And then there was one - Tom Schnackenberg

By SUZANNE McFADDEN

Dr Tom Schnackenberg is happy when he can feel the wind on his face where a luxurious moustache once flourished.

He likes to windsurf the big waves off Maui, heli-ski in the mountains of Blue River, Canada, and snowboard the slopes of Treble Cone. He has flown a biplane around the Isle of Wight, and back home he rollerblades around the waterfront and cycles up Auckland's volcanic peaks. And of course he sails for a living.

Within the 57-year-old elfin frame is the verve and pluck of a teenager. Every year, Schnackenberg joins a gang of friends from around the globe and they set off on adrenalin-fuelled holidays. This band of "senior" adventurers, who have been together for 20 years, includes a plastic surgeon from San Francisco and a retired banker from New York. Unlike Schnackenberg, they have nothing to do with the America's Cup.

Even without his bushy trademark 'tache - sacrificed for charity two years ago - Schnackenberg is one of the most recognisable faces of Team New Zealand. Behind the kindly smile is a perpetually fizzing brain. The ideas that bounce around in there are eclectic, to say the least.

One minute he can be thinking about the smooth silhouette of a sail, the next he is musing over the lack of carparks on Syndicate Row, the new sandwich place at the end of the street or the hidden wonders of the Carbon-12 isotope.

Schnackenberg's grey matter is legendary in sailing circles. Dennis Conner, the king of the America's Cup, once called it "the best brain in yachting". Former French cup skipper Bruno Trouble refers to Schnackenberg as the "guru of the America's Cup today".

Certainly, Schnackenberg's cup record has landed him in the history books - he is the only man to have stripped the America's Cup from the Americans twice.

But the Auld Mug is only a square in the colourful patchwork that is the life of Schnackenberg - a nuclear physicist, pilot and thrill-seeker, a businessman and father of two adult sons. (Carl is a lawyer and David is setting up an IT business from his father's house in Kohimarama.)

He has so many letters after his name he needs a dinghy to tow them around - two honorary doctorates, an OBE and the Order of Australia medal.

It may sound like the syndicate head of Team New Zealand has a problem sitting still. Yet Schnackenberg - nicknamed Schnack by his teammates - is quite laidback. He likes sitting on the Auckland waterfront with his wife, Annie, drinking coffee and watching sails go by. And all the time he is thinking.

He ponders how his life so far has been like a fairytale - not just any old story, but Jack and the Beanstalk. How Jack took a gamble, swapping the family cow for a handful of beans, but in the end reaped the treasure. "My life has had a bit of that about it also," Schnackenberg says.

He threw in a future in physics for a job cutting cloth on a sail-loft floor and eventually came out holding the world's oldest sporting trophy.

"You must enjoy what you do and do what you enjoy," he says, "even if it takes a while to figure out what that is."

The teenage Schnackenberg had no idea what he wanted to do. While at Auckland Grammar, he was chosen to attend a summer science school in Sydney, and it was there he became interested in physics. Once he had his masters degree from Auckland University, he left New Zealand for post-graduate studies at the University of British Columbia in Canada.

"I didn't know what I wanted to do, so I just kept going to school," he says. "To be honest it didn't interest me very much - it was a bit boring.

"The carbon nucleus was my thesis topic, but one day I realised that I honestly didn't care how it was formed, and whether the little protons and neutrons might or might not form groups. If they wanted to do it, it was fine by me.

"Yet, for some unfathomable reason, I have never stopped wondering what makes one sail faster than another, and what makes one sail hold its shape better than another, and then what makes one boat faster than another.

"I still want to know the answer. I could spend a lifetime trying to figure out how to make a fast sail."

So he quit school and asked the owner of the boat on which he was crewing for a job at his sail loft. He became fascinated with sail design, and took sail-making a step further - writing his own computer programs to analyse the air flow around a sail.

Schnackenberg still has the first sail he made, rolled up in his garage at home. "It looks a bit tired now, and smells like a urinal," he says.

It was only a handful of years before he was drawing up sails to power arguably the mightiest yachts of all - America's Cup boats. In 1974 he moved to San Diego, snapped up by North Sails, today the biggest sail-making company in the world (he is still a partner in North Sails in New Zealand after setting up the business here).

Three years into his new career, he was invited to design a few sails for the America's Cup defence syndicate Enterprise. In the following regatta he worked for the challenger, Australia.

Then came one of the highlights of his life, as sail co-ordinator for Australia II, the campaign which finally broke the United States' 132-year stranglehold on the prized silverware. "There were highs and lows in '83, but it was mind-blowing when we realised we could win the cup," he says.

Schnackenberg did another two campaigns with the Australians before joining the fresh, young Team New Zealand contingent in 1993. There he was also able to use his sailing skills aboard the black boats, as navigator.

While he became invaluable, he was almost invisible as he hunkered down in a corner of the boat, tapping away on his waterproof laptop, staring up at the sails, always calculating where to go next.

