Return to the Southern Ocean

We speak to Steve Hayles about his move from BMW Oracle Racing back to the Volvo Ocean Race

Steve Hayles has come a considerable way since his days as a spotty youth chained to the chart table of Matt Humphreys' Whitbread 60 Dolphin & Youth. 2004 saw Hayles holding down what might be considered the top job in his field as he number crunched for Gavin Brady, Chris Dickson and John Kostecki among Larry Ellison's elite in the afterguard of BMW Oracle Racing.

While working for an America's Cup team may be at times glamorous and high earning, the endless speed-testing and R&D between infrequent regattas is equally tedious. While Hayles is a self-professed techno-geek and appears to have fitted in well as the interface between Ellison's afterguard and the posse of PhDs hiding in the BMW Oracle Racing back room, he is essentially an offshore sailor and the call of the sea - not just a small patch of it off Valencia - appears to have beckoned with the recent announcement of his becoming navigator for Neal McDonald's Swedish Volvo Open 70 campaign, Ericsson.

Hayles has also recently become a father and his partner and daughter are based in the UK. Striking a further blow towards adulthood, he has even moved away from Hamble.

"My decision to get out of the Cup and coming to do this [Ericsson] are in fact unrelated," he maintains. "It was always in the back of my mind, but the Oracle thing was due for personal reasons and I have been flapping around in the wilderness for a month or two. So I was very happy to get the call for Neal - we have been talking about it a little while."

Despite his departure from Valencia in March, his relations with Ellison's Cup team are still good. "I have a close association with the team. I think it is unlikely I’d do the Volvo and go back to them, but I still speak to them regularly and have a strong allegance with them. They aren’t employing me right now, but I haven’t left with any kind of final ‘that’s it, we’ll never see each other again’."

The 2005-6 Volvo Ocean Race will be Hayles' fourth participation in offshore sailing's grand prix event, following his time at the chart table on Dolphin & Youth, Lawrie Smith's Silk Cut and last time round with Kevin Shoebridge on Tyco.

So why is he going again? "Having not won it and to be honest one of the huge attraction is the new boats," says Hayles. "I don’t think I would be so enthusiastic about paddling around there again in a Volvo 60. Not that they weren’t good boats, but I have been sailing them for 12-13 years now and you feel like you have done your bit. I think the new boats will be quite spectacular."

The new Volvo Open 70 has already proved its potential with Bouwe Bekking's movistar breaking the 500+ mile monohull 24 hour record. Hayles says that studying the performance of Ericsson once she is finally launched will be his principle job. Already the numbers are stacking up to be impressive. "I looked at the Volvo calculations and thought they were pretty optimistic. They were looking at average speeds of up around 15 knots which even in a phenomenally quick boat is pretty hard to do. A really really fast leg in a Volvo 60 would be 12.5 knots and then there is the getting in and out of port. However having looked at them and being quite surprised by quite how quick they are - I have just started concentrating on the first leg which isn’t notoriously windy and isn’t the quickest leg - and they are going to be pretty on the money."

Obviously Ericsson being able to two boat test with the new Pirates of the Caribbean VO70 - also in the Atlant stable, but entirely separate from them - would be highly valuable but at present it appears uncertain whether this will take place or not.

Aside from the boats one marked difference between this Volvo Ocean Race and the last is that there is no clear favourite. "I don’t think anyone can be 100% sure that they have the edge here," continues Hayles. "I don’t see an illbruck-style campaign up and running. So I think it will be a fascinating race. And another thing, it seems that within the design envelope that people aren’t all in the same corner of the rule which will add lots of interest. Even if it turns out that a boat is in slightly the wrong area of the rule, they will be quick in certain conditions, so it will be interesting from that point of view. So you will have horses for courses and every boat will have its day. And then there is the all-round balance with the inshore racing, which will be quite interesting. I think everyone can justifiably go in believing that they have a good chance.

"Looking back at previous races that has not always been the case - there have been quite strong favourites I think. I reckon I could have guessed the finishing order of the boats in the last race and barring things like our rudder breakage, would have got almost all the positions right three months before the race. This time around I don’t think anyone has a clue. We might turn up off the start line and ABN takes off and is gone. All you can do is approach it the best you can, with what you have got."

So what did he learn from Tyco? "That boat should have been on the podium. I can obviously blame the rudder problem. That might be the difference between third and fourth place, but I don’t think that realistically given what we had we were ever going to beat illbruck and Assa Abloy. I honestly believe that both those boats had a speed edge on us. But that is not an excuse. The reason we weren’t going quick enough was all of our faults collectively. It was all about our testing and all the bits and pieces that go into making a fast yacht. We can’t blame the designer or the builder. I think we sailed a fairly conservative race and bar breakages we should have ended up in third spot. We had some pretty bad results in legs. You can surmount that in a nine leg race, but what you can’t get around is not finishing a leg. But that teaches you - you have to finish. The old adage and all that."

And what did he learn from BMW Oracle? "Obviously non-disclosure and confidentiality is absolutely critical for everybody. The people and the resources at Oracle are pretty impressive and for technically minded-people like myself, there is some fantastic development going on, but not things I can walk away with. Certainly the process of development and ideas and having sailed with such a massive sailing team - you definitely come away wiser than when you started.

"It is interesting for me to look at what is a slightly different arena for me. The concentration of my career has always been around offshore sailing. We go inshore sailing a lot, but this is the first time for a solid period of 16 months I have concentrated on just that. So it is good to come back and look at the software for the offshore races. The offshore races tend to become more and more sprints, very long inshores and in my mind I think of splitting the race down. On the first leg you can’t be thinking about what is happening in the South Atlantic because it just isn’t relevant. You have to think about what is happening in the next day or the next six hours. You are obviously keeping you eye on the bigger picture, but in a relatively small fleet and it is all about racing the next guy."

Having raced together around the world previously on Silk Cut, the McDonald-Hayles
skipper-navigator partnership will be one of the most formidable in the Volvo Ocean Race.