In the footsteps of Sir Peter

By JULIE ASH

Perched on the lawn outside his family's clifftop home in Parnell, a young Grant Dalton watched the sight of a huge yellow spinnaker coming around North Head.

The year was 1977, Dalton was all of 20 and the impressive sail was carried by the yacht Heath's Condor, which was competing in the Whitbread round-the-world race.

On board was a young New Zealander by the name of Peter Blake.

"When I saw this massive spinnaker I just thought it was the hugest thing in the world," Dalton said.

"I was struck by two things - the adventure of it all and how anyone could sail a boat like that from Cape Town. I knew then that sailing around the world was what I wanted to do."

Dalton's life has almost mirrored that of the young man he watched from the Auckland clifftop.

Sir Peter Blake sailed in the Whitbread round-the-world race five times, taking Steinlager II to victory in 1989-90. In 1994 he completed a successful Jules Verne attempt on Enza New Zealand, charging around the world non-stop in 74 days.

Dalton, nine years younger than Blake, has sailed in six round-the-world races, winning with Flyer II in 1981-82 and as skipper of New Zealand Endeavour in 1993-94.

In 2001 he won The Race, a non-stop, round-the-world race, on the maxi catamaran Club Med, which still holds the record for the fastest circumnavigation.

Now, 11 years after Blake was called in to help run the New Zealand Challenge in San Diego when it was caught up in protests and crew splits, Dalton has been handed the job of trying to win back the America's Cup following Team New Zealand's disastrous 5-0 rout by Swiss challenger Alinghi.

"Grant is very similar to Peter," said Yachting New Zealand's high-performance manager Peter Lester. "They both have proven track records, they are good with people and sailing teams. They also have the ability to put people around them who complement each other and neither are afraid to make the tough calls."

The two men's career paths first crossed in the late 1970s when Dalton applied for a job on Ceramco, the first Whitbread campaign Blake put together himself.

"I missed out," Dalton said. "So then I applied for a job on Flyer II but missed out on that as well. But they came back to me and I ended up sailing in my first round-the-world race on Flyer II as a bowman."

In the 1985 Whitbread, Dalton managed to secure the position of watch captain on Blake's Lion New Zealand, the one and only time the pair sailed together.

"I really wanted to do my own race," said Dalton. "You cut your teeth on the round-the-world race. You learn about people, campaigns and about sponsors - it is every facet of yachting all in one."

In the next Whitbread in 1989-90 Dalton, skippering Fisher & Paykel, and Blake on Steinlager II, created one of the most dramatic leg finishes in the history of the event. They were neck and neck approaching Auckland before Blake pipped Dalton at the post by just six minutes.

"The biggest thing I took from Pete was from Steinlager II and the way he ran that campaign," Dalton said. "He had really good guys around him. I learnt that and took that to New Zealand Endeavour. I ran things the same way as he did and I still do.

"Pete wrote the book about how to do it well and since then we have just been following the chapters."

Like Blake, Dalton has an uncanny ability to find sponsorship.

"Once Team New Zealand won the America's Cup there was no way I was ever going to fund another campaign [in New Zealand]. So I had to go offshore and got lucky again when Merit Cup [which finished second in the 1997-98 Whitbread] came out of Switzerland.

"The funny thing was the time I started sailing with a guy, who I didn't know, called Ernesto Bertarelli on a trimaran called Alinghi. He was a nice guy and he looked like he had a bit of money, but I had no idea."

Bertarelli went on to head the Alinghi team in this year's America's Cup.

Although fierce rivals on the water, Dalton and Blake were great mates off it.

The day Blake was murdered in the Amazon in December 2001 was one Dalton, like many New Zealanders, will never forget.

"It is like September 11, everyone who knew him remembers what they were doing," said Dalton, who was in Australia with his Amer Sports One team preparing for the next leg of the round-the-world race.

"I was in my motel room in Sydney. It was about 10pm and we got a call from a family friend who said 'Pete's dead, he's been shot'. Like everyone I was shocked.

"One of the first things I thought about when I knew the circumstances of his death was a time back in 1985, at the start of the Whitbread race, I think. There was a ferry in front of us, they just wouldn't get out of the way. So Pete dropped the wheel, ran downstairs and grabbed a Verey pistol and was waving it around, yelling 'I am going to shoot the bastards with this gun if they don't get out of the way'. We were all there saying: 'Calm down, Pete, calm down, mate'.

"Those circumstances appear to have repeated themselves in the Amazon."

Like Blake, Dalton had little America's Cup experience before being appointed this week to lead Team New Zealand. He was part of the New Zealand Challenge in Perth in 1987 but failed to make the sailing team under skipper Chris Dickson.

"I remember it so well," Dalton said. "We lived in these kind of 20ft containers that had a window in them, a partition in the middle and a bedroom at each end.

"The night the team was selected the guys who were in had a party outside the compound. I lay in bed that night and basically the guys were drinking until 2 or 3 o'clock into morning.

"I have never forgotten that night. Never ever forgotten. I had just got engaged to Nicki [now his wife] and we just lay there together - I was destroyed.

"Part of my motivation over the years has come from that one night in Perth."

Dalton said he had always had a "passing interest" in returning to the America's Cup but the opportunity never arose.

After the loss to Alinghi, several Team New Zealand crew contacted Dalton and encouraged him to go for the job. The timing couldn't have been worse.

"I lost my mother two weeks ago. The day we were told she was going to die, she was on life support, I walked out of a meeting with the doctors and into my first meeting with Team New Zealand. It wasn't easy.

"She went in for a test because she was over-tired so they did a liver test and they struck an organ in the process. It was terrible."

Although struggling with his family's loss, Dalton was still keen to pursue the top job at Team New Zealand.

"The devastation I felt, just being a Kiwi on the couch, when we lost the cup and the way we lost it really hit a chord for me. I was flat for days.

"This was our whole lives and I guess when you are travelling as a yachtsman you always feel really proud when you talk to people about yachting in New Zealand - we had the America's Cup and we were so bloody invincible.

"So after the loss I just thought, maybe I can do something to help. I am not under any illusions about the scale of the job, but my feeling is that an America's Cup campaign is very similar to a round-the-world campaign. It is about people, it is about money, it is about boats and it is about speed. I have heard nothing yet that scares me."

Like Blake, who had the support of his wife and children, Dalton has Nicki and children Eloise, Mack and Olivia fully behind him.

"Mack is 7 and Team New Zealand is a big thing in his life. So Daddy running Team New Zealand is just great. So far he has asked if he could choose the song and colour of the boats. He has also asked if he could possibly get a T-shirt and meet Dean Barker.

"The America's Cup meant a lot to many people - we just have to get it back."