Volvo Ocean Race form guide

Field has never been closer in the fully crewed round the world race

Who will win the Volvo Ocean Race? That is the million dollar question.

Six boats are entering this year’s Volvo Ocean Race. This might not be the largest field in the history of the fully crewed round the world race, but the event has never been more competitive, to the extent that we believe for the first time all six teams will feature on the podium at some point during this race.

As Ian Walker put it earlier, in the last race there were large differences between the boats. Not so, this time. “I sailed with Green Dragon and we had a great program and great experience, but you just had to look at the certificate to realise that our keel was 500kg light and the bulb was even more so. Clearly we just weren’t going to be competitive and there was very little we could do about it.

“Look at the certificates of all the boats here and all the boats are pretty much max beam, pretty much minimum weight, maximum keel weight, minimum mast weight - all very very similar. I don’t think there are any glaring issues. We are going to have a race. Someone might be slightly slower, but if they sail well they will be able to make up for that. What we see now is six similar boats and maybe it will be even more interesting, it will depend on the weather and the mode as to who goes best. Maybe there will be more pressure on the navigators and the skippers, to make the right decisions.”

Compared to the last race, this time around the playing field has been artificially levelled by new limitations in the race and class rules, with no teams being allowed to carry out two boat testing, a limit on the number of sailing days and a defined maximum combined keel/fin weight, restricting one of the VO70’s primary performance drivers.

Five of the six VO70s taking part are new, however the sixth, the Mike Sanderson-skippered Sanya, cannot be discounted. She is the former Telefonica Blue, which last time around finished third overall behind Ericsson 4 and Puma having won the legs into Singapore and Qingdao as well as four of the seven in-port races. She has been substantially renovated and upgraded for this race including a new Future Fibres rig and while she is not new, she does hold the advantage of being grandfathered, thus her keel is in theory some 200kg heavier than that permitted by the latest VO70 class rules for the new builds (see are soon to publish an interview with Mike Sanderson expanding on this).

The 2011-12 round the world race will also be the third outing for the VO70 canting keel monohulls, so although there have been substantial changes to the class rule and much innovation in the boats this time, both teams, designers, engineers and builders have become extremely refined in their respective arts conceiving these boats. This should also mean for exampl that the engineers have a better handle on the load case resulting in there being less carnage in this race than there has been before.

There are a number of teams, crews and skippers back for repeat business. This will be Telefonica’s third attempt to win the Volvo Ocean Race, albeit with Iker Martinez and Xabi Fernandez running the show for the first time, while it will be Puma’s second. Meanwhile British skipper Ian Walker learned huge amounts from spearheading the Green Dragon campaign in the last race which he has now applied to Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing. Would you bet against Sanya skipper Mike Sanderson, who so convincingly won the 2005-6 race as skipper of ABN AMRO One or against Chris Nicholson, who was integral to the Puma campaign that came home second last time around and now leads Emirates Team New Zealand’s first foray into the Volvo Ocean Race with the R&D might and experience of an America’s Cup team behind him?

Then there is the ‘supreme team’ of Brad Jackson and Tony Mutter, the Kiwi duo who were integral to both the ABN AMRO One and Ericsson 4 victories in the last two races and now reside at the heart of the latest Puma campaign.

And while Franck Cammas’ Groupama team from France may be the new kids on the block, they have the advantage of what many suspect is the highest budget campaign for this Volvo Ocean Race. They have a huge team and carried out the traditional race-winning move of using the previous race winner (Ericsson 4) as their trial horse.

Of the designers, this time around three boats of the five new boats – Puma, Groupama and Telefonica - have been designed by Juan K’s Valencia-based team that were behind the last two race winning VO70s, ABN AMRO One and Ericsson 4. Having designed the Telefonica boats last time, when Telefonica Blue finished third, Farr Yacht Design has a new offering in the form of the Ian Walker-skippered Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing while Marcellino Botin, having designed Puma which finished second in 2008-9, has penned the new Camper boat with, as mentioned, the benefit of the hefty posse of in house specialists at Emirates Team New Zealand.

As the list at the bottom of this page shows - the Camper and Puma crews have the most past Volvo Ocean Race experience, Camper with 22 previous races and five wins among them, while Puma has 21 races and six wins. In comparison Telefonica has the experience of 19 races in their line-up, but only one race win (Joao Signorini, who was on Ericsson 4) while Abu Dhabi have 16 races and 3 wins (Rob Greenhalgh and Justin Slattery from ABN AMRO One and Jules Salter, who was navigator on Ericsson 4).

Sanya and in particular Groupama are much lighter on previous, the former having 10 races and two wins (both Mike Sanderson’s – ABN AMRO One and New Zealand Endeavour), while within Cammas’ new team there are just eight participations and zero victories.

Sanya skipper Mike Sanderson says his money is on Puma. “Hand on my heart, I have no idea who is the favourite. For me it is Puma’s to lose, if I had to pick it - if they can keep their crew composure together in times of adversity. They have got a boat with great pedigree. It is second time through for their management structure and set-up. They have Brad and Tony who I am obviously a big fan of. They were both instrumental in ABN’s victory and then Ericsson’s winner. Puma for me are the favourite.”

