KEY POINTS:
With the Waitemata Harbour in the background and a handful of yachts gunning for the first mark, round-the-world yacht race winner and world sailor of the year Mike Sanderson outlines his next goal.
He wants to win the single-handed transatlantic race - a 5370km race from Plymouth to
Boston.
Funded by British company Pindar, Sanderson has teamed up with Argentinian designer Juan Kouyoumdjian, who designed his round-the-world race winning boat.
The pair are well under way in creating a new Open 60 yacht which they hope will break new boundaries and set records.
The yacht is under construction at Cookson's boat yard in Auckland and will be launched in June. Sanderson hopes to race it in next year's two-handed Transat Jacques Vabre race and the 2008 Transatlantic and Route du Rhum races.
Relaxing in the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron, Sanderson, 32, is quite chirpy considering the last few days are probably a bit of blur.
Five days earlier he was in Finland for the International Sailing Federation Sailor of the Year Awards. Sitting next to King Constantine, Sanderson became the third Kiwi after Sir Peter Blake and Russell Coutts to win world sailor of the year award.
Three days later he was in Auckland for Yachting New Zealand's awards where he was named sailor of the year. Both awards were for his victory in the round-the-world race. Few teams have dominated quite like Sanderson's ABN Amro One. Over eight months and 58,338km, they won all but three of the nine offshore legs and all but two of seven port races.
Sanderson's victory in June started what was a good spell for New Zealand yachting. Emirates Team New Zealand won the final match racing regatta of the year and took out the 2006 America's Cup class championship and Hamish Pepper and Carl Williams won the Star worlds.
"It's interesting because if you take Dean Barker and lots of the guys on Team NZ, Hamish [Pepper] and Carl [Williams] and maybe myself and the other four Kiwi guys on ABN Amro One [David Endean, Brad Jackson Mark Christensen and Tony Mutter] we are almost half a generation younger than the guys who have previously been making all the noise in New Zealand sailing, or certainly a few years younger.
"So it's great that we've had the year that we've had."
While he will head to Valencia to watch the America's Cup to keep himself up to date with developments, Sanderson will spend most of next year working on his Open 60, one of 12 new ones being built around the world.
For their size the Open 60s are the world's fastest monohulls, their construction is as hi-tech as Formula 1 racing cars. "For me the exciting classes at the moment are the Transpac 52s and the Open 60s - those two classes are in a league of their own in current development."
For the singlehanded skipper just sailing an Open 60 around the world, let alone racing it, is a challenge. Sanderson finished third in the 2004 Transatlantic race after battling with winner Mike Golding for most of the way until a broken daggerboard ended his chance of victory.
"I don't know if I like it or not," Sanderson said of single-handed races.
"I love the development of the boat. I love the class and sailing solo is what that class does. I felt a huge amount of satisfaction from sailing solo. I like being able to do a few different disciplines - the fact I have sailed America's Cup boats, I have sailed Volvo boats, I have sailed solo. I think sailing solo made me a better skipper so I'll give it another go."
The Open 60 is not the only project Sanderson has on the go. He will manage ABN Amro's sailing programme which runs until the end of next year despite the bank's decision not to enter the 2008 round-the-world race. ABN Amro One will sail in this year's Sydney to Hobart.
While ABN Amro have ruled out the next round-the-world race, Sanderson has not. "I don't want to go and do it just for the sake of sailing around the world. It has to be right - a good campaign, in enough time, good budget, good opportunity to get the people I want. This one always seemed right from day one."
