Famine and feast all within the same yacht

By SUZANNE McFADDEN

There is a split in the Team New Zealand sailing crew - half of them are eating like pigs, the others are starving.

A strict weight regime has been controlling the sailors' appetites in the final buildup to the first America's Cup match tomorrow.

Under an archaic cup rule, the 16-strong crew must weigh in at under 1408kg before they can sail on the Hauraki Gulf.

So while the chunky grinders have been scoffing whole chickens and buckets of pasta, the brains trust at the back of the boat have been surviving on the scraps.

Young grinder Jonathan Macbeth has packed on 24kg of muscle, but already-lean guys such as navigator Mike Drummond had to lose weight to balance the total.

"There's a little bit of jealousy across the meal table," says Drummond, who has dropped from 82kg to 77kg, starving for the cause.

"It's a ridiculous rule. Originally, they thought with lightweight, wide boats, huge crews would be sitting on the side stabilising the boats.

"The reality is that the boats aren't that wide, and the crew weight has a pretty insignificant effect on the boat's performance."

Once a month, the sailors have stripped off and stepped up to the scales to check progress.

"If someone has put on weight, we boo," Drummond says.

During the finals, chief measurer Ken McAlpine could turn up any day after a race and pick a sailor at random to be weighed.

Drummond no longer eats anything with fat in it. Each crewman must pack his own lunch for the boat, so Drummond takes eight slices of bread with very little between them.

"The funny thing is that you get used to plain food. Every so often I buy a filled roll from the shop and I think, 'This is lovely.' That's until the third mouthful, when I think I'm going to be sick, it's so rich."

Huge grinder Craig Monk has built an extra 12kg of muscle since the last Cup - he is now 105kg.

In the past month, he has happily given up his daily diet of two whole chickens for full-on carbohydrate meals: pasta, potatoes and kumara.

"I'm a bit of a chocoholic, and I've had to cut that back. But I'll still sneak a Mallowpuff into the rationing."

Monk says the Kiwi tough guys have had more time to work on their bodies. "The Italians are in good shape, and we are expecting a tough battle physically.

"I still think we are physically meaner and tougher than them, though. We eye them up - the tight five check out Prada's big guys, and our afterguard look to see who's the skinniest in theirs."