Team New Zealand makes afterguard switch as the temperature rises

by Ivor Wilkins on 20 Feb 2003 Team New Zealand’s decision to bring Bertrand Pacé into the afterguard at the expense of Hamish Pepper has been hailed as a positive move in their current 3-0 situation, but would not have come easily to Dean Barker, who has a friendship with Pepper stretching back to childhood.

Bertrand Pacé, a former match race world champion and tactician, starting helmsman and skipper to four successive French America’s Cup efforts, is known as a feisty, aggressive campaigner with a keen intellect.

He has been in the crucible of high level competition before and brings passion and a change of style into the afterguard, particularly in the crucial pre-start duels. With a long record of competition on the world match racing circuit, Pacé has waged many battles against the Russell Coutts / Brad Butterworth combination at the heart of the rival Alinghi team.

“I like this move,” said former America’s Cup tactician Peter Lester. “He is a charismatic bloke. This has a nice feel to it and there is a real buzz around the traps today. People are seeing it as very positive.”

Explaining the switch, syndicate head Tom Schnackenberg likened it to a bench substitution in the middle of a rugby test match when “one player runs off the field and another runs on.”

“It is mainly the experience factor,” Schnackenberg said. “Bertrand is very experienced. He has been sailing NZL-81 and he has worked as tactician inside our team. We have had races with Cameron Appleton steering and Bertrand working as his tactician and that was a very powerful combination.”

After in-house racing, Pacé and Barker also worked very closely together on debriefing and analysis.

There was some early speculation that Pacé might start the boat and then hand over to Barker, but Schnackenberg discounted that, saying “Dean will be on the helm right through and Bertrand will be talking in his ear.”

Born in Dunkirk, Pacé brings a rare intensity to his racing. He has a characteristic style at the helm, hunched over the wheel with a fierce concentration. When he is in the midst of battle, he gnaws his fingernails to the quick and then chews on his forearm, puffing furiously on cigarettes in between races.

Despite this image of nervous tension, Pacé was outwardly calm and relaxed as NZL-82 left the AmericanExpressViaductHarbour today to a huge send-off from Kiwi supporters. Support for Team New Zealand appears to grow as the situation becomes more urgent and, on a gloomy midweek morning, crowds thronged the waterfront to cheer the black boat into battle against the Swiss team.

Adding to the usual clamour of superyachts sounding their klaxons during the send-off, cars, trucks and buses in mid-town Auckland blasted their horns, while workers on downtown construction sites set off their sirens.

In the America’s Cup, sailing skill must blend with the intellectual challenge of move and counter move in an intricate game of chess on the water. Pacé has accumulated a lot of skill and experience in this mental game over the years.

A keen student of history, he dislikes the nickname Le Petit General (The Little General) sometimes attached to him, believing it is an Anglo-Saxon belittlement of Napolean. At an early regatta in Auckland, he impressed onlookers during the long waits between racing by immersing himself in a weighty academic study of guerrilla warfare.

Pacé joined Team New Zealand at Barker’s behest in the aftermath of the 2000 campaign. Barker was rebuilding Team New Zealand and Pacé had no wish to be involved in yet another shoestring French campaign, so their interests coincided and a deal was done.

Although Pacé was perfectly content to work as trial-horse helmsman in preparing Barker and his team for the Cup, he made sure he complied with the residency requirements of the Protocol so that, if ever the call came, he could step aboard the race yacht.

That call came yesterday as the team regrouped after a dismal start to the regatta with three losses in succession. After the disappointment of Tuesday’s race, the sailing team gathered at Dean Barker’s house and let off steam with an impromptu party and then gathered at the base yesterday for debriefings and planning sessions.

On Tuesday, Barker made it clear his preference was to make no changes on the boat, but it is understood a team consensus developed and the decision was made.

Barker and Pepper go back a long way to their schooldays on Auckland’s NorthShore. Pepper is a year older than Barker, but in their pre-teens they were members of the Murrays Bay Boating Club, which has been a powerhouse of New Zealand dinghy sailing for years, producing a string of champions. Among the coaches guiding the youth sailors at that time was Russell Coutts.

Pepper and Barker graduated through the ranks of youth sailing together, briefly combined in a 470 campaign, and then decided to concentrate their efforts on Lasers. Barker won the youth world championships in Lasers, while Pepper later earned the No.1 ranking in the world in the class.

For nearly three years, Barker and Pepper travelled the European regatta circuit sharing a yellow VW van, sleeping on the beach or in the carparks of regatta venues, living rough but going through a vital rite of passage, both in terms of sailing and life.

'Those were great times,' said Pepper in a previous interview. 'We often look back on it and laugh at how much we enjoyed our sailing. They were pretty carefree days, but we had a serious goal, first of getting into the top 10 in the worlds and ultimately of winning the worlds.

'We look back and wonder at how we did so well, but I guess it was a case of good friendship and having a lot of fun along the way.'

Over that period and in subsequent campaigns on the match race circuit, Barker and Pepper have cemented a close friendship and a good understanding.

However, fatally, Barker acknowledged that confusion had entered the afterguard during Race Three.

In a game where split second timing and clear decision-making is vital, there is no place for confusion. The pressure for change mounted and Pacé was brought on board. The challenge facing the afterguard now is for Barker and Pacé to quickly meld into a fighting unit which can overcome language and cultural differences and communicate clearly and directly in the heat of battle.