As the chief measurer in the America's Cup, Ken McAlpine is the keyholder to more design secrets than any other person in the world. But don't try to bribe those secrets out of him. The keyholder is not for turning.
How long have been the chief measurer?
My first America's Cup was 1987 in Perth, but my first touch of the Cup was in 1970. I was working for the Australian measurer on Gretel II when she went to Newport.
Are you friend or foe of the sailors and designers?
I think a bit of both. I've had some great friendships with the crew members and the designers. But I hope they see me as maintaining a level playing field for everyone. I hope they think I am representing their interests when I am measuring someone else's boat.
How do you cope with the responsibility of potentially ruling a very expensive Cup boat out of class?
It doesn't really work like that. It's more a process where we have a relationship with the players, where if they have something they're not sure about, they come and ask. So we don't ever get to the situation where we say, 'I'm sorry, you can't sail your boat.' So it's a more a process we go through so that when they get to the regatta they have every confidence that their boat is legal to go racing.
So you must be privy to new developments like Team New Zealand's 'hula' many months before the rest of the world?
Yes, that's one of the special things about this job, you do get to some pretty special and exciting things that almost nobody else gets to see, and a long way in advance.
Having had access to so many details of so many different yachts, do you ever fancy having a go at designing yourself?
I guess I have a latent wish that I would love to play inside a team, once. Because I've been around this game for a long time and I love the game, it's so complex. And I'd just like to play on the other side of the fence, just once. But of course, I can't do that. Once you move to the other side you can never come back to what I'm doing now. It's a one-way ticket. There is a moral responsibility on me such that it would be wrong for me to go and play, having seen what I've seen. There's an ethical position where because I get to see a lot of people's secrets, I have a responsibility to keep those secrets secret.
Do every people try and get you drunk, to try and pry those secrets out of you?
In a joking kind of way, of course. There's lot of that sort of thing. But there's never been anything serious offered to me. And if there was I would take serious offence at it, and probably do something about reporting it to the Jury if it did happen.
In your whole time with the Cup, can you recall an instance of cheating?
No I don't think so. The stakes are way too high. There would be an international incident if a boat was thrown out of the regatta. Everyone is very conscious of that, and I think the instruction comes down from on high in every syndicate, that, 'there's too much at stake so please don't do it'.
How busy are you at a regatta like this?
Once a regatta starts, the load comes off, but there can sometimes still be a lot to do. I was measuring sails yesterday morning, for example. The other thing we do is a post-race measurement check, where we'll board a boat at the finish of racing and come back to the dock and check it over.
Will Version 5 increase your workload next year?
Yes, I'll be very busy next year, with all the boats switching from Version 4 to Version 5. There will be a lot of re-measuring involved, and we'll be twice as busy as we were here.
How long does it take to measure a boat from start to finish?
Well you always do it in bits and pieces, but in total it's probably about 40 hours.
Which is the most stressful part of the job?
The most stressful part is when there is controversy, but we're all under stress and you've got to take it in your stride.
How long do you intend to keep doing the job?
That's not in my hands. That's in the hands of the Defender and the Challenger of Record, and it's up to them to decide whether or not I've done a good job or a bad job. If I've done a good job, then maybe they'll ask me to stay. If I've done a lousy job, then it would be fair enough if they said, 'Thanks, but no thanks.'
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