Yachting: Baptism of fire for young Aussies

By Suzanne McFadden

Young Australian-Kiwi sailor Ed Smyth did some more late-night reading last night to learn how to be a navigator after his difficult America's Cup debut yesterday.

Smyth was born in Melbourne but moved with his Kiwi father and Australian mother across the Tasman when he was three. He had never navigated on any size of boat until Young Australia's first race in the Louis Vuitton Cup challenger series against the French yesterday.

And it was not the most confident of starts for the youthful Aussies. They were ecstatic when their five-year-old boat led the sparkling new Sixieme Sens around the first mark by half a minute.

But then the Le Defi France syndicate caught up and left the youngsters in their wake as the Australians dragged their spinnaker through the water halfway through the race and had to lower a crewman over the bow to clean up.

At the finish-line, Young Australia were 5m 35s behind. But the boys were not disheartened by their defeat.

"It's not bad for a team who've had four months to put the whole thing together," said 24-year-old Smyth, who tried out for Syd Fischer's America's Cup crew, was offered the job of navigator and took it, even though he had never done it before. So he is taking lessons.

That means reading books by Cup legends like Tom Whidden, usually at midnight when he finally has time.

"That's when I'm not reading the software manual for my on-board computer," he laughed. "It's fun, but I don't know if I enjoyed it today. I guess we're all still learning."