Yachting: Barker now sailing along nicely - on land and sea

By SUZANNE McFADDEN

With another win to his name, Team New Zealand skipper Dean Barker is finally starting to relax.

After carrying the weight of the yachting world on his 27-year-old shoulders for the past couple of months, Barker turned off his phone, played a bit of golf and won the Swedish Match matchracing grand prix in Marstrand yesterday.

He even had time for a little shopping in Sweden, approaching a few sailors in the regatta about joining Team New Zealand.

Things are finally going very nicely for Barker.

On the water, he and his Team NZ crewmates followed on from last month's world championship victory to beat French America's Cup skipper Bertrand Pace 3-2 in yesterday's final.

On land, he is not far off signing up a full sailing crew for the 2003 defence after the old team was decimated by defections.

"It's been pretty stressful at Team New Zealand. Back home I've been on-call all the time with the crew business," he said. "So I told the guys we were going to relax and enjoy this regatta. I made sure we played a bit of golf and had a good time. We were still pretty serious on the water, though."

The Kiwi crew - Barker, Hamish Pepper, Tony Rae, James Dagg and Chris Ward - finished the round-robin on top and were untroubled reaching the final against Pace.

But Barker took his eye off the ball yesterday and found himself 0-2 down to the feisty Frenchman.

Team NZ were disqualified in the first race for sailing the wrong course - a decision Barker contests - and Pace swept to the lead on a huge windshift in the second.

But two penalties and a windshift in their favour, and Barker's crew wrapped up their second grand prix win on the world circuit this year.

Barker is one point behind Pace on the tour scoreboard, but he is now "handing the baton" to his Team NZ back-up skipper, Cameron Appleton, already in eighth place among the world's top skippers, as he has Team NZ business at home.

Appleton had his own victory in Sweden this week, helming the old Whitbread 60 Toshiba to handicap victory in the Round Gotlund race, one of the world's big ocean races.

Another Kiwi skipper, Gavin Brady, added another world title to his resume - steering Innovision Sailing to victory in the world IMS 50 championships in a 12-boat fleet crewed by mostly America's Cup sailors.