Next year will signal Tom Schnackenberg's ninth America's Cup campaign. This time he has taken on the role of team leader - a job inherited when Russell Coutts and Brad Butterworth suddenly left for another side.

The trio were to have shared the leadership responsibilities. "It was to have been the R-B-T show," he says. "I would've been design co-ordinator again, and Russell would have been syndicate head. I guess this is a bit simpler without three people running the show.

"Really, I don't do very much. I'm jack of all trades, master of none. I sometimes front the team, I speak twice a week, I go sailing, I do a little bit of work on the rules, a little bit of work on the sponsorship with Ross Blackman, a little PR and a little designing with the design team."

He's also not afraid to get down and dirty. Last week Schnackenberg was in the boatyard covered in fine black dust, helping to sand the hull of the first new defence boat, NZL81.

"Because I jump from job to job I seem to spend more time at my desk thinking, 'What should I be worried about? What could go wrong?"' he says. "Before, I had projects that totally absorbed me, like making the wind tunnel to test sails for 1995."

These days Schnackenberg does not have as much time to figure out his burning question in life - what makes the ultimate sail - and he admits he has fallen off the pace of sail technology in recent years. "I still keep an eye on the design programme, but I ask all the questions now - I don't have the answers," he smiles.

Schnackenberg is still the design co-ordinator, and principal designer Mike Drummond says his input is vital. "Tom has always had an ability to see the big picture of a yacht. You might be talking about a very small area like a rudder, working out the intricacies of it, and he can easily relate it to the entire yacht's performance. He can see the whole jigsaw puzzle rather than a single piece."

In his role as team leader, Schnackenberg says he would never try to fill the much bigger boat shoes of his predecessor, the late Sir Peter Blake, head of Team New Zealand for the two campaigns before. "If I tried I would be silly. Peter was the master of raising money and massaging the sponsors. I have no charisma at all - maybe if I was a good actor I could act the part," he says.

I tell Schnackenberg that since the mass defections of 2000, I am asked by my friends at least once a week if Team New Zealand will win the America's Cup next February, and if skipper Dean Barker is good enough to do it.

"I'm never sure whether to reassure people or not. I like the idea of a hint of nervousness and drama, you've got to give it a bit of an edge," he says. "When people ask whether we are going to win, I honestly can't answer that. We won't know until race one of the match.

"Just tell people that the team is in good shape, we're happy with the progress and we think we can win, but we don't know yet. It feels a lot like '95 when we were small and no one knew who we were, but we always felt like we were on track to win. Then 2000 was marred by a bit of conflict. So we're just putting one foot in front of the other. And yes, Dean is definitely good enough to do it."

There's another question people stop Schnackenberg in the street to ask - is he going to grow the mo back? Everyone has an opinion on his face - they either loved the moustache or prefer him bare-lipped.

Schnackenberg's answer would be simple - if it helps to make the black boats go faster, he would grow it back. He is still studying the aerodynamics of it.

Why Tom does what he does

A simple picture of three black boats racing each other hangs on a wall in Tom Schnackenberg's home.

Entitled The Race, it was drawn by Schnackenberg when he was 9 and published on the kids' page of a Wellington newspaper.

"I guess it was quite prophetic," says Schnackenberg, who dropped art and went on to win two America's Cup regattas, racing three famous black boats - NZL32 and NZL38 in San Diego, and NZL60 in Auckland.

Yet Schnackenberg was not a serious yachtie as a child. He did not start competitive sailing until he was 21.

"Our family had a Frostbite dinghy the kids would sail in the holidays. I obviously liked boats, because Dad used to buy me books about sailing from the time I was 8. When I first climbed into a boat when I was 11, I knew how to sail straight away.

"As a teenager, if I was having trouble getting to sleep I would imagine myself in this little boat, with a white hull and varnished deck, flying along at 10 knots. That was my happy thought, and I would always drift off to sleep.

"Even though sailing wasn't that big a part of my life, I guess it was all leading somewhere. It was inevitable I would end up in a boat."

So what is it about sailing that has captured Schnackenberg for the past 35 years?

"It's a combination of the aesthetic - boats look good - the romantic - being on the sea close to Mother Nature - the competition - it's fun - the technology - which feeds another part of the intellect - and the drama, like the America's Cup.

"The America's Cup is a complete ball game - it has all the dimensions of life, all in a microcosm. It's beautiful."

A short history of Schnackenberg

Team New Zealand

Team role: Syndicate head, design co-ordinator

Crew role: navigator

Date of birth: May 11, 1945

Family: wife Annie, sons Carl and David

Cup career:

1977 Enterprise (USA), sail designer

1980 Australia, sail designer

1983 Australia II, sail co-ordinator

1987 Australia III & IV, sail co-ordinator

1988 New Zealand Challenge, sail co-ordinator

1992 Spirit of Australia, sail co-ordinator

1995 Team New Zealand, design co-ordinator, navigator

2000 Team New Zealand, design co-ordinator, navigator