Matt Hibbard's been a sailmaker with Team NZ worked with the Camper team in the 2011/12 Volvo Ocean Race and is now making sail covers at Burton Sails, Tauranga.

He's done a bit of campaigning; twice with Team NZ, and says he discovered covers between America's Cup campaigns.

There was also the Volvo campaign, but the former Wellingtonian says he only lived in Auckland for work.

'I did a little bit in wellington where I learned to be a sailmaker at Linton Sails,” says Matt.

After he left Wellington he got involved with a Spanish sailing team in the Volvo round the world race, and then the Team NZ campaign in San Francisco.

Between San Francisco and Bermuda he had about 18 months off the team payroll, when he did a bit of covers work in Auckland. After 14 years he felt like doing something different, says Matt.

Matt was at the sharp end of the all-nighter repair mission after Team NZ broke its 23m tall wingsail when the foiling AC 50 catamaran pitch-poled in Bermuda's Great Sound on June 6 this year.

At the time Team New Zealand was at 3-1 in the race to get five points and a place in the America's Cup final.

The team recovered in an all-nighter pulling parts off the alternate wing sail, leaving them ready to compete the following day.

Team NZ benefactor Mateo de Nora says the way the team re-grouped and re-built the wingsail was the highlight for him.

The secretaries were using hairdryers to dry the boat, the cooks, security, everybody was working round the clock, says Mateo is a later interview.

Matt also remembers it as a team effort to get everything done, and everyone helped.

'I was a big part of the wing team and the wing was quite damaged, and also I had a lot to do with the fairings on the boat and a lot of them were quite damaged as well,” says Matt.

'We had a lot of people in the team that don't usually help out, round the shore crew side of things.”

'It was a big team effort and it wasn't just get your area done and go home. It was get everything done that needed doing.”

Constructed of carbon and Nomex (honeycomb laminate core) the 23m wingsail was very light.

'The whole thing only weighed about 400kg. It was very big but everything was very light and fragile. That's why it broke into a million pieces when it hit the water.”

The pitch-poling also resulted in structural damage to the fairings, which Matt was involved in repairing

'I think this campaign more than any other campaign I've been involved in you had to be quite diverse in your work, pick up new thing as you go.”

He was doing 18 hour days during the campaign, with the wing team undertaking any repairs or modifications to the wing sail and conducting the pre and post-sailing checks.

'It takes about an hour, hour and a half to check the wing after a day's sailing,” says Matt.

'The whole month just blurred into one week. A month of racing went by very quickly. You sort of got to work by 6.30 and you weren't leaving by nine most nights. That was just the way it was. It was all worth it in the end.”

He and his wife were only living in Auckland for work and had bought a house in Tauranga a year ago, which they rented.

'The plan was to move after the America's Cup. That was our plan and it worked out.”