Tauranga crowds flock to Team NZ's Camper

Wind - not enough of it - forced Team New Zealand's Volvo Ocean Race yacht and its crew to seek refuge in Tauranga Harbour for an extra night after a scintillating sea trial from Auckland on Easter Monday.
Camper, Team NZ's 70ft (23.3m) Volvo Open 70-class yacht, fired into Tauranga Harbour in the early hours of yesterday morning after an 11.5-hour blast down the east coast from Waitemata Harbour.
It will also call at Gisborne, Wellington, Lyttelton and Dunedin on a tour aimed at getting the New Zealand public to re-engage with the around-the-world race. The last time New Zealand had an entry in the event was in 1994, with Team NZ boss Grant Dalton skippering the victorious New Zealand Endeavour challenge. After the tour down the east coast, the Camper will head straight out to sea from Lyttelton for a 2000 nautical-mile voyage to qualify the boat to compete in the Volvo Ocean Race.
Camper attracted plenty of attention yesterday parked in Pilot Bay, with hundreds braving the wind and blustery 30-knot wind to get up close to the new generation open-sea monohull, which is the first VO70 launched for the 38,000 nautical mile race starting in Spain on November 5.
But the stiff breeze put the brakes on plans to take Tauranga Yacht and Powerboat Club guests for a spin yesterday afternoon, with skipper Chris Nicholson also parking the boat up in the harbour for an extra night before heading to Gisborne.
"We could head out but we've got a few days up our sleeve, although I'll admit it does sound strange that an around-the-world yacht isn't going out sailing because it's too windy."
Dalton took the non-sail as a sign, saying when he brought New Zealand Endeavour to Tauranga in 1993 he couldn't get yacht club sponsors on the water either because of the rough conditions, before going on to win the race.
He hand-selected Nicholson to steer the yacht in the Volvo, first clapping eyes on the veteran of three previous round-the-worlds, who has also won six world championships and represented Australia at two Olympic regattas, a decade-and-a-half ago in Melbourne.
"He'd won the 49er world championship and I was sitting on a wall at Port Phillip Bay watching him go from about 27th to just sailing past everyone downwind," Dalton told an audience of 160 at a lunch yesterday at the Tauranga Yacht and Powerboat Club. "I said to myself then if I ever do another around-the-world race I need him to drive (the boat)."
Nicholson first sailed with Dalton when the latter skippered Amer Sports 1 in 2002. In 2005-06, he was a watch captain on board ill-fated Spanish entry movistar, while in 2008-09, he was watch leader on Puma.
Dalton said Nicholson had left him with some explaining to do to Italy's super-wealthy Ferragamo family, owners of the international fashion brand, after a mishap aboard Amer.
"The Ferragamos thought we all needed Ferragamo sunglasses to wear during the campaign, which didn't please Nico, and one day when he was washing our pots and spoons over the side of the boat during the race he lost all of our spoons. He fronted up so I told him to go below and find something we could use as spoons for the rest of the race - he goes and pulls all the lenses out of our Ferragamo sunglasses and gives us those to use.
"This is the Ferragamo family we're talking about, and we're photographed by the world's media using $1000 sunglasses to eat our food. I got a bit of grief over that one."
In the 2008-09 race, Torben Grael's race winner Ericsson 4 set a new world sailing speed record when it averaged 24.85 knots over 24 hours, amassing 596 miles in a day. Nicholson said given the right conditions, Camper could top that.
"We started the boat design 13 months ago (under Marcelino Botin) and the good thing it was, and still is, a sailor-led design." The boat had undergone more than 300 tests before the design was perfected, with 1000 sail tests in a wind tunnel undertaken before Nicholson was satisfied they had the right combination.