A constant need to stay sharp - even on days off

The starting helmsman on GBR Challenge, Britain's America's Cup yacht, looks ahead to the next challenge in the Louis Vuitton Cup

WHOEVER SAID that between the two round-robin rounds of the Louis Vuitton Cup there would be sacrosanct days off may have been able to fool the rest of the world, but not the crews in any of the nine challenger syndicates up and down Halsey Street here in Auckland. There may not have been any racing, but there has been precious little time off. I have just come in from a match race practice session in one of the two three-man Etchells, day sailers, where we had been concentrating on starting manoeuvres organised by the coach, Bill Edgerton, and skipper, Ian Walker.

There is a constant need to stay sharp, and taking two fully crewed America's Cup class yachts out for a training session is a whole lot more difficult, especially when we are seeking to make sure they are ready for the next round.

But, just as you see golfers constantly on the practice range, or, for that matter, musicians putting in some technique practice every day, so we need to be in tune with what we do and keep the communication process going constantly. While we are doing that, all the other members of the team are pushing the project forward, keeping up with their fitness programmes and taking part in briefing sessions, looking back at footage and data from the last round, preparing for the next. You just cannot afford to stay still or you will fall behind.

It is about more than just staying on top of the maintenance of the boat. We know that every one of our rivals is working flat out to make improvements. I believe that at least five of the nine have been modified enough to mean they have had to be re-measured.

It's like a motor rally, where each round is an event in its own right, though with the additional pressure of knowing that the results are cumulative. You can go into the next round with an advantage of up to four points on some competitors and a disadvantage of up to four points, if you do not count OneWorld's so far unapplied penalty.

The pressure that I am thinking about is that, to achieve our goal of a top four slot at the end of the 16 races, we need to be able to take some more major scalps this time, particularly those of the two other syndicates with which we currently share fourth place overall, Stars & Stripes and, assuming they beat fellow-Italians Mascalzone Latino, Prada.

Stars & Stripes are our first opponents. We know they have been studying the videos of all of our starts, just as we make our own analysis. All the syndicates know a little more about each other the second time round except that, because of boat alterations, we also have to be ready for those boats to have different characteristics and for game plans to have been modified to suit them.

Monday and Tuesday are pencilled in for a couple of serious shakedown days, but our weather guru, Fiona Campbell, has sounded warning bells about the possibility of more bad weather. However, conditions can change very rapidly here, so we will have to wait and see, and also be on standby. The boat will have been fully stripped down and put together again, so we want to make sure everything is working in terms of gear, plus focus the minds of the sailing team on racing the boat. As always, we are all champing at the bit to go racing again.

We also want to pick up where we left off. Going out of the first round with three consecutive wins created a winning mindset. It's important to hit this next group of races at full speed.

There has been at least a little time to get away from it all and have some fun. Last week it was rally cars, this week we took some of the team Land Rovers down to Rotorua for a day off road, testing our skills on a specially prepared track called the Land Rover experience. All my life my father has told me to keep it on the black stuff and avoid taking to the grass. At last that was what we were meant not to do, and when it wasn't grass it was mud and water.

A great day, not least turning up back at the base with a vehicle looking just as it does in the adverts. Because they are our sponsor's vehicles, we have been desperately trying to keep them clean and shiny, only for the sponsor to make sure they looked as dirty as possible. I can't believe they really wanted us to drive them like that. By 8am the following morning they were hosed down and shining again.

Andy Beadsworth was talking to Stuart Alexander