Head to head

Roger Nilson gives his views on the dangerous conflict between The Race Tour and the Volvo Ocean Race

Above: Roger Nilson's group includes Neal McDonald, Knut Frostad, Ross Field and Grant Dalton and some of the most influential individuals in offshore yacht racing.

Aside from tackling Volvo, Nilson over the last couple of months has got together some influential parties to discuss the future of fully crewed round the world races via phone conferences. This group includes djuice dragons skipper Knut Frostad, Ross Field, ex-SEB head Pelle Norberg, Grant Dalton, Atlant's Johan Salen (ASSA ABLOY) management, Paul Cayard and Neal MacDonald. They are unanimous, says Nilson, in their feeling that the future of fully crewed round the world racing lies in a concept similar to The Race Tour, although he points out that the group does have differing opinions about a few things eg: they want one class of rather than both the giant multis and Bruno's new 80ft one design cat racing on the same course.

"For example Grant Dalton, a year ago, when I talked about the merge - and then I was talking about the Volvo Ocean Race merging with The Race and not even The Race Tour - he wasn't so interested in a merge. But after this summer Grant realised that 'God, that is the only good solution.'" continues Nilson.

With Nilson's group all for using big multihulls in the new Volvo Ocean Race, Tyco's Kevin Shoebridge feeling the same way, even the Volvo Ocean Race's new Director of Race Operations Andy Hindley being an ex- Team Phillips crewman, it is hard to see who it is apart from Volvo themselves who want the next VOR to be sailed in a new slightly bigger monohull.

Nilson puts his case: "My feeling and this group, which is basically the people - except myself - that got the money together for the last Volvo Ocean Race - I exclude illbruck and Tyco [who essentially had private backing] - we have the feeling that one has to go to a spectacular boat. For example in Scandinavia TV viewers are going down like crazy from 5 to 2 million and this is the same around the world and to get through the clutter you have to create something spectacular. It is not a matter of anything else other than creating the maximum interest in the media - that is the key to the whole thing. And it is a very tough market in the world with the economy and so you have to include south east Asia. And to do that you obviously need to have multihulls."

Nilson says that during The Race he felt "no less safe" on board the big cat than he has done on the 64ft Whitbread/Volvo monohulls. Indeed, he says it is the most fun he has ever had on a sailboat. "You have the old discussion of the risk with the multihulls versus monohulls, and you can go on about it for ever, but these big cats are as far as I'm concerned are basically as safe as a Volvo 60, because the individual risk for the crew is much less from, for example, being thrown overboard by water. Then you have the capsize risk, but on the other hand if you hit something there is a much better chance that a big multihull will float than a monohull. You can go back and forth endlessly... It is a simple fact that none have disappeared in the Southern Ocean so far - so what's the problem?"

He also doesn't think that the difference in price will be that great. "If Volvo create a new 70ft class, whatever they do is not going to be so cheap and the difference between a big multihull and a new Volvo campaign is going to be very very small. This thing [The Race Tour] is going to be so much more spectacular and so much more media friendly. Return for investors is more important." Yes, the cost of running a two boat big cat campaign with a big sail development programme, as Grant Dalton has previously mooted, could be astronomic and considerably more than the $10 million budgets Volvo have stated as the ball park figure they would like to see campaign costs in the Ocean Race coming in at, but Nilson says that Bruno Peyron will be banning two boat campaigns from both The Race and the The Race Tour.

Nilson says that the Volvo Ocean Race's new CEO Glenn Bourke was part of the group teleconferences and has been kept fully informed of their views. "At one stage Glenn actually said he was going to present a multihull alternative to the Volvo Ocean Race board on 17 December when they have a very important meeting," continues Nilson. "But when I spoke to him a few days ago after the Route du Rhum, he says it is out of the question and he won't do that. But obviously a bunch of 60ft trimarans racing singlehanded hitting hurricane force winds is very different. I don't know what would happen if you put the Volvo fleet in 85 knots but I think you would have seen some pretty bad damage [Roger thinks the most wind they saw in the entire Volvo Ocean Race was 50-55 knots]. That is what Glenn said was a final call for them not to touch the multihull subject - and that was sad to hear.

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