Volunteering for the Cup

By SUZANNE McFADDEN

Grey Power controlled the challengers - now its up to the Right Royals to run the Match.

Over 300 Aucklanders have volunteered to run both the Louis Vuitton Cup challenger series and the America's Cup match.

A whole new team comes in for the first race, Team New Zealand versus Prada, to control the on-the-water crowds, mark the course and fire the starter's gun.

Many of the volunteers, decked out in blue, are from the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron, holders of the Auld Mug.

Around 240 volunteers, most of them from the Bucklands Beach Yacht Club, helped run the challenger regatta for four months.

"You could not have the Louis Vuitton cup run by the Squadron, they would know too much about the challengers," said LV spokesman Bruno Trouble.

"People firing the start gun could see every detail on the boats."

Trouble, a former America's Cup skipper, describes the team as "the best volunteers ever".

"Not many countries would you find so many people with sailing expertise. Even on the rough days at sea, they never complained, they never argued."

Retired American Naval officer Vince Cooke, race controller for the series, also could not speak highly enough of his corps.

"The grey power has succeeded - they have fulfilled all of my expectations by doing an exceptional job," he said.

"These were people coming fresh from their farms or from their retirement to help us run the regatta.

"If this cup was to stay here - which I doubt very much - they are the first people I would call next time to do it all again."

The new breed of Cup helpers aren't novices. For the last couple of months, they have been practising at least three days a week with the match race director Harold Bennett on the Team New Zealand course.

They have run the black boats' races as though they were the real thing.

Course marshall Peter Carr will have a team of 65 working on 23 boats patrolling the race course.

He deliberately cast his net further than the Squadron to "give the opportunity to people who were good seamen with maturity and commonsense.

"All we ask of the boaties in the crowd is for a fair go. We'll give the same in return," he said.

"We're not going to spend too much time with hoons."