ABN AMRO update

We get the low down on the progress of the Dutch two boat Volvo Ocean Race campaign from Roy Heiner

Thedailysail caught up with Roy Heiner recently as he was in the States taking in the fleets in The Transat, the Newport-Bermuda Race and the UBS Trophy.

Heiner is the public face of the ABN AMRO two boat Volvo Ocean Race campaign and was taking a particular interest in the swing keel maxZ86s racing to Bermuda and the Open 60s that had just arrived in Boston at the end of the Transat.

Meanwhile work is progressing on ABN AMRO's two new Volvo Ocean 70s, both designs by the innovative Juan Kouyoumdjian.

"We are hard at work building," says Heiner of their progress. Build work is being carried out in Lelystad in Holland, by Killian Bushe the man who constructed the all-conquering illbruck Challenge for the last Volvo Ocean Race. "We hope to be sailing the first boat around the end of November."

Despite rumours that they were downsizing the campaign to a single boat, Heiner refutes this and says that the plan is still to build the first boat, test it and train on it before going ahead with the second. "We decided not to decide whether the two boats would be same. We wanted to see what came out of the tank testing and what came out of the sailing. We’ll see where we end up. We don’t want to be restricted by pre-conceived ideas."

The design team remains as announced in March with Kouyoumdjian's team (now based in Valencia), plus Killian Bushe, Hall Spars and North Sails Denmark's Henrik Søderlund who is also a naval architect.

At this stage Heiner is playing his cards closely to his chest in terms of the design. Kouyoumdjian is renowned for his radical designs and design ideas, but Heiner says that the ABN AMRO boats will not be too left field.

"You have to do the right thing. You can’t design a boat that is fast in all conditions, so you have to put in a compromise somewhere. Juan is I think renowned to use the rule to design what he thinks is the fastest boat. I think from a basic strategy you wouldn’t want to have the most extreme boat out there, because we will be sailing the first boat built, so why would you put yourself on one edge of the boundary? That would not be a clever move. But he’ll do his best job. I know he’ll make us a very fast boat."

Obviously the new boat will have a canting keel. "It was very interesting watching the Z86s start to Bermuda. In real life when things go well you cant the keel and it is all very fast and nice. But you saw just after the start when the guys were hitting the fog bank that the wind headed 20 degrees and the boat was completely on its ear to windward. And that was sailing just along a straight course... We have to sail these boats around the cans with far too few people. So it is a very important design issue to make the boats sailable by 10 people." With this in mind it will be interesting to see if Kouyoumdjian and the team decide that furling headsails might be a fast option.

In terms of the canting keel, a view is that the pitch of this will have to be trimmed as conscientiously as a sail. "In real life you won’t have enough people, so I think it will be a combination of helmsman, tactician and some fancy computer software," Heiner says of the keel's operation.

Obviously with a canting keel will come daggerboards, but Heiner will not reveal what format the appendages will take, although The Transat has provided some eyeopeners for him. "If you look at the Open 60s, everyone had them on the sides. The older generation boats had them in the middle. If you break them you can’t sail upwind anymore. If you have your board in the middle of the boat it is a lot easier to go upwind even when you break them."

However he says that the biggest advantage the ABN AMRO team will have is that they will be the first to hit the water. "The earlier we can get the boat on the water, the happier we will be."

As the design team go about their business, so the small matter of who will skipper the boats remains outstanding. The decision Heiner says is down to him and also the team's ABN AMRO representative Jan Berent Heukensfeldt Jansen. Both Paul Cayard and Neal McDonald's names are rumoured to have been on the list of potential candidates but at present no deals have been done. Until such time as the skippers are decided then Heiner says he is reluctant to go about recruiting crew. "We have lost a few good people because of that," he admits. "We are very sad about that, but we have to know who is skipper - I have experience of that!"

At present ABN AMRO look set to be first of the Volvo Ocean Race teams to launch their boats but clearly the decision over the skippers needs to be made rapidly so that those individuals can add their input to the design of the boat.

In the meantime Heiner is currently en route to Quebec on board Thomas Coville's 60ft trimaran Sodebo, a prospect he was excited about when we spoke to him. "It could be for fun, but I expect to learn a lot. The 70s are going to be a scary boats to sail. The trimarans are even faster and sometimes it is good to sail even faster boats than the ones you are going to be sailing, because you can explore the limits."