Ian Walker heads offshore

We look at the Irish Volvo Ocean Race campaign he has put together with Jamie Boag

At a press conference earlier in Dublin, attended by the Irish Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, Seamus Brennan, the Irish Volvo Ocean Race entry was presented. Team Green, as it is to be known until such time as a deal with a principle sponsor is finalised, is to be skippered by Ian Walker with a new boat currently under construction to a design by Reichel Pugh. It is the first Irish entry in the fully crewed round the world race since the Joe English-skippered NCB Ireland in 1989/90.

Rumours about Team Green have been rife for months. The campaign has been put together by Ian Walker and the silvery tongued Mr Shirley Robertson, Jamie Boag, the same duo behind Eamon Conneely's three year long Patches TP52 campaign.

According to Boag when they began considering a Volvo Ocean Race campaign around 18 months ago, they initially looked in the UK but in his words "it was too hard" and they instead turned their attention to his native Emerald Isle as the place to found an entry.

While Boag admits that to start with they only considered fielding an entry, he and Walker were aware that Volvo Ocean Race CEO Glenn Bourke was keen to change the course for the next event and this led to them substantially scaling up their goal - to organise a stopover in Ireland.

“Our plan had always been to try and put a boat in the race,” says Boag. “But having been through sponsorships with Ian and Shirley we didn’t want to be one of those campaigns that just came out, waved a flag and said ‘we’ve got this great idea, give us loads of money’. We wanted something concrete to base it on. We came over here and the Ryder Cup had just happened, so there was support as they wanted to find another event. That gave us the confidence to really go to work on it. We looked at other venues around the country and we saw the tourist board had a west of Ireland agenda.”

Galway, in the west of Ireland, happens also to be home to three of the most powerful yachtsmen in the land - including Enda O'Coineen, John Kileen and of course Patches owner Eamon Coneelly. This trio formed a 'project board', providing seed funding for the campaign.


Left to right: Eamon Conneely, Minister Seamus Brennan, John Kileen and Enda O'Coineen.

The first step was to negotiate with Volvo to get the race to come to Ireland. And so it was that in May this year, Galway was announced as a stopover of the 2008-9 Volvo Ocean Race, thanks to 8 million Euros in funding from the Irish government, via the National Tourism Development Authority, Failte Ireland.

Getting money for an entry proved harder. "We looked at all the sponsorships we’ve done over the years and figured out what’s stopped them," says Boag. "Governments are nervous about putting money into boats, so we decided to remove that problem."

The Galway businessman trio succeeded in bringing other likeminded souls on board forming a syndicate to fund the building of the new Irish Volvo Open 70. "Interestingly, the syndicate we have building the boat is 70-30 in favour of non-sailors, they like the idea and want to get involved," states Boag. "We have some key property people, friends of the guys, both commercial and private money they’ve put into it. We are going to grow it to quite a big syndicate. Also it allowed us the flexibility to progress it without having to wait for the big sponsor to come on board." Failte Ireland were today announced as a sub-sponsor for the campaign.

Another issue with the boat was that the project was late and with Farr signed with the Spanish, Botin & Carkeek with Puma and Juan K with Ericsson, all on exclusive deals, and Judel Vrolijk not willing to play following Peter de Ridder's withdrawal from the race, finding a designer with experience in the Volvo Ocean Race was going to be tough. In the end it was not a hard decision to go with Reichel-Pugh, given that they had already worked closely with the San Diego-based design house on Eamon Conneely's two Patches TP 52s. As Boag says "let’s face it, you are not taking a big risk with Reichel Pugh on a canting keel boat."

While they may not have specific Volvo Open 70 design experience, Reichel Pugh have penned many of the 100ft supermaxis, such as Neville Crichton's Alfa Romeos and Bob Oatley's Wild Oats, as well as the canting keel maxZ86s. However while most designers of canting keel offshore race boats give them with twin asymmetric daggerboards, to date Reichel Pugh have firmly advocated CBTF designs with a canting keel and a steerable forward canard. Bucking the trend these boats have traditionally had a much smaller beam:length ratio compared to equivalent Open 60s or Volvo 70s.

Ian Walker gets hesitant and diplomatic when we enquire whether the Irish Volvo Open 70 will be CBTF. In theory this appendage configuration is allowed under the VO70 rule which states that appendages can only move in one plane - ie they can turn or lift, but not both. The forward rudder on a CBTF boat is fixed down.

'So it will have a forward steerable rudder?' we enquire. "Not that I have seen," quips Walker. "If you look at all the offshore boats at the moment - be it Open 60s or Volvo 70s - they are all going one way. I think all the boats will look pretty similar to ABN AMRO One to be honest. Basically, without giving too much away, we’ve tried to get John Reichel to draw the fastest version of the Volvo 70 and ABN AMRO One is the starting point in terms of what was fastest last time around. The biggest thing with the design of these boats is the conditions you try and design for. You could build a much faster boat than ABN AMRO One in light winds and you could build a faster one for strong ones, but can you build one that is fast throughout the range? That is the key - the weather input and making the decision on the type of boat you want."