Puma’s Brad Jackson gave us his take: “I don’t think we’ve sailed enough to have a good handle on it. All the teams look very well prepared, so I’m sure that all these boats will be strong in certain conditions. I’m just hoping that we are on the money in most of those conditions. Obviously all the Juan K boats will be pretty similar, so there shouldn’t be too much difference there. Abu Dhabi and Camper are different sorts of boats to ours. Camper - I’m not too sure, but they will have conditions where they are going to go well. They look a bit lighter air and a bit more upwind, but we haven’t done any good reaching, stretch-your-legs type sailing yet and they will sail it well and their sails will be good. Abu Dhabi – seems to go alright in the lighter stuff. We just have to see how it goes out in the ocean, reaching.”

Camper skipper Chris Nicholson shared his thoughts with us: “It is a very hard one. From an all round point of view, I think Telefonica. To me their boat looks really nice. Puma has amazing depth and experience on board. I tend to think of those guys as all-rounders, but then you look at Abu Dhabi and you know that at certain angles they are going to be very quick. At different times people are going to shine."

Horses for courses? “The ones who can stick to their game plan and sail their course and to their numbers and not get manipulated into sailing a direction they are not as comfortable in – it is going to be really hard to stick to that type of game plan, when people are putting miles on you, but you just have got to be able to say ‘this is as fast as we can be at this point in time. We have to wait until we are at our strong point’.”

Around the dock here in Alicante, our informal poll of race pundits indicates that most believe Camper to be favourite.

And who do we like? We would very much like Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing to win, if only because there is a higher percentage of Brits in Ian Walker’s team than any other. Barring disaster, on the podium when the race concludes in Galway next July we reckon will be Puma, Abu Dhabi and Camper.  And probably if we had to pick a single winner it would be Camper.

Camper's crew is up there and within their ranks they have experience from all the major teams that competed in the last race. Their forward keel position may indicate that they lack the hard reaching potential compared to the Juan K designs, but having a mast that can be raked more than the others will increase the versatility of their sail plan. They not have Deano and Ray Davies on board, but our principle reason for liking them is that behind the campaign is the powerhouse that is Emirates Team New Zealand and we saw how they dominated the Audi MedCup with what was initially thought to be an odd boat.

The Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing boat looks to be exceptionally well built and her large bow volume should certainly solve the nosediving issues that were a limiting factor power reaching on the last generation Farr VO70s. If there is anything to be gleaned from last weekend's in-port race it is that the Emirati VO70 is also swift in light conditions. Ian Walker's team also won the Rolex Fastnet Race.

Above Mike Sanderson expresses why Puma is such a strong contender for line honours. Something of an unknown is Telefonica. With a Juan K design their equipment should be on the pace and the depth of experience in their campaign is up there with Puma and Camper. Iker Martinez and Xabi Fernandez are now running the campaign and while they both have past experience of the round the world race this is their first time managing a big team.

Groupama is very much the fledgling campaign this time and while they were able to get experience training on Ericsson 4, their team remains very green compared to the competition. It seems odd that while they want to learn about the Volvo Ocean Race from people with past experience in the race, apart from Damian Foxall they haven't employed anyone with any great depth of experience or anyone who has won the race recently. Franck Cammas is smart and he has surrounded himself by some of France's most talented sailors, however he is used to winning and it will be interesting to see how he copes with being an underdog. We suspect Groupama will make a slow start to the Volvo Ocean Race but will rapidly get on the pace.

The joker in the pack this time is Team Sanya. As Telefonica Blue the boat won into China last time, something that skipper Mike Sanderson will be keen to repeat for his sponsor this time. Being an old generation boat everyone expects the boat to finish last, but we suspect that the boat will be featuring some more specialist sails than the newer boats and there could be occasions, particularly when it is lighter, that the boat is a weapon.

It should also not be forgotten that for teams in the Volvo Ocean Race, their performance is a work in progress. In particular with this first leg from Alicante down the Atlantic to Cape Town, teams will be checking out each other’s sails, especially their kites, as the upshot of the new rules, limiting sail numbers, is likely to be holes in each boat’s polars. Checking out each boat’s kites will give a good indication of where the sweet spots are in each boat's polars and this is likely to have significant strategic implications as the race unfolds.

Fortunately teams at this stage will not have used up all their sail slots, so if there is a hole that needs to be plugged or some new wonder design makes itself apparent then teams have the scope to be able to investigate these options as the race progresses.

As Chris Nicholson explains: “We have got a lot of slots to go. We did that because with the reduction in sails this time, there is a degree of unknown over if everyone has their sail programs right. You have seen people chopping and changing their sails a lot in these last few weeks trying to work it out. We have been fairly set with our program for a while, but there is still no way we would order future inventory until after leg one. There is a certain risk in that for instance if you sustain sail damage during leg one – what do you do? You just can’t afford to waste sail slots.” 

Our thanks go to Inmarsat for their assistance this time. Each Volvo Open 70 in this race is fitted with a FleetBroadband 500 terminal, delivering voice and high-speed data communications. Competitors in the Volvo Ocean Race 2011-12 will be the first sailors with access to the new ‘red button’ safety service on FleetBroadband, giving instant one-touch contact with maritime rescue coordination centres.  Also on board will be a compact FleetBroadband 150 for crew voice calling and IP data, two Mini-C systems for constant positioning data and additional global safety.