Sailing: GBR Challenge count cost of coming home

The yard was a shambles when Ed Danby cast a critical eye over his little empire, the GBR Challenge America's Cup base, on Tuesday. Looking energetic with a broom was the skipper Ian Walker, clearing up the debris from the party the night before after the British team had been eliminated by the New York Yacht Club's Stars & Stripes.

The Brits had taken to heart the dictum of Napoleon that, in victory, champagne was deserved, in defeat it was necessary. Magnums of Moët had been the order of the day until 3am.

Danby, whose vocabulary becomes more economically Saxon the more his patience is tried, is the quartermaster general of the £20m campaign, which has been Britain's first foray into Cup territory for over 15 years.

For the next month he is responsible for seeing that the two new boats, GBR 70 and the more radical GBR 78, are in top condition for a testing programme which is no less demanding on equipment than a racing schedule.

These are pieces of kit that demand constant attention, winches being stripped, sails washed, fittings checked. The major difference is that the hours become more civilised, the programme, weather permitting, a normal five days a week, and there should not be any frantic overnight shifts.

Peter Harrison, the syndicate leader, hopes to make a second America's Cup challenge and much of the 2002 equipment will therefore be used again. Although the two 2002-generation boats would almost certainly be replaced in a future campaign, they would form an important data comparison base when design decisions are made about building their replacements. Plans are therefore in hand to bring everything home to Cowes. On every mainsail and on the side of the hulls is the orange and dark blue logo of P&O Nedloyd, a sponsor of the British challenge, which is about to become very valuable.

There are three hulls to be shipped back and each one takes up the deck space of four 40-foot containers. They are usually stacked five high, so that is 20 containers and, as it costs about £5,000 per container, that means £100,000 of deck space per boat.

Add to that two eight-metre inflatables and a 14m inflatable, plus three masts and the benefit begins to soar. Plus, although about 10 containers full of gear came down from England to New Zealand, including all the Concept Rowing machines for the gym, which now go to Britain's Olympic sailing squad, about 20 are going back. "We even have enough carbon fibre and Kevlar resin on the shelf in case of a major crash to build a 30ft yacht," Danby said.

There is also Harrison's 75ft motor yacht, Viking, used for hospitality during the Louis Vuitton Cup, and for which he traded in part exchange one of the three yachts he bought from the defunct Nippon Challenge syndicate, JPN 41. That is now plying its daily trade out of Viaduct Basin, giving visitors an America's Cup yacht experience, up to 30 of them, for $NZ125 (£39) a time.

There is also all the boat gear and equipment, carefully stripped down, put in bags and labelled. All the 55 office desks, the computers and printers, every last thing has to leave the country as it was imported under a special, but temporary, tax-free arrangement with the New Zealand government.

All in a day's work for Danby, a man who was a rigger in the Naval Dockyard at Portsmouth – he replaced the cap shrouds on Nelson's Victory – and then, still 16, told his mother he was going to visit a friend as he joined a three-masted schooner to be delivered to the Sultan of Oman in the Persian Gulf. He did write a quick note on the way to tell her of the real plan. She was not favourably impressed.

He has been sailing professionally ever since, the America's Cup for Britain on Lionheart, when he was paid £100 for the whole summer, and a couple of Whitbreads on Lion New Zealand and Fisher & Paykel, plus New Zealand's famous KZ7 entry in 1986-87 into America's Cup racing. His job then was to beat Britain's White Crusader. This time Wight Lightning went the same way.

To Danby it is just a job, but even he cannot hide a hint of regret as he also faces the task of pulling down the whole base in Halsey Street so that it can be developed into flats. Nor can he hide an eye for detail. "I don't think Peter knows about everything he owns," he said. "We have 40 battery-operated drills and 20 jigsaws."

He probably knows about every nut and bolt. But the point he most wants to make is that the syndicate's biggest asset is not boats or hardware. It is people. That is what he most wants to reassemble.