Fresh from success in last month’s Rolex Fastnet race, Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing’s skipper Ian Walker sits down with Abu Dhabi Week to talk about the team’s preparations and progress ahead of the hotly anticipated Volvo Ocean Race, which goes under starter’s orders in Alicante on 29th October

‘Azzam’ made its debut in the UK recently, winning the Rolex Fastnet in record time. Are you happy with the new boat?
It was our first race as a team, it was our first race in the new boat and the Fastnet is one of the biggest races you can do, so to win that and break the monohull record was fantastic. It’s very early days yet for the new boat, I think if the race had been a week earlier then we probably wouldn’t have won because we wouldn’t have been ready – there’s a lot more we need to get out of it. We’ve already made four changes to the sail, so it’s a constant evolution but the important thing is that we’ve checked in against the opposition and we know that we measure up.

Does this give you confidence heading into the Ocean Race?

It doesn’t make us think that we’re going to sail away from everybody and blow them out of the water, that isn’t what happened – it was a really tight race – but it gives us the confidence that we’re going to be fighting it out day in and day out and that’s the most important thing. We’ve got more that we can improve on the boat than our competitors as they’ve been training for much longer and I would hope that we can be competitive in most conditions.

How have the preparations been going in general?

Very busy! Putting a new boat on the water, refining it and getting all the bugs out of it is a really lengthy process and we’re only just getting to the end of that now. We still have some issues to resolve and it’s just hard work – there’s nothing else to it. It means long hours for the shore team and long hours for the sailing team. We launched in Italy, then we sailed to Portugal and trained there for a couple of weeks. We then had to get up to England to do our 2,000-mile qualifying passage. No sooner had we finished there, we sailed back to Portugal and then back to England for a week’s safety course. So just the logistics of moving our team around Europe takes a lot of work. To put it into context, our team is 36 at the moment of whom just 13 are sailors so there’s almost twice as many people working on the shore side. That’s boat-builders, riggers, sail-makers, engineers, electricians, people in the office and the commercial team, so it’s quite a big operation.

What does having Abu Dhabi as a host port mean to the country?

Well, it’s what’s behind the whole project. We’re trying to promote Abu Dhabi and promote the whole region – I think the world’s sailing community are all used to going to places like New Zealand or America or England but we want to open people’s eyes to this region and one of the things I’m looking forward to most is people coming here and realising that actually this is a pretty good place to go sailing and a very nice place to live. This is where we trained all last winter and between January and March you couldn’t have better weather conditions anywhere in the world – I think it will be a real eye-opener for all of the competitors.

What do you think about the plans for Abu Dhabi’s Destination Village?

It looks just awesome, amazing. It’s not quite finished yet and I think that no matter how much work ADTA puts into developing the village, it won’t really look and feel like a village until all the teams get there and all their bases are built – the reality is that that won’t start happening until the shore teams leave Alicante and the village will be open to the public on 30th December.

You skippered the Green Dragon boat to 5th place in the last Volvo Ocean race. How do you rate Abu Dhabi’s chances this time around?

I don’t think you can really compare the two campaigns. The Green Dragon entry was very late and we had a boat that was fundamentally uncompetitive. This is different – we have a world-class team, we’re one of five new boats in the race and I don’t believe anyone in the sailing world could pick between those five boats. I think it will be as much down to the reliability of the boat, the nuances of tactical decision-making and the skill of the crew in sail selection and sail changes – so I think it’s going to be very tight between those five boats.

What are you most excited about as the start date approaches?

I’m really excited about the racing – how you can go on deck, sail for three hours with a boat in sight and you’re grinding away trying to pull a few degrees of bearing on them. Then you can go down below for a couple of hours sleep, you get up again and they’re right there still. Just having boats around you raises the tempo on board and really makes the time go quickly. But for me personally, coming into Abu Dhabi is going to be the highlight for sure. I just hope the whole country gets behind the team and welcomes us into the city.

You’ve won two Olympic silver medals. How would victory in the Volvo Ocean Race compare to this?

I could retire then, couldn’t I? No, it would be huge but I think the thing to remember about the Volvo race is you’ve not only got to be the best prepared and have good sailors and a good team, but you’ve also got to have a little bit of luck. You can be the best team in the world and hit a whale in the middle of the night or the weather could turn against you or something could break on the boat, so even if we’re leading the race after seven stopovers, it still wouldn’t be over. There’s a long way to go but that’s why we do it.

Jon Muller