Jez Fanstone, Skipper of News Corp/Pre-start Leg seven

by Volvo Ocean race media on 28 Apr 2002 A: Are you looking forward to heading towards home?

Q: I’m looking to being back in Europe again. It’s been a couple of years
since we left to go down under and set up the campaign. I’m looking
forward to the Atlantic again. It’s our last ocean leg of this race and
it is an ocean race and we do enjoy that. It will be good and we are
looking forward to it.

Q: The mood in the camp must be pretty high?

A: The boys are in good shape, but they always have been. We’ve managed
to keep a good balance the whole time. Winning is obviously very good. It
gives us a little bit of a pep up and it reinforces everything that we
have done.

Q: One crew change?

A: Yes, Nick White is staying with the team and he is carrying on his
work on the shore with the weather for us, but he won’t be sailing on the
boat anymore. So we looked for another boffin. These boats are very
technical and there are a lot of systems that need to be kept running that
us mere sailing mortals can’t handle, so we needed a boffin and a techie.
In Campbell we have got a boffin who is also a very good sailor and a very
strong sailor. This next leg we are going to be seeing some decent breeze
to start off with and it’s a long leg and to have another big guy to help
sail the boat is fantastic. He has navigated and run boats himself and
so he brings a huge sailing experience as well as his technological
experience. He is very important to B&G group looking after the
instrumentation on the yachts around the world, so we have a really strong
person there.

Q: Campbell is Ross Field’s son. It seems that you can’t keep the Field
family away from the boat?

A: It’s great that he’s joining us and we all know Campbell and we are
very happy. He knows everyone and everyone on the dock and we are very
pleased that B&G have let him come sailing with us.

Ross is in good form and is delighted in how the team is going. He is off
to the UK to have his back operation, but he is in very good form.

Q: What is the target? Can you overhaul illbruck?

A: I think it is not impossible. Our target, our goal is to have three
solid last legs. We set out to have a solid leg in the last leg and it
came good for us and for the next three we are looking to be solid and get
on the podium again. We took three points out of illbruck in the last
leg and there is no reason why we can’t do that in this leg. They are a
very oiled machine, very slick, but they have had a couple of legs that
they aren’t happy with. We will keep pushing; keep doing what we believe
to be right.

Q: Is it a matter of keeping illbruck a bit rattled?

A: I think they are rattling themselves quite successfully at the moment.
They think they have got speed problems and they are running around
changing things and having lots of meetings apparently and it’s good. Let
them rattle themselves while the rest of us concentrate on what we are
doing.