From one shop to a Volvo entry in 15 years

We talk to Andreas Hanakamp about his unique Volvo Ocean Race entry with Russian Oleg Zherebtsov

While an increasing number of Russian yachts are competing in fleets as diverse as the TP 52s to the Baltic IMS circuit to the Dragons, it has been three races since we last saw one in the Volvo Ocean Race.

The as yet unnamed Russian entry in the 2008 Volvo Ocean Race has been put together by the boat's Austrian skipper Andreas Hanakamp, who has had a long association with the event. Originally inspired to get involved after following Peter Blake's exploits, he attempted to raise sponsorship in his native Austria to compete in the 1993 and 1997 races, but on both occasions came up short. "We always lagged four years behind - in 1997 we had the budget for 1993," says Hanakamp.

Hanakamp has a strong background in Olympic sailing - he has been involved with three Olympic campaigns, initially in the Soling, and twice ended up representing Austria in the Star firstly in Atlanta when he finished 15th and then in Athens where he was 13th. He has also covered 150,000 miles on the ocean, 30,000 of which were racing. A majority of these were covered in the Hong Kong Challenge in 1996-7 when he sailed the Rob Humphreys 50 footer Blizzard, the first ever Austrian entry in a round the world race.

Ironically Hanakamp (left) says his plans to compete in the Volvo Ocean Race had been put on the back burner. "I enjoyed the racing in the Olympic classes and I wasn’t certain that the Volvo Ocean Race was still what I really desired and was what I had dreamed about when I was 20," he admits. "So I have been on constant alert, but I haven’t been hard selling to multi-national companies to try and persuade them to spend millions." But in a twist of fate this would change when he was introduced to Oleg Zherebtsov, founder and chairman of Russian hypermarket chain Lenta.

They had a day of champagne sailing on board Grant Dalton's old Merit Volvo Ocean 60 and Zherebtsov was hooked. "We had a glorious day with warm weather 30 knots of breeze - just fantastic speed," recalls Hanakamp. "He really enjoyed it, clocked the highest speed on that day and I did some coaching when he was helming and then he wanted such a boat for himself - he always felt he couldn’t have such a boat not because he can’t afford it but because he couldn’t sail it. So I told him – that’s the easy part! Six weeks later he decided to have one."

While Zherebtsov had sailed previously it was the first occasion that he'd sailed in anger on a Grand Prix race boat. "He is picking up sailing very quickly and he is fit, keen, very hungry and very talented," Hanakamp goes on. Since then they have sailed a lot more together in the Mediterranean and in the North Atlantic. "He enjoyed it so much he got the idea of doing the Volvo."

As an individual Zherebtsov is a self-made man. Whereas so many Russian tycoons took over, by hook or by crooks, many of the Russian state-owned businesses, Zherebtsov started with one shop 15 years ago and has since grown his chain of hypermarkets throughout the west of Russian to the extent that he now employs 10,000 people.

As a result the Russian entry, will be largely privately funded - the first occasion this has happened in the Volvo Ocean Race since George Collins with Chessie Racing. "He wants to do it and get on with things and we can get very quick decisions, because there is no corporate ballast – it is all very refreshing," says Hanakamp. Zherebtsov will be racing on board and Hanakamp says will be treating it as the adventure of his lifetime.

Zherebtsov pressed the green button at the beginning of May and the first appointment after Hanakamp was that of Michael Woods as Team Manager. Woods knows the event intimately having been race director of the 2001-2 Volvo Ocean Race when Hanakamp worked on the media team.

At present the team are in final negotations with designers and builders - both of whom may be from the UK. A problem with Volvo Ocean Race teams this time around is that many of the best known designers are tied up with exclusive contracts - Juan K with Ericsson, Farr with movistar, Botin & Carkeek with Puma, Rolf Vrolijk with Mean Machine, etc. Hanakamp says there are still designers available and aside from finding some with appropriate experience while they must have time available and not be on the other side of the planet.

Time is inevitably of the essence with Hanakamp looking to start the build on 1 September with a launch on or around 1 April next year. While this seems late it is in fact positively luxurious compared to some of the later campaigns from the last Volvo Ocean Race. "At the end of the day it just means narrowing down your choices," he says.

Part of Hanakamp's plan is to join forces with another team. "If we can help them shorten their build time and development time through sharing our resources then we can run a training program together. I think what makes you quick at Olympic level is having a good training group and sparing on the water should also work here. I would be very happy to welcome somebody for the training period and try and fight it out on the water."

Over the course of this year Hanakamp will be carrying out crew selection. Among the team there will be some more Russian sailors and between Olympians and the present influx of top Russian teams in other classes Hanakamp reckons he shouldn't be hard to find good enough sailors. Among the crew will be at least two old salts.

They have the VO60 as a training boat and Hanakamp says they will use this to work out their best compliment of crew. "You can do that with any boat," he says. "We need to talk to a couple of sail makers about their ideas about how they develop sails for the next race as you are allowed to have furlers on the forestay, reefing spinnakers. I think you have to be quite creative to get around with 24 sails and not have any big performance holes."

Once the new boat is launched they will set up a training base either in Lanzarote or somewhere else in southern Europe over the winter before moving to Cascais or the north of Spain prior to the start of the race.

While Zherebtsov is providing the funding to get a boat built and a team around the world, at this level it will be a no-frills affair. Hanakamp explains: "We’re not paying rock star wages, so everything is under control. We have a proper build budget. We are not cutting costs building the boat but we are not spending excessively. We are not putting in another two weeks CFD sessions or tunnel testing, but we have a proper sail budget. We have enough money to get around the world and we have some contingency."

However this could well change if, as seems most likely, they receive additional corporate funding. Rather than offsetting Zherebtsov's costs these, will go into beefing up the team. "Every cent we raise will go into us being more competitive in terms of buying people or getting in more people and paying more money or more sail development or more appendages, etc," continues Hanakamp. "But I really like the idea of us going around the world with a white boat – how nice not to have to do corporate stuff and you have to be nicely dressed and talk nice. You just go around the world for someone’s fun, you have fun on the water when you are racing..."

While it has not been mentioned yet, Russian involvement in the Volvo Ocean Race is likely to mean that the race will now conclude in St Petersburg and not in Sweden.