KEY POINTS:
Peter Isler was tempted aboard Stars and Stripes for his first America's Cup campaign.
Peter Isler's list of hobbies is almost as extensive as his sailing achievements. The American, navigator for Chris Dickson's BMW Oracle Racing syndicate, plays guitar in a band called the Water Brothers. He is
a huge fan of Stellar*, Dave Dobbyn, the Finn brothers and American rock band the Grateful Dead, particularly lead guitarist, the late Jerry Garcia.
He also likes Mustangs and is partial to the odd bit of writing.
Sailing started as a hobby but turned into a career when Dennis Conner lured him to Stars and Stripes in 1987. It took Mr America's Cup quite a bit of talking to convince Isler.
"I thought it looked like joining the military. I had this liberal arts experience of sailing where I was sailing lasers, college dinghies and big boats - who wanted to go and train on these heavy 12 metres? It didn't look like that much fun to me."
Twenty years later, Isler, 51, is about to embark on his fifth cup.
Oracle finished their training programme in Auckland on Friday and head back to Valencia for the challenger series starting on April 16.
The syndicate launched its second boat USA98 here and has worked hard on establishing a race crew.
With two months until the big show in Valencia, it would appear the syndicate, set up by software billionaire Larry Ellison, is going just fine.
"I was thinking of an analogy the other day... at the beginning of the Formula One season, no one in the know would ask drivers how they are going to go against Ferrari because everyone knows all the teams have new cars and, until we see how the cars go, we are only guessing.
"We feel cautiously optimistic we are on track. I feel really good about the boat handling. If it comes down to a boat handling battle, BMW Oracle Racing are the best crew out there."
Isler was born in Hawaii where his father was a minister. The family moved to Cincinnati when Isler, the oldest of three children, was young.
"I was going to be a baseball player when I grew up. I wasn't a sailor at all, my family were not sailors. My dad had taken me out one time on a lake, but that was all."
His parents separated when he was 13 and Isler moved with his mother to Connecticut on the Long Island Sound.
"By chance we moved across the street from a family of boys whose father, Ted Jones, was the editor of what is now known as Sailing World magazine. He got me into the junior sailing programme at the local yacht club and I got hooked."
As well as dinghies, Isler dabbled in big boat sailing on a mate's family's 45-foot sloop. During his later college years at Yale (which he chose because they had a good sailing team), he met Tom Whidden, who became Conner's tactician and would eventually lead him to Stars and Stripes.
Isler's first flurry in the cup almost came on board Courageous IV, a boat launched in 1974 which defended the cup in 1974 and 1977.
Leonard Greene - a scientist and social philanthropist who invented aeroplane landing systems - bought the yacht in 1981 and mounted a challenge for the 1987 cup. Isler was offered the job as helmsman.
However, the campaign struggled financially and Conner invited Isler to join Stars and Stripes as a navigator in Fremantle six months before the regatta. Stars and Stripes beat Chris Dickson's KZ7 in the challenger series final, then trounced Australia's Kookaburra to regain the America's Cup.
"We continued to improve from the end of the round robins to the semis. We put on different wings and our sails got better. By the time we hit the challenger series final against NZ and Chris [Dickson], which was our hardest series, we were much better than we were a month before.
"Back then after we won the Louis Vuitton Cup, we inherited all the American sails. There were five other US teams in the cup so we ended up using sails designed by other teams, which you would never be allowed to do now - it was like Christmas."
Isler stayed with Stars and Stripes for the 1988 mismatch between Conner's catamaran and NZ's huge KZ1 - the cup in which Conner uttered the immortal line "I am sailing a cat. Someone else is sailing a dog".
"The cat was like a tiny mosquito compared to the New Zealand boat," Isler laughs. "They were two beautiful science projects that never should have had to race against each other. But each had really advanced a lot of the technology in sailing."
Isler tried to set up his own campaign for the next cup but failed to raise enough money so ended up commentating for ESPN for the 1992 and 1995 regattas.
In 2000 and 2003, he returned to Stars and Stripes. The syndicate exceeded their expectations in 2000, making the semifinals despite being a one-boat campaign. However, their luck ran out in 2003 and they were eliminated in the quarter-finals.
"It was a great example of how the cup is not very forgiving in respect to time. We got behind, had a boat failure and sank one boat, had some keel problems and broke a mast. One little thing compounded on everything else."
Isler said it is sad to think Conner won't be on the start line in this cup. "I can see him involved in future cups, that's his passion. It was really hard for him not to come back. I think he'd have tied or exceeded [Thomas] Lipton's record had he come this time."
And what was Conner like to work for? "Highly charismatic, a really good numbers guy and very involving of everyone on the crew. Dennis wasn't the match-racing expert in the pre-start but he was as good as, or better than anyone at judging time and distance. We just put ourselves in the position to take the gun on the line."
While Conner was always plotting his next move in the cup, Isler is not sure what his future holds.
"I didn't want any part of it [the cup] until the 1987 campaign when we won it and had the ticker tape parade down Fifth Avenue and went to the White House. From there, every cup has been memorable for me in one way or another. I can't imagine not being part of it."
PETER ISLER
Nationality: American
Position: Navigator
America's Cup career:
2007: BMW Oracle Racing
2003: Stars and Stripes
2000: Stars and Stripes
1988: Stars and Stripes - America's Cup winners
1987: Stars and Stripes - America's Cup winners
Other: Top-ranked US skipper of world match-racing circuit for five years, coach of 1984 US Olympic team, analyst for ESPN during the 1992 and 1995 America's Cups, co-author of Sailing for Dummies.
- HERALD ON SUNDAY