Yachting: They also serve who only float and wait

By SUZANNE McFADDEN

One of the world's best round-the-world sailors bobs around at the top of the America's Cup course every day, searching for wind.

Kevin Shoebridge is a member of the Team New Zealand weather corps who guide the black boat in the right direction when it crosses the start-line.

Shoebridge has a feeling for a sea breeze after winning two Whitbreads and finishing second twice.

On race days, he sits in a rubber boat with a 10m mast at the top right end of the Cup racecourse.

Round-the-world navigator Mike Quilter mans the top left end, Mark Orams, a doctor of philosophy, sits at the top mark.

Before the race starts, they all report to Peter Evans, tactician for Nippon in the last America's Cup, who relays the general feeling of what the wind is going to do, to Team New Zealand strategist Rick Dodson on board Black Magic.

The eight-man team are charged with working out which way the boat should go after the start-gun, a move which can often equate to the winning of the race.

"Some days we can't call it at all," Shoebridge said. "But we're not scared to make an opinion, because we've got one-and-a-half years of history.

"In the end, a windshift can mean a minute a beat. No keel or rudder is going to give you that edge."

The convoy of rubber boats deal with predicting the weather for the first 20 minutes of the race. Weather guru Bob Rice, an internationally respected meteorologist, gives a long-term forecast for the following two hours.

Shoebridge reckons the team have got it right two times out of two races so far.

The 37-year-old Aucklander has worked on four America's Cups and four Whitbreads. He admits he sometimes gets itchy feet to sail on a Cup boat again.

But working with Team New Zealand, in Auckland and in San Diego, has helped his future offshore sailing plans.

"I'm up-to-date with the technical side of it and how a team should be run," he said. "You realise how important people are in campaigns. This is a very strong people team - they're not scared to have too many strong personalities."

Shoebridge plans to sail around the globe two more times in the next three years.

He will be watch-captain for Grant Dalton in the non-stop The Race, starting on New Year's Eve, before embarking on the Volvo Ocean Race. He still plans to skipper a boat around the world, but "the time has to be right."