18 December 2005

Smooth Sailing
You have been involved in this race since the days when it was contested by amateur owners and crews, every boat had a chef on board and communication with the outside world was difficult to non-existent. The changes are all too obvious but have they, in you opinion, detracted from this event as the greatest sailing adventure on the planet?

Magnus Ollson
The Volvo Ocean Race has become a highly professional race where the main focus is to win the race. Yes – I do think it has taken away some of the ‘adventure part’, but I think this is a necessary development. One way to solve this problem may be to have two different classes – one class for the highly professional, and one for the ‘adventure type’ sailors.

Smooth Sailing
Just how big a project is this race for a team like the Ericsson Racing Team and the others involved in the Volvo Ocean Race? Give us if you can, some insight into the planning, infrastructure and personnel requirements that go into putting one of these campaigns on the water from finding the sponsor to crossing the finish line.

Magnus Ollson
The involvement from Ericsson is much greater than simply backing a sailing team – they are using the Volvo Ocean Race as a platform to move forward internally, in terms of increasing employee pride and motivation, as well as externally, to improve brand awareness and customer relations. To put things in perspective, whilst the sailing and shore team consists of 40 people, the number of people working with the project are at least three times this number.

Smooth Sailing
The most obvious change in the boats for this edition of the Volvo Ocean Race, and possibly the most radical thing about the new Volvo 70 class, is that it allows yachts to carry canting keels. While canting keels have been around for longer than many realise, in particular in the Open 60 class, there have been some well-documented failures in other bigger boats. The yachting public perception seems to be that canting keels are downright dangerous. Is this perception correct and does this feature of the boat make it any more risky to get around the planet?

Magnus Ollson
In one sense yes – however in the near future I think that when we get more feedback about how these canting keel boats work, we will also be able to sort out the problems that come with them.

Smooth Sailing
Has the fleet been as close as you expected on Leg 1 of the race so far and in particular has the good turn of speed shown by both ABM Amro boats been surprising to you and the rest of the Ericsson Racing Team?

Magnus Ollson
I would like to give a lot of credit to the ABN AMRO boats – they seem to be well prepared and they sailed the first leg very well. The Ericsson Racing Team was a late starter in the preparations for the race but our learning curve is very steep and our ambition is of course to soon be able to match ABN AMRO in any kind of conditions.

Smooth Sailing
Are there any major changes planned for the Ericsson Racing Team boat during the Cape Town stopover that you can tell us about? In his missives from the boat during the leg, Neal MacDonald has frequently mentioned gaps in the sail inventory. Is that all that is going to be changed/added to improve Ericsson's performance or is there a possibility of more radical changes?

Magnus Ollson
We of course do not intend to change the boat design – this goes against the race regulations. We will however highly prioritise our sail development program. We have learnt an awful lot on the first leg and we have now a better understanding of how to optimise the sail inventory for a particular leg. In addition to this, we are also going to work very hard to prevent any future gear failures.

Smooth Sailing
Final question, with little relevance to the boat, the race or the team at all, what do you like best about visiting Cape Town?

Magnus Ollson
Coming from Scandinavia, I think that I have come to Paradise on Earth!