Britain's team comes together

Sailing

STUART ALEXANDER

Piece by piece the British Admiral's Cup team is being put together, yesterday seeing the appointment of David Bedford, a former European J24 champion, as helmsman for the big boat Rubin/Seahorse.

He will be joined by Peter Schofield, an army officer who has also developed navigational computer programmes, as navigator, but discussions are still taking place over who will be tactician and the principal sail trimmers.

Robin Aisher, to whom the boat has been lent by Germany's Hans-Otto Schumann, who is also a former rear commodore of the Royal Ocean Racing Club, organisers of the event, picks up the boat today and will be sailing during the competition. Five of the German crew will also be available.

But many people who would have been important players in the British team are committed either to other teams or to other campaigns as the search for British boats dragged on for so long.

The second German boat to sail for Britain is the 40-foot Seahorse Astro, where Harold Cudmore has Andy Beadsworth and Adrian Stead lined up but a question mark lingers over Andy Hemmings. As well as the charter cost being underwritten by a group of RORC members, they need to find enough money to pay for new sails.

In the Solent yesterday, the International Six Metres continued to enjoy some cracking race conditions. The first race started with the nine-knot wind in the east, shifting towards the south. The second started with the wind fully in the south before swinging into the south-west and picking up to more than 20 knots.

In charge in both races, and overall, was Bruce Owen's Scoundrel with the following three the same in each race - Tony Canning and Robert Leigh- Wood in Lion, Peter Bateman in Thisbe, and Tom Richardson in Georgia.