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Ian Walker discusses Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing

Ian Walker is returning for his second crack at the Volvo Ocean Race following on from his Green Dragon campaign with the Irish in the last fully crewed round the world race. This time he is to skipper the race boat campaign accompanying the 2011-12 race’s Middle Eastern stopover in Abu Dhabi.

The Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing team is currently in the final throws of its design phase before they launch into construction shortly. Details of both are to be forthcoming imminently, but the rumour mill has it that the Emirati team are going with Farr Yacht Design for their boat’s design (to date Groupama, Puma and movistar have all committed to Juan Kouyoumdjian, who’s team has penned the last two race winners).

Over the next months Walker will also be picking his crew. To help with this process Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing have acquired the former ABN AMRO Two from Ken Read’s Puma team. This they will use for training in Abu Dhabi over this winter.

“We’ll be announcing the team in the New Year,” says Walker. “We will be slowly building the team up. The emphasis at the moment is on design and finalising the details of the build. Like all the teams, we are aiming to start building fairly soon to be launched by May-June next year, so we have the whole of next summer to train for the race.”

Walker says that there are no constraints on his choice of crew, however he has chosen to take one Emirati. “That is driven by me as much as anyone, because I think that is what you have to do to make the project a success in the region. I think you saw that with Green Dragon last time around [when they took a Chinese crewman with them]. And actually there is quite a lot of sailing out there. I don’t know yet how strong the candidates we’ll find or not – there is a little bit of unknown in that at this stage. That is something we have to get to work on quite quickly when I get out there next month.”

To choose the Emirati crew, Walker says they will go through a trials process. “Otherwise we want to pick the best team we can to do well in the race. Abu Dhabi always want to be very competitive in anything they do. They now have a Volvo race team but they have a successful Red Bull Air Race team, triathlon team, etc and we are part of that.”

While Volvo Ocean Race CEO Knut Frostad says that for this race they are erring away from the edict of his predecessor Glenn Bourke, that stopovers should be fielding teams in the race (or teams, stopovers...) this is the way it is working with Abu Dhabi and Walker feels strongly that the union between stopover and team is important. “As you saw last time with Galway - the key to having a good stopover is having a team in the race to try and get interest in the race prior to the race arriving there.”

So how confident is Walker feeling compared to this same juncture with Green Dragon last time around? If they haven’t started building yet, then they are a little behind the ‘big three’ (Groupama, Telefonica and Puma) this time around? “A lot of work has already happened,” states Walker. “We are late compared to the other teams. Yes, we have a challenge on our hands, but there is no comparison with the Green Dragon campaign, because our fundamental problem with that was a lack of finance from the beginning and the lack of certainty that the whole thing was going to go ahead. Then there was the fact that you couldn’t sign up with any of the VO70 known designers because they all had exclusivity agreements which isn’t the case this time around. If we had been able to go to Juan K or Farr last time around and buy even a standard boat that was somewhere near the pace, then we would have done just fine. We were very strong in a number of areas but if you are fundamentally 5-10% slower than the other boats it doesn’t matter how good you are.” Saying that, he still be believes that the Green Dragon campaign was well worth doing, even though it was frustrating.

According to Walker they are investing heavily in R&D prior to committing their design this time around.

The deal with Abu Dhabi is with High Aspect, the company Walker runs with the charismatic ‘Mr Shirley Robertson’, Jamie Boag. They won this contract over other strong entries, including former America’s Cup defenders Alinghi. Since Green Dragon they have brought into their team Phil Allen as General Manager and Commercial Director, Dave Hassett, both of whom worked on the Green Dragon campaign.