Mike Sanderson back in the Volvo Ocean Race

2005-6 race winner to skipper Team Sanya

They say you can never keep a good man down and so it is that after a year out of the game post TeamOrigin, winner of the 2005-6 Volvo Ocean Race Mike Sanderson is back with an 11th hour campaign in the fully crewed round the world race backed by the Chinese government, called Team Sanya, Sanya being the Chinese stopover this time around.

“It’s nice to be back in the hot seat after a year of R&R,” said Sanderson, 40, late last night from China. “For me it is an amazing challenge. It is an opportunity to help develop China as an ocean racing nation. We know that when China puts their mind to something, as we’ve seen time and time again, they tend not to do things by halves.”

While Green Dragon had partial funding from China in the last race, and had Guo Chuan as their on board media crewman, Sanderson says that in this next race they will have a squad of three or four Chinese sailors and of these at least one would always on board as part of the sailing team.

“This is about developing awareness in China and with the Chinese people, to try and get a huge wave of momentum behind the Volvo Ocean Race and ocean racing and sailing, in the hope that this could be a stepping stone to being able to have a race winning campaign in the next race,” maintains Sanderson. “So given the incredibly short amount of time, we have been careful that the budget fits what our objectives need to be for this one. It is really about dipping the nation’s toe in the water. It is trying to over-achieve for this one in the hope that we can encourage them to bigger and better things and be a race winning nation in years to come.”

Obviously there is no time to build new, so Sanderson is on the hunt for a secondhand boat. One would imagine that his first choice would be the Juan K-designed Ericsson 4, a direct evolution of Sanderson’s 2005-6 race winner ABN AMRO Two and now owned by Groupama (who have said they aren’t selling because they want to keep the boat for corporate entertainment...) An alternative is Ericsson 3, now in Italy, but probably not in as good a state.

Sanderson says that firstly they haven’t made a decision on which boat they are going to take yet, although they currently have one being surveyed and, surprisingly, adds that going with either of these boats might in fact not be Team Sanya's best option. “It has been an interesting process. We have looked at every boat that was in the last race and everyone assumed straight away that we’d be targeting Ericsson 4 as the race winner last time. Very quickly we had to work out what we really wanted to achieve out of the race. One idea would be to get the race winner from last time and hope to get as many points as possible, but another concept was to try and get a boat which would possibly get us on the podium as often as possible, because one thing to ignite this nation will be to have a few successes and whether they be in-port races or light or heavy wind legs or whatever, I think that might be more important than being okay all the time.

“So one of the things which we’ve looked at is what boat we think might still own the corner that it owned in the last race. If you look at the podium positions last time, Ericsson was particularly fast in the high stuff, Puma very good all round but fast upwind and the Telefonica boats were very quick in light to moderate stuff.” So they have looked at the new course and the likely weather scenario to see of those boats characteristics might best suit their objectives.

Given this approach then the best boat for the Chinese team might well be Telefonica Blue, that the Spanish team has been using as their training boat this time around. In the last Volvo Ocean Race, the ‘blue boat’ won two offshore legs but significantly given Sanderson’s objectives, these legs were into Singapore and ironically the big breeze leg into Qingdao. But Telefonica Blue will best be remembered as a weapon in the in-ports, winning four of them. There is a strong argument that Telefonica Blue could be the boat that leads even a group of newer generation VO70s into Sanya this time.

Then there is the potential advantage of an older boat having more weight in the bulb. For this race the combined bulb and fin weight is limited to 7400kg of which the fin must be no less than 1900kg, so a bulb weight of 5,500kg. In the last race VO70s didn’t have this limitation and some heavier bulbs were in the region of 5,600-5,650kg, so potentially one of the better built older boats could have more stability.

So how competitive does Sanderson think he can be in an old boat? “We have to be careful to the mods we make to an old boat so that we maintain the boat’s grandfather ability so we theoretically have a bulb weight advantage and we have a keel CG advantage.” To qualify for grandfathering we understand means no modifications be made to the hull, otherwise it would have to comply with Version 3 of the VO70 rule.

“I think the five new boats, they have to be angled to be good at the high speed stuff, which is what we did in the 2005-06 race - we made hay in the breeze and put big miles one, which was then very hard for people to catch up to and that is the same with what Ericsson 4 did in the last race. To have glory days with this campaign, we may have to pitch ourselves slightly differently.

“With the new sail restrictions this time you can slant yourselves very easily into one corner of your performance with your sail inventory. Let’s be under no illusion that this next VOR will be the most competitive we have ever seen. Looking at all the teams there is no doubt, it is very very hard to pick a difference between any of the five new boats. So we probably need to position ourselves slightly differently and hope for the dice to roll our way a few times.”

Sanderson says that a decision about the boat is likely to be made in the next 7-10 days.

In terms of crew, Sanderson says he has a short list. On board for this Volvo Ocean Race the limit is 10 plus the media crewman and three of the sailing crew must have been born on or after 1 September 1980 (ie under 31). Into this mix Sanderson must build in the Chinese contingent.

“Everyone who is on my short list would be a fantastic option, so it is just a matter of making it all work so that we tick all the options, enough helmsman, enough bowmen and under 30s, etc.”

Sadly most of Sanderson’s regulars are otherwise occupied – Brad Jackson and Tony Mutter are with Puma while Stu Bannatyne is with Camper. ABN AMRO One navigator Stan Honey is busy working on the TV side for the 34th America’s Cup. Justin Slattery and Rob Greenhalgh are sailing with Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing. So Dave Endean? Jan Dekker? Sidney Gavignet? Will he break Mark Christensen out of retirement again?

Sanderson says that finding top crew isn’t a problem at the moment. “My timing is pretty good. I won’t tell you how many AC teams there are, but there are a lot less than 17 sailors on the boats, so there are a lot more AC sailors kicking around. I think it is fair to say that Volvo sailors are getting older, so the guys that were good on EF and ABN and illbruck are still in the game. The pool to pick from is getting bigger. I have been blown away by how many people there are to choose from to be honest.

“One thing which we worked very hard on at ABN was to have at least five or six fast helmsmen and I am certainly adamant to do that again.”

Sanderson says that the campaign is fully funded by the Chinese government for one race at present, although there seems to be a drive to turn this into a campaign that rolls on to future Volvo Ocean Races with the aim of one day having a largely Chinese crew. “This campaign is about over delivering hopefully and the wave of enthusiasm being so high that we roll into V2 and V3 with Chinese support. The plan is for more than one, but the focus is 100% on doing this one properly.”

Yet the boat is also carrying Failte Ireland and Discover Ireland and probably one Irish crewman, so could also be conceived as the ‘Irish entry’ in the next Volvo Ocean race.

Assuming the boat purchase and refit work go to plan then it is likely that Team Sanya will be based on the south coast of the UK, for Sanderson is quietly hoping that they might be ready to compete in the Rolex Fastnet Race. “I haven’t even spoken to RORC about whether we can enter it and it is very early days for me to be making such a bold statement, but it would be wonderful if we had the boat ready, even if it was one week before the Fastnet so that we can get out there and get into it.”

Anyway, in a race that was looking more competitive than ever before, but thin on numbers, having Moose back into the fold is a great development for this next Volvo Ocean Race and we wait with interest to see how his campaign pans out.