Sailmakers are good friends, but rivals on the water

By JULIE ASH

Although discussing their own teams is out of bounds, when Kiwi sailmakers Kylie Hogg and Felicity Lind-Mitchell get together it is hard to get a word in edgewise.

The two friends work for rival America's Cup syndicates - Hogg for Oracle BMW Racing and Lind-Mitchell for Team New Zealand - but when they are together work is the last thing on their minds.

"We have so many other things to talk about - work just never comes into it," said Hogg.

Which is very apparent after spending just a few minutes with the pair.

They met through sailing six years ago and have raced together in several classes both nationally and internationally.

Hogg, 25, started her sailmaking apprenticeship at Doyle Sails New Zealand in Auckland.

"It was a job to start off with just so I could leave Napier where I am from," Hogg laughs.

"I started off sweeping the floor. Everyone starts off sweeping the floor."

After five years with Doyle Sails she went to America where she and her partner, Oracle sailor Philip Jameson, worked on the maxi yacht Sayonara, owned by Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison.

It was through Sayonora they became involved with Oracle.

"We were just in the right place at the right time," she says.

One of seven sailmakers at the syndicate, Hogg works a week of day shifts from 7am to 6pm and then a week of night shifts starting at 4pm.

A sailmaker's responsibilities include the production and construction of all sails, repairs, and recuts.

The sailmaker also packs the sails and loads them onto the boats and at the end of the day takes every sail off the boat to check it and dry it.

Often the job means staying in the sail loft until the early hours of the morning.

"It is hard but it is worth it at the end of the day," says Hogg.

"It is pretty cool to see the sails once you worked away on them for however long. Seeing them finished and out there is pretty cool."

"And getting out on yachts is also cool," adds Lind-Mitchell, who started her sailmaking career at North Sails in Auckland in 1993.

Nicknamed Flick, Lind-Mitchell, 28, spent four years making spinnakers before moving into North's One Design Loft, where she was involved in making sails for Olympic class yachts - a job that required considerable precision.

After a year in design she heard some of Team New Zealand's sailmakers were moving on and applied for a job.

She is now one of four Team New Zealand sailmakers.

"I love it, it's fantastic," she says.

"Everyone's out to achieve the same result at the end of the day."

A keen sailor, Lind-Mitchell was part of a crew that competed in the ISAF World Sailing Games in France, finishing an impressive second in a women's keelboat class.

"That will be my last event until the end of the cup.

"I will be knuckled down from now on," she says.

For Oracle, the Louis Vuitton Challenger series is now just over a month away but Team New Zealand still have a bit of time before February's America's Cup match.

"There is a lot of nervous energy around," says Hogg.

"It is getting very exciting."

The pair admit to giving each other a bit of a ribbing about who is going to win the America's Cup although Lind-Mitchell says she fully supports Hogg in the Louis Vuitton series.

"But that's where it ends."

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