Rachael Oakes-Ash sails on an America’s Cup winner in New Zealand – and meets a man known to his friends as Mud Crab.
New Zealand prides itself on two great sports and one Hollywood blockbuster in three parts. The nation works itself into a frenzy whenever the All Blacks score a win, Auckland renamed itself the City of Sails after Team NZ first won the America’s Cup in 1995 and Peter Jackson got a street parade after his Oscar glory.
The average tourist can’t play ball with an All Black but, thanks to the yachties behind Sail Queenstown you can now have an America’s Cup sailing experience with a true Lord of the Rings backdrop on the South Island of New Zealand.
NZL14 is the most southern docked America’s Cup yacht in the world on Queenstown’s Lake Wakatipu and it took a fair bit of manpower and money to get her to this landlocked town of seventeen thousand.
Trucked over three days from Auckland on a haulage specifically designed for the job, the minders could only transport her on the road at night due to her size. Weighing in at 24 tonnes, 17 tonnes of the NZL14 can be found under the water in the keel. She arrived on Lake Wakatipu in November 2005 and is officially the largest sailing vessel to take to these waters.
The NZL14 provides serious boasting rights for those who step aboard. Stand close enough to the skipper and business owner, Craig Smith, and some of his sailing magic may just rub off, if it doesn’t at least you have someone to cling to as the yacht tacks at 16 knots. He has completed the Sydney to Hobart four times, winning in 2004 as watch captain on board the Aera. If that’s not enough he sailed with News Corp in the 2001/2002 Volvo Round the World Yacht Race as helmsman and trimmer.
Company front man and Craig’s business partner, Nick Crabtree, is also known as Mud Crab – or The Crab.
The Crab has spent his life around yachts in his hometown of Auckland where he worked for North Sails as well as time in North America working for Philippe Kahn from Pegasus and Hasso Platner from SAP.
The America’s Cup is considered the granddaddy of yachting cups. Australia was the first in 132 years to win the America’s Cup away from the Americans under Alan Bond in 1983. Mud Crab is quick to point out, however, that while Australia was first, New Zealand has held it more times.
The twenty-two metre carbon fibre NZL14 was built specifically for the 1992 New Zealand challenge in San Diego, designed by Farr and Associates and skippered by Russell Coutts, who went on to win the America’s Cup twice for NZ and once for Alinghi.
She’s an impressive beast filled with wannabe sailors equally keen to impress. Few folks can say “I sailed an America’s Cup yacht” and once aboard most that have paid their NZ$150 are eager to grab the grinders when the mainsail is hoisted past Queenstown Bay.
Lake sailing may not provide the nauseating big waves of the open ocean but it provides a Southern Alps vista of postcard proportion with an amphitheatre of snow capped mountains. The NZL14 does the same top speeds in mountain winds as it does in the deep blue and the adrenalin flows as the yacht tacks tilting and pitching, forcing the day sailors to move from port to starboard and the testosterone to peak.
The absence of another America’s Cup yacht on the lake doesn’t mean the absence of racing. Corporates such as Macquarie Bank and big pharmaceutical companies have already taken up the challenge with teams racing against the clock. A committee boat cruises alongside filled with one team tucking into the barbequed lamb and Central Otago wine of the region while the other pulls the jib on the NZL14.
Standard Sail Queenstown experiences include two hours under sail on the Lake, returning to town with the spinnaker in full flight. Sail Queenstown goes out four times a day during summer including twilight sailing and twice a day during winter.
It is fair to say the winter weather provides the ultimate challenge but the boys are well-stocked with seriously warm sailing jackets and if the cold sets in, then grab a grinder and get cranking.
NZL14 is available for exclusive charter and corporate team building packages. A GPS tracker is also planned, so that those who step aboard can step off with their journey fully charted and happy snaps taken from the camera fitted on the mast above.
Visit Sail Queenstown online at www.sailqueenstown.co.nz
