Winning combination?

Newly appointed Ericsson skipper John Kostecki talks to thedailysail about his latest campaign

Following the announcement of Peter de Ridder's Ray Davies-led Mean Machine team for the Volvo Ocean Race 2008, so today John Kostecki was revealed as skipper of the new Ericsson campaign for the next edition of the fully crewed round the world race. The skipper of the winning illbruck Challlenge campaign in the 2001-2 Volvo Ocean Race, Kostecki was tactician on board the Ericsson boat in the last Volvo Ocean Race and even took over from Neal McDonald as skipper for the Rio de Janiero to Baltimore leg in the hope of reviving the team's flagging fortunes. However a fifth place out of six boats on the leg to the US showed that even he was unable the bail the team out.

In Gothenberg at the end of this last Volvo Ocean Race, there was much talk of repeat business in the Volvo Ocean Race - ABN AMRO seemed keen but in the end have opted not to go again and movistar are currently being wooed by at least one syndicate in Spain. Only Ericsson have committed so far. Even at the end of the last race Kostecki was already in discussion with Richard Brisius and Johan Salen, the managers of Atlant, the Stockholm-based management company behind the Ericsson campaign and previously the highly successful Assa Abloy and EF programs, over the possibility of getting involved with their next program.

While Kostecki has been integral to the new program from the outset, he only joined formally around two week ago he says. It was a joint decision between Kostecki and the head honchos at Atlantic to get Juan Kouyoumoudjian on board as the team's designer. This was not a hard decision - aside from designing the dominating ABN AMRO One, Kostecki had previously worked with Juan K during his tenure at BMW Oracle Racing.

"One of the other reasons is that not only is he a very talented designer, he has time now, because he is not that heavily involved with the BMW Oracle campaign," says Kostecki of Juan K's appointment. "He is not one of the key designers there, although with him winning the last Volvo Ocean Race they may be listening to him much more now! Both race boats for the BMW Oracle have been designed and nearly completed and for sure they’ll be fine tuning all the way through racing and he has time to start working with us. Whereas Rolf Vrolijk is busy at Alinghi and Bruce Farr seems to have taken a step back these days and is not committing the time he has in the past. The refreshing thing with Juan is that he is thinking about the race all the time and he has some great ideas. So he is going to be a fun guy to work with."

An interesting first with this deal is that while Farr Yacht Design typically provide boats for several teams, Juan K has signed an exclusivity deal with Ericsson and will only design for them. If this becomes a trend in the sport then it could well pave the way for many other design houses getting the chance to be involved with the Volvo Ocean Race.



One of the successful features of the ABN AMRO program was just how much of a team effort it was, Mike Sanderson and his core crew including the likes of Mark Christensen working closely with the designers, builders and other contractors. ABN AMRO also brought in much specialist help, most notably on the engineering side where they were assisted by Will Brook and leading French specialist Herve Devaux.

While Kostecki says they will certainly be making decisions about the new boat as a team, he thinks they probably won't go to the extremes ABN AMRO did to get outside assistance during the design process. "I think with ABN One they had outside consultants come in to validate what they had done. I think we’ll be doing that in a few areas, but probably not as much as the ABN project did. I wasn’t involved with the design last time but I imagine that there were a few ‘is that REALLY going to work???’ so you get a few other opinions on it. But now a lot of those questions have been answered or proven as to whether it works or doesn’t work."

A builder for the new Ericsson has yet to be decided but the most logical choices are either Jason Carrington who masterminded the build of the last Ericsson and of the Assa Abloy boats before that, or more likely Killian Bushe who not only handled the build of the ABN AMRO boats but also of Kostecki's illbruck Challenge yacht in the previous race.

In terms of choosing a crew Kostecki says this will be on-going over the next months, at present the priority is on the design side. No decision has yet been made over when the crew will congregate for the first time but it seems unlikely this could be before the America's Cup is over. It is hard to imagine Kostecki doing this campaign without his friend, right hand man and sailmaking guru Ross Halcrow, currently on the BMW Oracle Racing payroll in Valencia.

"We’re talking to him. He’s a great sailor and a great friend of mine. I’d love to race around with him again, but whether it happens or not. He turns 40 this weekend! So we’ll see," says Kostecki of Halcrow.

As the last race demonstrated racing Volvo Open 70s is a handful for the crew, so having top quality personnel is of paramount importance particularly as crew numbers seem to be remaining the same for the next race. Thus Kostecki says he will certainly be on the phone to many of his ex-illbruck Challenge Challenge crew, although Ray Davies and Stu Bettany have already signed with Mean Machine.

With a new route, the navigation and meteorological side of the team will be ever more important. Presumably top of the list of choices for the navigator's spot will be Juan Vila, who did such a successful job with illbruck and is now with Alinghi. "I think on this new route it could be a very important factor, the navigation and tactics and anticipating some of the weather systems," says Kostecki. "It is going to be a lot more heads out of the boat and get the weather data and be able to react to it. So you’ll be more pro-active on the yacht. It looks like there will be a lot more upwind work, compared to the typical Southern Ocean reaching and running race. So that puts an interesting twist into the whole race."

While most of the sailors we have spoken to aren't that enamoured with the prospect of the new route, including a double dose of Doldrums on the first leg and then sailing from the Middle East to the Far East through the tropics, probably upwind, it does present a fresh challenge. "The new route doesn’t bother me too much," says Kostecki. "These boats are very exciting to sail even in 15-25 knots which we’ll get on this new route. We don’t have to have the Southern Ocean to make it an exciting race. I feel like a pioneer on this new route and going to these new areas of the world where the race hasn’t gone before, so it should be exciting and hopefully we’ll be able to educate a lot more people about the race and yacht racing."

A decision has also yet to be made over how the team will go about training while their new boats is in build. They have the existing Ericsson VO70, that has recently visited the Black Sea and is shortly to head back to France for a refit. While Mean Machine are now using the Pirates of the Caribbean VO70, another attractive option might be to acquire ABN AMRO One to use as a test bench, now that the Dutch bank have decided not to go again.

A feature of the last two Volvo Ocean Races has been that one team has proved dominant on both occasions, ABN AMRO One last time around, illbruck in the race before. With the Volvo Open 70 now into its second generation is it likely that the next race will be more competitive for the winner? "For sure, I think the boats will be a lot more equal although we’d love to have an advantage," admits Kostecki. "The boats will be a little more refined and it will come down to the normal stuff, the small refinements and the total package - sails, mast, foils, hull shape, crew and handling the boat and then of course the navigation and strategy. So we are looking at all those aspects and trying to figure out what are the priorities and where we want to focus our energies and what is going to be key to winning this next race."

With his new commitment to the Ericsson campaign, this is likely to limit Kostecki's other sailing to an extent. By coincide Michael Illbruck has pulled the plug on his TP52 program for next season and Kostecki says the boat is almost sold. "He has a growing business and a big family. It is a bummer he’s not doing it, but it was the right thing for him."

At present Kostecki is talking to the Caixa Galicia team with whom he sailed at the two regattas last year Pinta didn't compete in. "They have a new boat coming and so I might be able to do the season or part of the seaons with them. That is an awesome circuit and I am pretty keen to stay on top of that."

Aside from this Kostecki hopes to hop back into the Star from time to time. "Michael Illbruck supports Marc Pickel and the German Star team and they have a few boats and one of those is available to me. So I am trying to do that."

Meanwhile a Kostecki skippered, Juan K designed, Bushe built Volvo Open 70 campaign early on to the battle field - you certainly wouldn't bet against them being winners of the 2008-9 Volvo Ocean Race.