New home for Kingfisher

James Boyd catches up with Jonny Malbon to discuss stage one of his ambitious new project with Mark Denton

Ellen MacArthur has said that she won't sell Kingfisher, but with her new three-hulled record breaker under way and the season ahead racing with Alain Gautier on Foncia what was going to happen to her famous Open 60?

Fortunately the answer has come in the form of her former boat captain, the charismatic Jonny Malbon who has teamed up with former BT Global Challenge skipper Mark Denton to form Team 888 to charter Kingfisher undertaking program that lasts up to and including the Rolex Fastnet Race.

The program is to race the boat in fully crewed events such as the DaimlerChrylser North Atlantic Challenge. the Open 60 class' Calais Round Britain and Ireland Race and then ultimately the Rolex Fastnet Race. However this is just a means to an end. Their ultimate goal is the Volvo Ocean Race 2005.

Malbon, 28, says that they started cooking up the plan last year. "Obviously we knew the boat would be available. I had amassed knowledge about the boat and where she was at and how to sail her. So it has just been brewing. We've changed ideas, brought new ones in, put proposals to several big companies for very different plans. We got to the stage at the beginning of this year where we realised that we could spend the next four years trying to hook a sponsor, but we couldn't go really justify going public with it until we'd secured a boat."

So very much taking a leaf out of the Ellen MacArthur 'guide to how to get ahead in offshore yacht racing' they decided to bank roll the project themselves - for the time being...

"We’ve raised the charter fee and costs between me and Mark because we are so passionate about getting stuck into this, that we are taking the punt ourselves," says Malbon. "For sure it is a huge gamble, but you have to bite the bullet once in a while."

Below: Jonny Malbon (left) and Mark Denton



The bigger picture is that their Open 60 program this summer is merely an exercise in training as well as promotion for their planned Volvo Ocean Race campaign.

"We want to put a development team together, not rock stars, just people we work with, getting people into that arena from a different route," says Malbon of their grand plan. "Just develop those guys within that type of framework. Build a team of motivated and enthusiast young guys."

Aside from he and Denton, Nick Moloney will be on board as navigator amd other crew will include Nick Black and GBR Challenge boat builder Ian McCabe, both ex-Challenge Business as well. They will sail six up in the DaimlerChrysler and with five in the Round Britain race.

In a Volvo Ocean Race context expecting this team to stack up against other boats packed with international assortments of the very best VOR veterans and Olympic medallists would seem a little hopeful, naive even. However Malbon is adamant that this is their unique angle. "I believe there are equally good sailors or even better without over-inflated egos or over-inflated price tags attached to them. We don't all have to be hanging gold medals off our necks to warrant our position.

"We’ve got time to train and you can certainly train people. The biggest factor that I have found in all the training we’ve done is that you can have the best sailors in the world but if they are egotistical they can be the best sailor in the world, but they can still pose problems."

In their favour, Malbon and Moloney, unlike other Volvo sailors, have considerable experience racing boats with canting keels, although it is expected that this technology will take a leap in sophistication once some top Volvo teams start throwing some serious R&D cash at it. It believed that several potential Volvo Ocean Race teams have been attempting to buy or charter Open 60s to gain experience in this area.

Within their team Malbon will be concentrating more on the boat side, while Mark Denton will be dealing with the business side.

The duo met during their stint working for Challenge Business. Malbon had been an instructors' instructor for sailing, windsurfing and kayaking at UKSA in Cowes before the call of the sea became too great and he ended up spending a year on board Mike Golding's Group 4 67ft Challenge yacht as crew.

He ended up working for the Challenge Business training crews for the 2000 BT Global Challenge. While Mark Denton got the job skippering BP Explorer in that race, Malbon, aged 24 at the time, was considered too young. "We started together as training mates for the Challenge Business. We’ve been best mates ever since. I was his best man. I used to live with him. We think along similar lines and trust each other implicity."

Since the BT Global Challenge Denton has been working full time for BP, touring their head offices around the world giving presentations to senior executives.

Meanwhile Malbon was working for Challenge Business helping run the EDS Atlantic Challenge for the Open 60s, where he forged a name for himself and at the end of it landing the job as Kingfisher's Boat Captain.

"I took over the boat prior to the Jacques Vabre, running the whole show: Getting the boat back from Brazil then a major refit last year in Cowes," recalls Malbon. "We stripped her down to a bare skeleton. I hadn’t done that before. I was massively in at the deep end. When Mark [Turner] and Nick [Moloney] stepped off the boat in Brazil I think I had sailed her for an hour on the foredeck in the prologue of the EDS in Boston. And suddenly I had the keys to the boat with a deadline to get the boat from Brazil to London Boat Show! We had Conrad and Mark Denton on board, both BT skippers. We didn't have a clue about anything – the keel, the boat. We went backwards for about 20 minutes on our first tack!"

Prior to the delivery of Kingfisher back from Brazil Denton had wanted to get into solo sailing. "He very much changed his mind on the delivery back," says Malbon wryly.

Through his 18 months as Kingfisher's Boat Captain and particularly overseeing her refit Malbon developed an intimate knowledge of the boat. He also raced her doublehanded around the Isle of Wight with Mark Turner and in the fully crewed Regate de Rubicon last year. "The way it worked in the end was that we'd do everything apart from the race, so get the boat hopefully ready for Ellen to be happy to step on and go. Then she'd finish the race and we'd jump back on. Effectively we skippered the boat full time, but not doing the racing. Now it's our turn now to prepare and race the boat!"

Considering his closeness to Offshore Challenges it seems unusual that their sponsorship, marketing and PR powerhouse is not representing them. "We want to go on our own," explains Malbon. "We are building up to a bigger picture. We are trying to do everything ourselves as much as possible. We are lucky to have such a good relationship with Mark and Ellen that we can draw on their information. And I don’t think Mark would have it on their books as an Offshore Challenges project because they have quite a few things going themselves at the moment."

Ellen is enthusiastic about the project. "She knows how much effort I put into getting that boat to where she wants it to be," says Malbon. "I think she’s pleased that we’re taking it on and she knows that it’ll be looked after, maintained and loved and not just used as a vehicle."

They take over Kingfisher on 1 May at which time it will be renamed Team 888 (this is the sail number of the boat) until such time as they find the £150-200,000 needed in sponsorship for this year's program. Malbon is also keen to get additional funding for him to do November's Transat Jacques Vabre in the boat, although it seems more likely that Nick Moloney will get the boat for that race.

The boat was heavily tweaked for the Route du Rhum last year, including the addition of a new keel, a new mast and the change from rod to PBO standing rigging and should still be on the pace this season Malbon believes.

Aside from the major crewed races, the boat will be around at Cowes Week back in her Kingfisher livery. To read more about this new Open 60 challenge see their website www.team888.com (to go live imminently).