Keeping their powder dry

Bouwe Bekking brings us up to date with the Telefónica Volvo Ocean Race campaign

It is currently open season for new Volvo Open 70s. Ericsson Racing Team have launched their first new boat with their second, allegedly ‘much different’ Juan K design due for launch next month in Sweden. In the US, Puma have dipped their Botin & Carkeek design. Team Green’s new Reichel Pugh design is on a ship to Europe from China. And word is that several first generation Volvo 70s may yet to be announced as doing the race - with a strong rumour doing the rounds that Ericsson have sold their training boat - the former ABN AMRO One - to another Irish team.

Of the new boat campaigns, the one that wins the award for being quietest over the last few months is the Spanish. Since last year it has been known that they are fielding a two boat campaign on an exclusive deal with Farr Yacht Design. At this point they were being referred to as the ‘Alicante’ boats and it was only two weeks ago that the team finally came clean that they were indeed, as everyone suspected, being backed once again by Spanish telecoms giant, Telefónica, who’s subsiduary movistar funded them in the previous race.

The deal has once again been put together by Spain’s chief mover and shaker when it comes to yachting sponsorship - Pedro Campos - while the familiar figure of Bouwe Bekking is back in the driving seat, running the campaign.

The two new Telefónica boats are due for launch in June, but are coming from different corners of the globe - one has been built at King Marine in Valencia, while the other is coming from Southern Ocean Marine in New Zealand, who have recently been churning out Open 60s such the new Temenos, Paprec-Virbac 2 and Gitana Eighty. The Kiwi boat is arriving on 4 June, the King Marine boat two weeks later.

So why did they build in two different places? According to Bekking this was a case of logistics - it is hard to get race boats built anywhere at the moment... “At that point the America’s Cup was still going on and King Marine had the obligation to build the Desafio boat if it happened. So they could only build one of them. And we weren’t 100% sure if we were going with the second boat. With this second boat it was all a matter of funding and luckily there was enough funding to build it.”


Bouwe Bekking with His Majesty King Juan Carlos

The wheels were in motion to find a designer even before Bekking was employed. Campos had already been talking with Juan Kouyoumdjian, the obvious choice having designed the previous race winner. However the Spanish were not fast enough out of the blocks and Juan K signed with Ericsson.

“Then there was Botin - who was obvious for a Spanish campaign - and Pugh and Farr of course,” Bekking takes over the reins of his explanation. “The guys started going around and one of the big things was motivation and to do an exclusive deal [after Juan K had done so with Ericsson], so we though Farr... and with all their Open 60 work and their AC experience and the eagerness with them as well - they were not the happiest in world with what happened to us in the last race. And it has been a great experience. The boats look totally different to last time. We hope they have done their homework.”

With their old movistar boat now presumed to be at the bottom of the Atlantic, so the team last year acquired the Farr-designed Brasil 1. As revealed on thedailysail when we spied her in Alicante last summer, she has been fitted with twin rudders and chines. According to Bekking has since has a V2 rig put in to take the masthead Code Zeros allowed under the latest iteration of the VO70 rule.

A significant advantage teams have had compared to a similar period prior to the last race is that they have existing hardware to use. Thus they have been testing their new rig, developed it with HallSpars and working exclusively with Scott Ferguson (ex Young America/Prada, etc). They have also been working on sails with Juan Meseguer and his team at North Sails Spain in Valencia.

The team have obviously been using the boat for crew training and gear testing, but Farr have also benefitted this time from being able to use Brasil 1 as a live benchmark to refine their VPPs and other design tools.

The new sisterships are to be christened Telefónica Black and Telefónica Blue - hopefully no reference to the injuries the crews will sustain racing them. Interestingly Bouwe Bekking insists that the two boats will be equal 0 while we have heard this previously with EF, Amer Sport (which Bekking was part of) and ABN AMRO, the reality has always turned out to be different as the race progresses. “In previous campaigns there was always a case of A and B boat,” he states for the record. “But we have the same design, same resources, etc.”

