Yachting: May the Force be with Mike

By Suzanne McFadden

It's like something out of Star Wars.

Mike Drummond shoots enemy craft with a laser gun and taps into a computer to vanquish the dark side.

Well, at least beat the challenger for the America's Cup.

The laptop and laser are the essential tools of a modern-day navigator like Drummond - no more sextants and nautical charts.

Drummond, a unassuming dad of two, works at an on-board keyboard while the old black boats are testing as a member of the design team for the new generation of Team New Zealand yachts.

His job: "To determine whether one thing is better than another and by how much."

In the early days of the America's Cup, the navigator's role was to know where the boat was and where the rocks were. Nowadays, you know where you are to within a metre using a GPS receiver, and there are no rocks to dodge on the cup course in the Hauraki Gulf.

"These days it's about collecting information about the performance of your boat over the other one, so the tacticians understand what options they have," said Drummond, who has worked on all New Zealand's cup campaigns.

Shooting the other boat with the laser gun can tell you if you have gained or lost ground. With the right software, the laptop - which unfortunately is not waterproof - helps to analyse your boat's performance in a second. During testing, Drummond communicates from one black boat to the other with an encrypted radio.

Testing in Auckland waters has been a totally different task from four years ago.

"In San Diego we were just trying to make the boats faster all the time. We didn't stop and try to figure out how it made them faster - we just said 'thanks very much' and looked for the next improvement," he said.

"This time we're able to revisit some of those effects and understand why something works."

In his designer role, Drummond manages TNZ's structural programme and keel design. "This time we have to make sure the boats can handle strong winds and higher speeds without failures - but not make them too heavy."

He has worked on the structural design of New Zealand cup boats since 1985 and was there at the birth of KZ7.

After Fremantle, he went to work in Bruce Farr's United States design office overseeing the construction of the KZ1 monster. Work then rolled on to the 1992 and 1995 campaigns.

He has a degree in engineering, but says most of knowledge in naval architecture has been self-taught.

Like any truly competitive sailor, Drummond would rather be racing.

"It would be lovely to just go and race all the time. But you've got to do the hard grind to get the fastest boat," he said.

He did not get to sail in 1995, but he has every chance of making it on board this time.