Mark Rudiger interview - part 2

Assa Abloy's navigator describes lessons he learned sailing with Cayard and Dickson

Rudiger is against weather routing (following his experience in The Race Grant Dalton is for it) and one gets the impression he would like the amount of weather data sent through to the boat to be limited as much as possible. "The more information you get the more time it takes to process and the less time you have to sail the boat." He says he would prefer it if it was like last time when the race organization sent each boat the same weather information.
After the last race, Rudiger set up Team Rudiger to try and raise the sponsorship fund to have his own boat. "We were close a couple of times. On the west coast the potential was there to get the money, but there was little exposure about the race." More exposure about the race would have certainly helped them. As it was, he says, they would have to go to sponsors meetings and have to tell them what the Volvo Ocean Race was. His cut-off date to get funding was August 2000 at which time he had been contacted by several syndicates to see if he was available.

Rudiger says that he returned to the Magnus Olsen, Johan Salen and Richard Brisius-led syndicate again because he was impressed how they ran the campaign in 1997. "We had a good working relationship last time and they’re funding from a really good set of sponsors." He says he also wanted to get involved with the project early to be involved with crew selection and training. "To spend two years sailing around the world you want to do it with the right people. You want to make it a good, positive experience."

As the project stands now, Rudiger is happy. "We’ve got a killer boat. With Magnus we’ve got all the stuff from last time. I’ve been there for every step of the boatbuilding and nothing has been spared."