A lot of science, a bit of art

Navigator Jules Salter pores through voluminous data to set the course during Azzam's nine-month global adventure

Julian Salter, the navigator, won the 2008/09 Volvo Ocean Race aboard Ericsson 4, along with three other Azzam crew members.

Mention his name among the sailing scholars and prepare for a stream of unqualified respect.
"His manner and his whole package out there is second to none," bowman Wade Morgan said.
"Just a fantastic temperament for this," watch leader Craig Satterthwaite said.
"When Jules speaks, you listen," Shore Team technical manager Mike Danks said. "He doesn't say much. It takes a lot to make him angry, and when he does get angry, whew, it's not good. No arrogance. Great guy. Super-quiet. Respect for everyone."
The 42-year-old sailing brain of navigator Jules Salter from Isle of Wight long since evolved beyond any rational reproach. It is not just the second-place finish as navigator of Pirates of the Caribbean in 2005, or his first-place finish as navigator of Ericcson 4 in 2008. It is not just his probable feel for the contours of some high-pressure system 12 time zones away. It is not just his master's degree in nautical law from Southampton University.
Nor is it just his uncommon mix of meteorological expertise with what he calls "a practical sailor's approach", so that as Satterthwaite puts it: "He's got a pretty good understanding of what makes the boat go fast," apart from some navigators, for whom "it might be hard for them to relay in practical terms how it's going to pan out."
Surely it is not even just all of the above.
"You have to apply a lot of science to it," Salter said of the game, "but there's still a bit of art to it."
As if by way of fairy tale, he can extract vignettes from childhood relative to the round-the-world Whitbread race, the predecessor to the Volvo Ocean Race for which Salter is preparing now. At maybe eight or nine or 10, he said, "I remember going and watching the boats finish the race and sailing down the Solent into Portsmouth". He remembers being in the car with his parents and pointing out the boats.
And there is the mandatory turn of temporary truancy, which came at the age of 14 or 15 when he cycled toward school one day and stopped to watch the UBS-Switzerland boat for long enough to achieve memorable tardiness.
All of that explains his affinity for the race as "still kind of a traditional sort of thing".
If his hushed manner tells anything - and sometimes you do not notice him even when he is right around - it is that he believes steadfastly in listening, and that perhaps chit-chat would divert from time spent honing that mind. At the Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing headquarters by the sea in Cascais, Portugal, almost perpetually you could see him in a back office within the food tent, studying a computer screen.
"He'll sit there at that station 22 hours a day, going through a thousand different models and theories," Danks said. "Just so he's trying to outsmart the others on the weather around the world. He's just constantly looking at weather and data. When you start making those decisions out at sea, you've got some solid data. You might sail a little bit further but that's going to be better. He's one of the best guys in the world at doing that. Probably the best guy."
Salter's three-word summary of his role: "Worrying about numbers."
With a voluminous background that began at the age of seven at the Gurnard Sailing Club on the Isle of Wight, Salter thrived in the 2005/06 Volvo Ocean Race, even as he told the New York Times the Atlantic felt like "driving a car through a mogul field". The family-loving husband and father of two considers helming that boat into Portsmouth his proudest sailing moment. Come 2008/09, he became one of three Azzam sailors who know the feeling of winning the Volvo, aboard the Ericsson 4 skippered by the Brazilian five-time Olympic medalist Torben Grael. As a man who finds the preparation "as interesting as the race itself sometimes", he finds the whole exercise too sprawling to allow for much pinpointing of moments.
"It takes a while to sink in, really," he said of winning. "The whole thing takes a while. Just the fact that you've sailed around the world takes a while, I think. You win something just by getting 'round and being with the team and enjoying the sailing. There's a good feeling among all the teams, generally. You have a lot of respect for the competitors in this race because you know how hard it is .
"I think that's what I like about it, is there's a lot of respect" - with, of course, a heap of it steered toward him.
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