No bartering
A seemingly innocent query caught Ian Walker completely off guard on Friday. But even when the questioner was unrelenting, the Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing skipper refused to be backed into a corner while seated before approximately 250 journalists and race publicists. Walker, who won two silver medals in the Olympics, was asked if he would trade his medals for the first-place Volvo trophy. The Englishman, 44, visibly blanched. "Whoa, that's a bit nasty," he said. "I'll take the second question." When the query was reiterated, however, Walker explained the reason for his reluctance. One of his silver medals was won at the Atlanta Games alongside the late John Merricks. Walker did not tell the audience that Merricks was killed in a car accident in 1997, and that Walker was a passenger in the same vehicle. Understandably, it remains an emotional issue. "I'm not going to answer your question," Walker said, insistently. "It's not fair."
Sentimental choice
Most of the boats have sentimental keepsakes aboard, either for good luck, sheer superstition, or a combination of both. But SCA skipper Sam Davies’s personal good-luck charm beats them all. Around her neck is a St Christopher medal given to her by her paternal grandfather, Albert George Davies, who wore the tiny gold medallion while he captained a submarine for the Royal Navy during the Second World War. At one point, he patrolled the Mediterranean Sea, the same body of water his grandchild will navigate when the first leg of the Volvo event begins today. Moreover, Davies’s maternal grandfather was a speedboat racer. Talk about a child destined to become a sailor. “I really had no choice,” she said.
Ready and willing
One of the long-running subplots of the race will centre on whether, or when, the Chinese crewmen aboard the Dongfeng will prove as seaworthy as their contemporaries. All six crewmen have sailing backgrounds, just not in boats of this magnitude. They have been involved in an intense, six-month cram session to learn the nuances of the Volvo race’s super-sized version of the sport. Two Chinese sailors will start the first leg, and team officials said yesterday that they hope to end the race next summer with four aboard the boat. “They have already proved it to me,” said Charles Caudrelier, the boat’s French skipper. “I’m not afraid for them.”
Some design issues
After months of sailing in the one-design yachts, race skippers have formed some solid opinions regarding the comparative seaworthiness of the standardised boats. “I think they are very fast off the wind,” Walker said, somewhat charitably. Upwind, however, it has been another story. In fact, behind the scenes, crewmen have predicted that no race records will be broached during the nine-month event, because the Volvo 65 design is so unwieldy when heading into the breeze. The same boats will be used in the 2017/18 race, too.
Charmed, I’m sure
Charlie Enright, the rookie skipper of American entry Alvimedica, said his crew packed so many good-luck charms and keepsakes, he lost track of the number. “We have more trinkets as a team than we know what to do with,” he said. “Having not done this race before, we need all the help we can get. We can’t throw them away.”
PIRACY STILL AN ISSUE BUT A SUBDUED ONE
For decades, the topic has been romanticised in the movies and media.
The term commonly elicits images of a comically swashbuckling Johnny Depp, not armed guerrilla soldiers with little to lose.
The notion of piracy is taken very seriously by Volvo Ocean Race officials, who curtailed the middle portion of the leg from Cape Town to Abu Dhabi in the last race rather than tempt fate or risk the lives of sailors.
Two officials from Dryad, a British-based security firm used by Volvo officials, briefed the seven race teams this week on the global situation, which has improved tremendously since the last race.
In the 2011/12 staging, in the middle of the leg to Abu Dhabi, yachts and crews were picked up and placed on a larger boat, transported into the Arabian Gulf, then dropped back into the waters for a sprint to the capital.
Three years later, the situation has calmed.
Security officials told the crew that along the notorious stretch of Somalia, Yemen and the Gulf of Oman, reported piracy incidents have dropped from 237 in 2011 to three this year.
Neal McDonald, the performance manager for the Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing team, has sailed around the world six times and said the threat is taken very seriously.
“Yeah, buddy, it’s real,” he said. “They see a big corporate logo on the sail and come at you. They’re not in it for the gear, either.
“They’re in it for the ransom.”
Officials with Dryad, a company that is 70 per cent composed of former Royal Navy seamen, said the drop of piracy in the region is attributable to several factors, including the hiring of some former pirates in the economically challenged region as coastguard or security officials.
However, the Singapore area remains stickier, with 140 incidents reported in recent times.
South-east Asia is more likely to produce an attack than is the coast of Africa, the crews were told.
If accosted or boarded, the Dryad officers gave clear orders: be compliant and do not resist.
SCA CAPTAIN SEES HER CREW AS JUST COMPETITORS
The SCA team are not the first women to compete in the race, but female participation in the Volvo event has been sporadic in the past.
It has been 12 years since an all-female team competed.
Skipper Sam Davies said the trail-blazing notion is flattering, but that she looks up to all of her sailing predecessors, not just the female ones.
“We’re just competitors, like all the others,” said Davies, who is involved in the race for the first time.
The SCA boat will have 11 crew members, three more than the six men’s yachts.
“The extra brains, especially female ones – sorry, guys – could be an advantage,” Davies joked.
SKIPPERS ALL AGREE THAT COST-SAVING MOVE TO ONE-BOAT DESIGN IS AN EVENT SAVING DECISION
In any global sport, it is hard to find acclamation, much less complete agreement, on any seemingly contentious point. But given most of the yachting world was aware the Volvo Ocean Race was struggling to maintain a foothold in increasingly deep financial water, the unanimous voice expressed by race skippers yesterday was somewhat surprising. Six of the seven skippers were asked whether they thought their teams would be involved in the Volvo event this year if a one-design boat format had not been adopted as a cost-saving move. Down the line they went, in a symphony of agreement. Five skippers answered with an unequivocal no, and one offered a qualified no. One was absent. At the last Volvo race three years ago, six boats entered. This year there are seven, and with the sponsorship price points slashed by the planned consolidation of costs and maintenance by Volvo officials, more are expected at future events.
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