Age no barrier in Team New Zealand

SUZANNE MCFADDEN

The youngest crewman is 19 - the oldest 54.

And everyone in between has a chance of sailing on Black Magic during the America's Cup match.

Team New Zealand can pick from a sailing crew of 30 for their defence of the Auld Mug, even though you only need 16 to sail a cup boat.

The defenders could well change their crew in every race of the match - it all depends on the weather. Skipper Russell Coutts says he will decide in the morning who will race that day.

"We'll change for different wind conditions. If there are 25 knots of breeze we'll have a different crew than we would in 12 knots," he says.

"Your didn't need to switch in the light winds of San Diego. You could sail the boat with 14 and get away with it. Here you can't."

Team New Zealand will have the biggest sailing contingent among the syndicates - an advantage of being at home this time.

And they are a formidable bunch - only two of the 16 on board on May 14, 1995, are missing.

Trimmer Ross Halcrow jumped ship to Young America. And Sir Peter Blake, head of the defence, won't be working the mainsheet traveller this time - his elbows have given up on him.

But his lucky red socks will be on board - all of the crew will wear them.

Big-hearted grinder Andrew Taylor is the only Kiwi to have sailed in all four Cup regattas that New Zealand has entered, and at 36, he's back to give another gut-busting effort.

Mainsail trimmer Warwick Fleury has also worked in all the same New Zealand campaigns.

Nuclear physicist Tom Schnackenberg is the elder statesman of the crew - the navigator celebrating his 50th birthday during the cup match in '95. This will be the seventh cup campaign for Team New Zealand's head designer - he started in the Cup as Australia's sail designer in 1980.

Teenage apprentice grinder Matt Hughes is the youngster of the team. He describes his roles as grinding and "filling the water bottles".

Hughes was a university student and a junior dinghy sailor when he read a story in the Herald, Christmas 1997.

"It said they wanted a new rudder and a new grinder," he said.

"So I rang Team New Zealand and left a message." Coutts phoned back.

Hughes had an interview and went for a sail with the team, but it was a year later before he taken on.

"The crew voted to have him and I liked his attitude from day one," Coutts said.

Hughes, 19, is under no illusions as the rookie of the crew. He washes the boats down, gets them in and out of the water, and does the most despised job of all - wet sanding.

He is one of a dozen new faces in the crew - most of them other young up-and-comers like Olympian Hamish Pepper, last year's world No 5 matchracer Dean Barker, and promising helmsman Cameron Appleton.

"Bringing in these very good younger guys is absolutely important for the future of Team New Zealand," Coutts says. "We needed some new enthusiasm.

"There may have been more experienced and better guys initially that we could have plucked out , but that's not the way we wanted to do it. We're taking a fairly long term approach - we'd be silly not to be prepared for the next cup."