Don Cowie - The Engine Driver
The mainsail is the biggest engine on the boat, and it’s the mainsail trimmer’s job to get maximum power from the engine. For Emirates Team New Zealand, that man is Don Cowie.
One of the key interactions on the boat is between the helmsman, the mainsail trimmer and the jib trimmer. Get that three-way triangle right, and your boat will be fast. Cowie has been doing the mainsail for Dean Barker since 2003. Their relationship now borders on the telepathic. “I guess having sailed with Dean as long as I have, things probably happen more naturally now than when we first started sailing together, and I guess I’m always trying to anticipate what he wants and he’s probably communicating with me easier now than when he did previously.”
Aside from being the engine of the boat, the sails do a lot of the steering, particularly through tight manoeuvres such as in the minutes leading up to the start. “In the pre-start, it’s a combination of both the jib trimmer and the main trimmer to help steer the boat with how we trim the sails, and if you don’t get it right, that’s when you start having problems steering the boat, especially in the fresher conditions. Certainly the mainsail trimmer has to keep on his toes, as far as keeping the boat under control.”
The added challenge of the Louis Vuitton Challenge is sailing in borrowed boats with unfamiliar equipment. “You learn quickly. You have to adapt quickly. We don’t know these boats that well, and we’re given sails that we don’t know, so you have to deal with it the best way you can. Ideally, you might want a different set-up. But you have to remember that everybody’s got the same stuff, so you deal with it quickly and you soon learn what the boats are capable of doing.”
One of the key skills is being able to sail the boat close to a stalling situation without actually losing control. The better the team work, the closer you can push a boat to the edge of stall. “But you should never have a situation where your boat actually stalls,” says Cowie. “If we lose steerage, then that’s probably down to the trimmers. So that’s a slap on the hand.”
Equally it’s the trimmers who deserve a lot of credit for putting the boat in the right place with centimetre precision. “I think we can say we’ve done a good job if we manage to get a hook on the other boat in a pre-start or come off the start on with an even start or a good start. I think it’s a combination of Dean, myself, and the jib trimmer to make that happen. So it’s really a bit of a team effort around the pre-start. I mean, Dean is the guy driving the boat, and he tells us where he wants to start. But as far as coming off the line nicely, it really is a team operation.”
