McDonald gets his ride

We speak to the newly appointed skipper of the Ericsson Volvo Open 70, Neal McDonald

The rumour mill has been in high gear over the last few months over whether or not Neal McDonald would skipper one of Atlant's entry in this year's Volvo Ocean Race. While McDonald's gung-ho approach many feel would have been perfect for the Pirates boat today Atlant have announced Hamble's finest as skipper of their other boat, sponsored by electronics giant, Ericsson.

"It has been a long time coming," says McDonald. "I’ve been involved with Atlant for the last four months, or longer, so I have already got a reasonable handle on the situation and I’ comfortable it is all coming together. There is a lot of work to do, but it feels good."

Since the last Volvo Ocean Race McDonald had been trying to get a campaign together with wife and fellow skipper Lisa. However this did not come to pass. "Lisa and I spent a long time trying to get to where we wanted to be," he confides. "It was almost unfortunate. If it had been just no money then we would probably have given up this time last year but in fact we got quite a long way down the road, but we never managed to marry up the sources of money we had up together. I think we were right to stop when we did, because it was just too late. It is sad to look back and think of the energy we spent. The other sad part is the potential cost for the some of the sponsors we were talking to at the time, because it is actually going to turn out to be quite an impressive race and a year ago I think a lot of people would have had their doubts. So it is good that it has all come together, but it has been a rather torturous couple of years for myself and Lisa."

For McDonald November's Volvo Ocean Race will be somewhere between his third and fourth time competing in this race, having skippered Assa Abloy to second place in 2001-2, racing with Laurie Smith on Silk Cut in the race before that and a rather abbreviated race, more of a round the island, again with Smith on board Fortuna in 1993-4.

Having come second in the last race what will it take to win this time? "I guess we start with a little more experience," says McDonald. "It doesn’t take an awful lot to be better than second. Looking back at last time it was hardly surprising illbruck won because they started a year and a half before everyone else and they really did have an unbelievable collection of sailors and when the start gun went they were already virtually a leg ahead of everybody. This time I don’t think it is quite the same difference. Despite there being a new rule, people haven’t had a group of guys together for a year and half, reading each other inside out. So I guess you have to look at the illbruck model a bit and take out the good bits of out of that and improve on the bits which you know weren’t quite perfect."

While illbruck was generally led the 2001-2 Volvo Ocean Race around the world, this time round it is likely to be far less clear cut despite the introduction of the new Volvo Open 70. "There will be more horses for courses. Even if you had the same hull designs, people are going to end up optimising sailing in different areas and the range of sails has to be bigger so they won’t be good across the board. So one person’s sails will be good in one condition and not so good in another. So one day one boat will be rocketing away and if you have got your sums right, the next day you can get it back," says McDonald.

At present while Jason Carrington finished off the build of the new Ericsson down at Green Marine, so McDonald is sorting out his crew. "I am pretty far down the line. I do feel very lucky to have a number of very good people to draw upon, who I have been talking to for the best part of a year and a half now and more actively in the last couple of months. It is just a question of slotting them all together in a combination that I think is best. I have more than twice the number of good people that I need. Over the next three weeks I need to start thinning those options down and try and put together what I see as the A-team".

However his most important appointment has already been made in his navigator. "Steve Hayles is a massive gain. I was really very nervous about navigators. There are only four or five in the world that I would have been happy to start the race saying ‘this guy is going to give me an opportunity to win the race if we give him all the other bits and put them in place. Steve was without a doubt my first choice. So that is probably one of my biggest nightmares over and done with".

Sadly the crew will not feature wife Lisa. "Our sailing has diverged a little bit," says McDonald. "She’s doing some Yngling sailing and is doing incredibly well. In the short term I think we are going to go down slightly different paths".

Despite the new bigger boat and the prospect of having to handle it with fewer crew and larger but fewer sails, McDonald says that his approach to getting his team together is little different from last time. "You wouldn’t want a bunch of pigmies that’s for sure," he says when we put it to him that he will need a group of gorillas. "At the end of the day the key issues are experience talent and who people get on with. Although you could call it a small group and team dynamics aren’t as important, I disagree with that: they are even more important as we are going to go through some pretty hard times. It is really trying to mesh that team together and put people into an environment where they can get the best out of each other. It hasn’t changed my philosophy much. I don’t think I would have chosen a different group if we were sailing the VO60".

Johan Salen and Richard Brisius' company Atlant are running two campaigns - Ericsson and the high profile campaign promiting the new Pirates of the Caribbean film. However McDonald thinks it is unlikely there will be much cross over between the campaigns and possibly not two boat tuning. "I doubt it very much. As time goes on, we’ll see what we need to do. To be honest I don’t think there won't be a huge amount of time when we’ll be on the water. We want to be launched in the middle of June. What little I know about the complexity of these boats is that you won’t be putting them on the water and going off to do an offshore the next day. There will be some dilly-dallying around trying to optimise the systems and it will probably be more efficient to do that nearer where we built it, so we’ll stay here as long as we feel we need to".

Once they have the boat sorted then they will take it to somewhere on the Atlantic coast of Spain or Portugal to continue their training. If possible they will try and do the Rolex Fastnet Race but McDonald says this is entirely dependent upon their progress.

While with three designers fielding new Volvo Open 70s in the race, there is likely to be significant differencies in speed for seasoned Volvo Ocean Race sailors, the biggest change will be in the way you have to sail the new boat. "One thing a lot of people have sort of overlooked is that these boats are somewhere between the 60s and the maxi-multihulls and we won’t be able to thrash them around the course like the 60s. I’ve only ever slowed a 60 down once and I’ve never felt that it was going to fall to bits on me just because it was getting bashed around, but I’m sure there will be plenty of occasions on these boats where the conscious decision to slow it down will have to be made. Fortunately I’ve done enough multihull sailing to think I have got a pretty good feel for it. I would rather not be slowing down, it is not a decision sailing lightly, but I think the group of people we will have around us will be pretty good at that.

In addition to his sailing with Ericsson McDonald is shortly to set out as part of Mike Golding's Ecover crew on his inaugural Open 60 race in the Calais Round Britain. "For me it is has got an awful lot of plus points - the Open 60 is about the closest boat to what we have got at the moment and secondly it is a trip around the top of England which we don’t do very often and of course we will be doing on the race. Open 60s are very similar in a lot of respects. I know nothing about Open 60s so I am going in with very open eyes and I think it will be most entertaining. I am thoroughly looking forward it. There are several boats doing it and I think there will be a bit of a race on."

Aside from this his name is also down to race on board Atlant's 60ft trimaran in the Oops Cup, although this will be in an event and on a board a boat sponsored by....Nokia. McDonald really hopes he can do it. "I’d really love to. Of all the sailing I haven’t done, I haven’t done any sailing on the trimarans. If I get the opportunity to do it I will."

And so Neal McDonald will be getting his second corporate haircut (see above) in four years.