Yachting: Finally, Shoebridge can tell

By SUZANNE MCFADDEN

Now Kiwi sailor Kevin Shoebridge can finally tell everyone: his 15-year dream to skipper a boat around the world has come true.

But for the last five months he has had to keep silent about it - and it almost drove him mad.

Shoebridge will head the Tyco campaign in the Volvo Ocean Race, formerly known as the Whitbread, starting in September next year.

While he has been working in the United States putting a crew together and sailing an old round-the-world race boat, the campaign has had to be kept under wraps until now.

It was only two weeks ago that Tyco, a international parent company earning $30 billion a year, told its 225,000 employees about the project.

"We've spent three months sailing around in a white boat with no name, so no one would know who we were," said 37-year-old Shoebridge. "It was so hard not being able to tell everyone about it."

Shoebridge is back home in Auckland, waiting for the boat, the old Merit Cup, to be shipped to Australia for the Sydney-Hobart race.

At least four campaigns will sail in the annual Boxing Day race and then carry on to Auckland, a dress rehearsal for the same leg in next year's Volvo race.

This will be Shoebridge's fifth round-the-world venture, right up there with his old bosses, Sir Peter Blake and Grant Dalton.

Since he first sailed with both of those yachting heroes, on Lion NZ in 1985, he has wanted to drive a campaign.

It has taken until now for that dream to be realised, and he will have to do it under the flag of Bermuda, not New Zealand.

"If you had asked me five years ago how I would feel about sailing for another country, I definitely would have said I would be disappointed," he said. "But there are no boundaries in the sport any more. I've sailed just as much for Italy and Germany as New Zealand over the past 10 years.

"The America's Cup was the last hope for a place to hang the nationality thing, but now that's gone."

So far, his debut as boss has been a breeze. Tyco approached Shoebridge, not the other way round.

"It was great - I didn't have to jump through the hoops for 18 months to try to find sponsorship," he said. "But I've always wanted to be a skipper. It's just been a long time coming."

Shoebridge has found all but one of his crew. The last job going is tactician. Ten of the 11 crew have sailed around the globe before, the odd man out being 21-year-old Aucklander David Endean.