Yachting: Setting idyllic, but it's hard work

Hawaii is a wonderful training ground for the America's Cup - except it's not home as SUZANNE McFADDEN discovers when she pays a visit.

WAIKIKI - Cameron Dunn calls this a job - sailing among the whales and dolphins on azure seas in the balmy tropics of Hawaii.

Great job.

And at the end of it, he gets to come home and sail for the America's Cup. But he is yet another Kiwi sailing for the Americans.

"It's the way I earn my living. If there was a chance to sail for New Zealand I would have, but there wasn't this time round," he says. "Still, I can think of worse places to be in right now."

Dunn, 26, is the youngest crewman on Abracadabra 2000, John Kolius' fifth America's Cup campaign. He didn't even know Kolius when he got a job with him three years ago.

Now he is sailing every day alongside Cup veterans and living in a resort where it is always summer.

"Unfortunately we don't get to go and hang out at the beach," he laughs. "To be perfectly honest, we're working really long hours six days a week.

"The first month we were here we didn't get a day off, we were just trying to finish the first boat."

Still, the new Hawaiian isn't complaining. Life has been good since Dunn left Auckland in 1996 after he failed to get to the Atlanta Olympics in the Laser dinghy class.

He and his friend Allan Coutts - nephew of Team New Zealand skipper Russell - were hired by Kolius to teach American adults how to race yachts.

"I knew who John was, but not much else," said Dunn. "One day we were talking and he said he was doing another Cup campaign. This great opportunity just came up."

Dunn has no Cup experience - he has sailed Lasers at two world championships and moved on to bigger keelboats. Yet he has won himself a place on the Abracadabra crew as mainsheet caddie - grinding and working the hydraulics in the middle of the boat.

Dunne says he is ready to come home - there is a slight tinge of homesickness when he talks about the waters of Ko Olina being so much like his home patch on Auckland's East Coast Bays, the site of this America's Cup.

"It's remarkably similar to the Bays here," he says. "The breezes are quite puffy and the water is flat because we're on the leeward side of the island."

The only differences are a swell and the short tow out from the dock.

"The great thing about being here is that the tow out takes five minutes and you can have the main up in 10. Then you're sailing around with the whales and dolphins and back at the dock for lunch."

Why would you want to leave? Because he is still a New Zealander.

Dunn has not given up his dream of sailing at the Olympics for his country. He is relaunching his Laser career - he has finished second in the North American championships for the past two years - and plans to sail in the Olympic trials next July.

And sailing around the world has whet his appetite to sail around the globe in the next Volvo Ocean Race.