown away by seeing all these women on the street and in shops and so on.
"I kept staring at them and I had to say to myself, 'Cut it out, they'll think you are a lesbian or something'. But it was only that I was so entranced by the fashion, the shoes and the hairdos."
There is another, darker side to her job - pirates. Supposedly the stuff of fantasy, there are thriving pirate gangs in Southeast Asia, Africa and the Caribbean - armed and dangerous men who sneak on to tankers in the dead of night and take whatever valuables they can find. Kidnappings sometimes occur.
Compared to that, working at the America's Cup course seems like a doddle and, of course, she is enjoying not being the only woman around.
