Building a successful team from shore to shore

Having proved a dynamo in water, Azzam this week will segue into dryness, a state most uncommon for the ocean-going craft. Her caretakers will greet the yacht's arrival on the Portuguese coast by giving it a welcome lift - out of water, with a crane - and a tireless refitting as Azzam will abide once more the expertise of one of the more unsung marvels in all of sport: the Shore Team. Diligent, capable, creative and mighty, the Shore Team seemingly could deconstruct and reassemble the entire world, and apparently would do so willingly, without audience or plaudits. "Everybody sees the 10 sailors," said Mike Danks, the technical shore manager for Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing. "It's more than the 10 sailors by a long, long way … The guy who sweeps the floor is just as important as the guy who steers the boat." As Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing's sailing crew savours their win in the monohull division of the Fastnet race and aim in earnest toward the Volvo Ocean Race, beginning on October 29, they will hand over the 70-foot Azzam to the Shore Team at the marina in Cascais. A different bustle will ensue. A tent village will reappear adjacent the water after the usual two to three days of assembly. Tools and machines will rev up until the place looks and sounds like some cross between a shop-class workshop and a Formula One garage. All-nighters will beset some, and anyone happening by the famous marina in the pretty resort town at midnight might see lights burning and hear gadgets grinding. An array of hardware will materialise with such breadth that at one point Ian Walker, the skipper, pointed to an implement of some sort and joked, "I thought it might make a nice table lamp for me after the race". At some point, the sailing crew might take the Shore Team out gratefully for a thank you evening, as it did on the last Thursday of July. And every sailor, if asked, or sometimes without being asked, will extol the crucial nature of the Shore Team. "The guys on shore are just as important as the guy sailing the boat," Justin Slatter, the bowman, said. "All the preparation work we do now, it's 80 to 90 per cent of the battle. If you can prepare well and have a really nice shore structure, you increase your chances of making sure everything's right on the boat." The Shore Team, said Walker - and here's that phrase again - "is just as important" as the celebrated crew, and it will spearhead the refitting and customising of Azzam for the rest of August until serious training resumes for the whole of September. To read the list of Shore Team positions would be to get a sense of People Who Know How To Do Things and People You Might Like To Have Around The House. There's an engineer, an electrician, a winch guy, two riggers, two sail makers, three boat builders … "He looks after all the winches," Walker said as he nodded toward an industrious Sam Bourne. "Every stopover, he'll have to strip all the winches down." Standing amid the din of the tent, Walker said: "It's sort of interesting, in a sense. We come off the boat, we say we're going to need some foot chocks, and these guys have to make it happen." He then held a foot chock in his hands and said: "Clever stuff, carbon fibre." Farther across the task spectrum, there's a diver who plunges beneath the boat on each of its wet mornings, and his mission spawns another consideration.