KEY POINTS:
VALENCIA - Adam Beashel knows a thing or two about turnarounds.
After all, he was in the Team New Zealand afterguard in the failed defence of 2003.
But it's another recent change of fortune that has had the Team New Zealand strategist doing a double take.
Australian Beashel caught his hand in the mainsheet block during last month's fleet racing regatta and stripped the flesh off his index finger, which required three operations.
At the first hospital he went to, surgeons told him they were 90 per cent sure his finger would have to be amputated.
However, they said they couldn't operate until later that night.
Meanwhile, one of the team's sponsors had found one of the best orthopaedic surgeons in Valencia, so Beashel went there.
"They were waiting for me when I got there," he said. "They were 90 per cent sure they could save it. So it was a big turnaround."
The injury forced Beashel to watch his team from a chase boat during the round robin competition.
"The days go a lot slower when you are sitting on a tender watching," he said. "It is a lot more interesting to be on board.
"But at the same time it has been good for me to get a look from the outside at how things are unfolding -different people's prestart manoeuvres, their thinking.
"It has allowed me to get a lot more involved with the weather team and be a big part of that, then bring that back on the boat with Ray [Davies], which all helps to strengthen the team as much as possible."
As a wind spotter Beashel spends a lot of time up the mast, but it was on the deck that he injured himself.
"I guess if anything the biggest memory I have was just anger when it happened. I was just thinking 'God, what has happened here, how bad is it'."
It was touch and go whether Beashel would make it back on to the boat.
But with his finger covered by a carbon-fibre brace he returned in race four of the semifinals.
Beashel says he is grateful to his team-mates and his replacement, Mark Mendelblat, for keeping Team New Zealand in the challenger series long enough for him to make his return.
"I am thankful for the team and for Mark for putting us in that position [reaching the semifinals] and allowing me to get back on the boat and hopefully be part of a successful team at the end of it."
He said the injury had not affected the way he operated on the boat.
"It is pretty much business as usual.
"That was the way I said I'd be able to get on the boat - if I was confident that I could do my job as good as I could.
"There is not a lot of feeling in the finger. There is a lot of nerve damage and possibly some more surgery to be done later, after the America's Cup, to get some more movement out of it.
"But for now I can protect it with a carbon splint and keep it pretty well out of the way of most things."
