In keeping with the nautical theme, it was a classic case of throwing a fishing line in the water with a shiny hook. Ian Walker was happy to take the comedic bait.
On the eve of the first event in the nine-month Volvo Ocean Race (VOR), the veteran skipper of the Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing team was asked to impart whatever sage counsel he could offer for comparative novice Charlie Enright, his American peer with the Alvimedica team.
Enright is not only sailing in the 39,000-nautical-mile event for the first time, he is serving as the team’s skipper.
Since proper timing is just as important in comedy as it is in yachting, Walker waited a heartbeat before delivering the goods.
Turning in his chair to face the 30-year-old American, Walker said:
“Advice? Don’t do it, Charlie.”
That will not be the last laugh emanating from the seven racing teams in the round-the-world adventure, but things are getting progressively more serious, beginning with Saturday’s in-port race along the Mediterranean coast.
Some teams have prepared for more than a year, some for a matter of days. The in-port race does not count towards the overall race points table, but it could provide some insight into which teams are best prepared for the long haul ahead – or it might not.
As he sat with his six fellow skippers near the Alicante docks on Friday, Enright listened to them discuss the wildly varying state of readiness with their boats and crews.
A three-week, Leg 1 jaunt to Cape Town, South Africa, is seven days away, followed by the stop in Abu Dhabi.
“It doesn’t look like there’s a script for getting where you are,” Enright said.
There is also only the vaguest of maps to get where they are going.
This is the first time in 12 races that all the teams are using identical boats. Other than the paint and corporate logos, it will be up to the seven teams to separate themselves.
In a sport that often has become a rich man’s playground, the boat with the best sailors, not the fattest wallet, should move to the fore.
“That is 100 per cent correct,” said Bouwe Bekking, skipper of the impressive Dutch entry, Team Brunel.
In the latter stages of the race, however, as the less-experienced teams get their sea legs, there could be a revolving cast of winners.
“We might see everybody winning a leg,” Bekking said. “It is very conceivable.”
With so little separating the teams’ equipment, it could look like a cycling peloton at times, he said, with a boat waiting for a magic “puff” of wind to push it across the line first.
“It’s theoretically possible,” said Bekking, 51, who is making his seventh VOR start and stands as the senior skipper in the event.
That means skill and savvy should separate the men from the boys, as well as the women from the boys.
For the first time since 2002, the race has an all-female team, SCA, based in Sweden. SCA was the first team to sign up for the race and has been preparing for about 18 months.
The SCA crew will have 11 sailors to make up for the physical differences between genders – the six other boats have eight male sailors.
The women’s crew, however, have just three VOR appearances among them, the fewest in the race.
Englishwoman and skipper Sam Davies, a solo sailing specialist, is glad the team started early.
“I know it’s no easy challenge,” said Davies, who is sailing her first VOR. “Sailing around the world by myself seemed simple compared to the Volvo Ocean Race.”
At the other end of the preparatory spectrum are the boats from Spain and Denmark, which came on-board a matter of weeks ago.
While the other skippers explained their particular watch systems – the rotation of sailing and sleeping – Chris Nicholson and Iker Martinez all but shrugged.
Martinez’s yacht, Mapfre, signed up in June and Nicholson’s Vestas Wind from Denmark joined the race roster two months ago. Characterising their situations as fluid would not be a seagoing pun.
“It has been a hectic couple of months,” said Nicholson, an Australian with four VORs on his CV. “It has been a really interesting project where everybody has been caught short on time.”
By comparison, Azzam, the Abu Dhabi entry, seems dialled in and dangerous.
With a year of preparation work and roster massaging, Walker’s crew is already steeled to contend.
The team finished fifth in the VOR three years ago after dealing with two catastrophic equipment issues.
But familiarity only goes so far, given the boat revisions. He compared the old VOR races to Formula One, where Mercedes and Red Bull have outgunned nearly every other team with advanced mechanical firepower.
With the standardised boats, finding a potential tipping point is akin to sailing at night. How the race will be won is the €4.4 million (Dh20.4m) question, a figure that represents the purchase price of each boat.
“That was the first question we asked ourselves when we put the team together,” Walker said. “How is the next race going to be won? Historically, you would say it was the teams that started first, had their budgets in order, probably the largest budget, hired the best people.
“That’s historically. This time around, we don’t know. We still don’t know. Is it going to be the team that has the best helmsman/trimmers, who push the boat the hardest?
“Will the differences between the boat speeds be so small that it will be down to who has the best navigator and how the navigator works with the skipper to make the best decisions?”
He could have continued for 10 minutes, splitting theoretical atoms. The Alicante warm-up race two weeks ago, dubbed Leg 0, did not provide tremendous insight with regard to runaway favourites. Far from it, in fact.
“We all finished within a stone’s throw at the finish,” said Walker, whose boat crossed the line third. “Had the race been two days long, instead of a day and a half, the whole thing might have been reversed.”
Unlike a couple of his contemporaries, Walker made little attempt to hide the importance of his position, given the simpatico vessels.
With all things being equal – which is the specific intent of the matching boat designs – the most able-bodied, capable bunch should win.
“There is nowhere to hide, no excuses,” Walker said, before adding with a smirk. “Though I’m sure we’ll try to come up with a few.”
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