While they may have been late in starting, the team got a considerable jump when they were able to buy R&D work carried out by Peter de Ridder's Mean Machine team, before the plug was pulled after they had been unsuccessful in finding a sponsor. This R&D included tank test results and some of the wind tunnel work. "We didn’t have time for tank testing with the time we gave Reichel Pugh to design the boat. So we were able to use some of the Mean Machine research carried out before they drew their own boat," says Walker.

The boat, if it ends up ressembling the supplied CAD drawings, looks like, well a Volvo Open 70, with a canting keel and twin daggerboards. There appears to be precious little protection in the cockpit. The chine in the aft sections extends forward level with the mast and daggerboards... The end product will certainly reveal more details than are shown here.

Construction is currently underway at McConaghys in China, where of course the second Patches TP52 was built. McConaghy have also previously worked closely with Reichel Pugh in the building of severeal canting keel boats including the latest Alfa Romeo and Wild Oats, although these were constructed in their Australian facility to the north of Sydney.

Today the hull and deck moulds of the Green Team VO70 are complete and this week McConaghys started the lamination of the hull. The spars are to be supplied by Southern and the build of the mast has just started too.

The recently launched North Sails Design Service are handling the sail wardrobe, with input from Mickey Ickert and Henrik Soderlund. "They were in charge of ABN’s sails last time around. So we are quite fortunate in that respect," says Walker. "The sails are pretty advanced." Four weeks ago they tested their downwind sails in the twisted flow wind tunnel at the University of Auckland.

The hydraulics and canting keel operating system is being put together by Greg Waters, who has worked closely with Reichel Pugh in the past. Rams built by his company Central Coast Hydraulics are on Wild Oats and Alfa Romeo - as well as Mike Slade's Farr-designed Leopard , but were also on the ill-fated movistar in the last Volvo.

As to the crew - Walker and Boag are naming no names as yet. "The present climate with the America’s Cup will present some interesting opportunities," says Boag. If there is no America's Cup likely until 2011 then it will open up the availability of considerable talent, including one of the main Irishmen the team hope to coax on board in Justin Slattery, who sailed on ABN AMRO One in the last Volvo and is currently on the Team Origin payroll. Another key Irishman who will certainly be courted is Damian Foxall, currently leading the Barcelona World Race aboard Jean-Pierre Dick's Open 60 Paprec-Virbac 2.



Look, but don't touch

Personally Walker obviously doesn't have huge experience racing offshore. He admits to having competed in a few Fastnets and once got stuck on a ferry... "I think anyone who is involved with the Volvo, they all have a good time," he says optimistically. "It has more meaning to it. I think this project is bigger than just doing the Volvo race. The whole association with the port, we have a chance to do something and build on the links I have already got with Ireland. Also I am a bit bored of doing two mile windward-leewards, if I’m honest and [ Puma skipper] Ken Read said the same thing. There is only so long you can do that and you’ve got to learn something new and offshore sailing is the biggest growth area in our sport. So I’m enjoying everything I have done so far and I’ll tell you after the Sydney Hobart."

Today Walker is on a plane to Sydney where he will sail to Hobart on Boxing Day on Matt Allen's Ichi Ban, that competed in the last Volvo Ocean Race as Brunel. Maybe in Sydney Walker will bump into another of Ireland's most famous and most capped of round the world yachtsmen - Gordon Maguire...

Walker is also likely to have to change physically. From being spindly Olympic sailor Ian Walker he will have to go through a transformation into offshore beefcake Ian Walker, along similar lines to the Incredible Hulk-style physical change Rob Greenhalgh went through prior to the last race.

Obviously time is of the essence with the campaign. Boag points out that in terms of their build, they are not far behind Puma. However they have the additional delay of shipping the boat back to Ireland from China. Once in Europe the boat will be based in Galway before heading down to the start in Alicante. In the meantime Walker says they are not currently looking to get a boat as a training platform for the crew or not unless they win the pools.

For Boag there remains the no small issue of paying for the boat to go around the world. He says they are a considerable way down the road in talking to potential sponsors - a global Irish brand would be ideal - but says "we are confident we will be fully funded and will do the race. The second string to our bow are the number of environmental companies and different companies that will come on under the Green Team banner. We are running three or four parallel programs at the moment. Today we are reasonably confident that we have three out of the five elements in place. We have the port, we have more than 50% of the funding in place. We have a world class boat and a world class skipper. So it is as good a story as it gets."