In fact on this occasion, this may well prove true. Unlike previous two boat campaigns which have always had a men’s team plus a women’s or a youth team that has always ended up being relegated to being the ‘B boat’, Telefónica’s boats will both be sailed by male teams the only difference between them being that one is more Spanish than the other. “One boat will be all Spanish speaking people except one. The other one will be 60% Spanish and 40% foreign,”explains Bekking.

While the crew are clearly more Spanish than they were last time, Telefónica, it should be pointed out, is not merely the local phone company in Spain. It is a giant international corporation active in 23 countries, with 218 million customers and more than 63% of its 52.9 billion Euros revenue last year coming from outside of Spain. While they may not be active in the Middle East and Far East, they have a particularly large market share in South America and are increasing their reach across Europe. If you are with O2 in the UK, then guess who owns your provider?

Despite rumours that he might be ashore running the team, Bekking confirms that he will definitely be sailing. Of the crew to date only 49er World Champion Iker Martínez and Tornado World Champion Fernando Echávarri have been officially confirmed. At present Bekking says that the crews have been more or less selected. A few of his old posse from movistar will certainly be with him, despite the horrors they endured on the last race. However this won’t include watch leader Stu Bannatyne who is with Ericsson, nor Andrew Cape who is with Puma.

Former ABN AMRO Two navigator Simon Fisher is known to be with the team. Bekking says that among the team are also three or four from the Desafio Espanol Spanish America's Cup team.

With the 2008-9 race now almost a quarter longer than it was in 2004-5, thanks to the route swinging up through the Middle East and Far East, we have been wondering if any of the teams have been looking at running a squad system in order to keep crew fresh. To date none are admitting to it. Bekking says that with the America’s Cup in hiatus, so many top sailors are now on the market it should not be a problem to find replacements if they are required. “If we need someone there are plenty of good guys out there who will come in a blink. It will be very easy to find people who are as good as the guys we have right now. “

Bekking is remaining tight-lipped about the design of the new Telefónica boats until such time as they emerge from their respective build sheds. However he gives his views on the fleet in general. “I think all the designs will be on max beam, from what I have seen of the boats coming out now - I think that is something everyone has learned. Then of course the wind impact is quite a bit different - there is way more upwind. So I think the boats will look radically different. Our boat will not look like a Farr boat at all. Normally you can click your fingers and say ‘that is a Farr boat’, but when people see these... they will say ‘what the heck have they been doing?’ It just looks really interesting.”

If last time around the Juan K-designed ABN AMRO boats seemed to be the only boats in the fleet to have been influenced by the Open 60 class, it seems certain that the new Farr boats will have benefitted from the extensive amount of development that the Annapolis-based designers have carried out in the class this time around, including the recent winners of the Barcelona World Race and the Artemis Transat, Paprec Virbac 2 and Gitana Eighty.

“They have definitely learned a lot from that,” confirms Bekking. “But I think everyone will be relatively close. There won’t be such a huge step as there was last time. I think in general the boats will be closer to each other.”

And obviously given their track record in the last race this time they will be placing more emphasis on reliability. “This was one of the things - some big steel plates so that the keel doesn’t fall out!" he quips. "Reliability is very very important. Last time we were performing quite well on some of the legs and all of the potential was there, but you have to stay in one piece.” To date they have sailed 12,000 miles in Brasil 1 without incident - but then prior to the last race many, including ourselves, were rating the team simply because they had had the most sea time, having delivered their new boat back to Europe from Australia. This is perhaps one reason why the team have been maintaining a low profile on this occasion.

Once Telefónica Black and Telefónica Blue arrive in Valencia Bekking reckons they have about 60 days of sailing time between then and the start of the race. Obviously they must sail their 2,000 mile qualifiers, but in their plan is also to compete in some round the cans regattas locally such as Copa del Rey.

As to this year’s Volvo Ocean Race Bekking says he would still prefer to be sailing the more traditional course with three stops and through the Southern Ocean. “I think it is a shame we won’t go to Australia and New Zealand but it will be challenging to do the new course.”

He keeps his fingers crossed that some 11th hour syndicates can take some of the old boats around. Particularly with the new course he reckons that they have a chance to win some sections. However at present no one seems to have signed on the dotted line to take their first generation boat...

Certainly we will be hearing more from the team in the next few weeks as their new hardware arrives.