Yachting: Dalton racing the clock to get his round-the-world boats ready

By SUZANNE McFADDEN

Grant Dalton is about to make a tough call - choosing one round-the-world boat for the "blokes" and one for the "girls."

The master of circumnavigation is taking a new tack and entering two boats in the Volvo Ocean Race.

He will skipper one, and an all-women crew will drive the other.

The first boat, a German Frers design, is already in the water and racing. The second, designed by Bruce Farr, will be launched in three weeks.

Dalton now faces a race against the calendar to put both boats through trials and allocate them to each crew before the race starts from Southampton in September.

"It's pretty bizarre. Here I am, this self-professed great Kiwi joker, running a girls' crew," Dalton said in France yesterday.

"A few people have given me a bit of stick about it. But it's pretty cool actually."

Of course, the blokes will get first choice of boat.

At the moment, Dalton is expecting to drive the Frers yacht in his sixth round-the-world race.

"I'm hoping the Frers will be quicker, because everyone else in the world has a Farr boat," he said. "The Frers is very, very light. But the other boat will still be fast."

The two boats will look virtually identical - with a fashionable grey and red colour scheme - and bearing the name Armer Sport, a European marketer of sports gear.

All of the money - $31 million - is now in place.

"This is by far the biggest campaign I have ever done," Dalton said. "But it is also a huge challenge."

Dalton's campaign will be the only two-boat team in the eight-boat race.

Other syndicates have been up and operational for over two years. But, until a few months ago, Dalton's time was taken up with another global circumnavigation, winning The Race.

"We are trying to do in six months what EF took two-and-a-half years to put together in the last race," he said.

EF entered a male and female crew in the 1997-98 event, with the men's boat EF Language winning from Dalton's Merit Cup.

"We're very late, so basically we're scrambling every day. We've flown in 35 Kiwis to build the boats in France and they are working every day, around the clock, to get this done," Dalton said.

"The logistics of running two boats around the world is huge. We've got a payroll of 38 people."

The all-women's crew has yet to be finalised, but there is certain to be at least one New Zealander on board.

Skipper Lisa McDonald has already selected one Kiwi (who remains anonymous) and is talking to another.

There are two New Zealand yachtsmen in Dalton's line-up - Phil Airey and Paul Quinn.

All have been living in the small French town of La Ciotat, near Marseilles, for the past two months.

Last weekend, they took the Frers boat on its first decent outing, sailing from France to Italy in the Giraglia Race.

There were no other Volvo-60s in the 120-boat fleet, so Dalton's crew could not judge just how fast the new boat is.

In three weeks, Armer Sport I and II will sail to the syndicate's training base in Spain, before heading to the race startline.

They will miss the dress rehearsal, the Fastnet Race, but Dalton is planning an espionage mission to check out the competition.