Fourth time around in the Volvo Ocean Race

Ireland's most capped offshore sailor Damian Foxall tells us all his can about Franck Cammas' VOR campaign

It might be his eighth or ninth time around the world, he's lost count, but Ireland's Damian Foxall returns to the Volvo Ocean Race for the fourth time following on from Tyco, Ericsson and Green Dragon. On this occasion he has signed up with Franck Cammas’ Groupama team, who after their superb Jules Verne Trophy record this winter are now having their first stab at a monohull campaign since Cammas’ rapid ascent through the Figaro class 14 years ago.

While Foxall can now proudly claim to be Ireland’s most capped offshore racing sailor, in fact these days he is more French than Irish having lived in Brittany almost constantly since he, like Cammas, campaigned a Figaro back in the mid-1990s. While he is best known for his Volvo campaigns, Foxall is also a leading offshore multihull sailor having been a long term crewman with Karine Fauconnier’s Sergio Tacchini ORMA 60 campaign and on board Doha 2006, Brian Thompson’s Oryx Quest winner and on Ellen MacArthur’s Jules Verne attempt, etc. Significantly Foxall has also from time to time been part of the Groupama team, sailing on their ORMA 60 and the maxi-trimaran.

This time Foxall has had a significant involvement in putting the campaign together and on board is a watch leader along with Laurent Pages, who raced with Bouwe Bekking on Telefonica Blue in the last Volvo Ocean Race.

Groupama haven’t announced their full sailing team yet, although more details are certain to pop out in due course. “We have more or less chosen our crew,” admits Foxall. “We still have to confirm one or two slots, but we’ve started sailing with most of the guys already. By the end of September we want to have signed off the crew.”

While to date the Groupama campaigns have had almost exclusively French crews, for their VO70 Foxall says that the Franco-Anglo split will be 60-40 and it shows a sign of maturity in their campaign that in this race, where most of the technology lies in Anglo-Saxon hands, they are not going down the normal route of going with a 100% French crew. For aside from Foxall and Laurent Pages and Sidney Gavignet (ex Puma, ABN AMRO One, etc) there are precious few French sailors who have competed in recent Volvo Ocean Races.

On board the Groupama VO70 we can certainly expect some of the Jules Verne crew and we wonder if they will be able to entice back navigator Stan Honey who was on board ABN AMRO One, winner in the race before last. Honey didn’t seem overly keen when we spoke to him just after the Jules Verne.

If Alinghi decide not to go ahead with their alleged VOR campaign, we wonder if Groupama will be able to entice their one time ORMA 60 bowman Jan Dekker back into the fold. Thomas Coville might also be game having previous taken part in some legs of the VOR. He was part of Cammas’ Jules Verne crew but is now returning to his own Sodebo maxi-trimaran ready for the Route du Rhum and then a crack at Francis Joyon’s solo non-stop around the world record.

While under the new VOR rules, teams are obliged to take three under 30-year-olds in their 10 man (plus media crewman) crew, Foxall says they might even take four under 30s with them.

Groupama have thrown their hat into the ring for the next two Volvo Ocean Races, and while it is tempting to think of this first race as a training run, there is no doubt that they are pulling out all the stops with the intent of winning the race on their first attempt. They were one of the first campaigns out of the blocks and on the basis that the winning Volvo Ocean Race team has in recent races been the one which bought the previous winner, then Groupama are in good shape having acquired Torben Grael's Ericsson 4 in November.

In buying the Juan K-designed Ericsson 4 they acquired a considerable amount of technology with it – the boat providing them with the ideal test platform on which to develop their own boat, also from the double VOR-winning Argentinian designer, along with containers and equipment, plus, significantly, a large suit of sails.

“It was a huge and very important decision which has given us a good step forward,” says Foxall of their acquiring the ‘Ericsson package’.

In addition to the boats and gear, Groupama also picked up shore manager Ben Wright and Hervé le Quilliec on logistics, both of whom worked on the shore side of the last Ericsson campaign. “It was important that guys like Laurent and Herve and Ben and myself - all the guys who have already done the Volvo - to carry the momentum through from the last race into the next one and integrate that into a new team,” says Foxall. An unusual addition to the team, brought in for his inshore expertise, is Luc Gelluseau, known from his role in the less than successful Le Defi America’s Cup team.

“It was very important for us not to waste time," continues Foxall. "Even though you realise that last November the race might have seemed quite a long way away, as you get into it you realise that the race is already on... We are already coming up on deadlines with regard to the design and build of the new boat, like all the other teams are. So the time we spend on the water now, preparing the design and filling in the gaps with regards to what we know about the current boats and where we want to go with the new boats - it is a very important stage. So right now we are making decisions that will have basically a fundament bearing on the race results.”

While in the past there have been significant differences between how Anglo-Saxon and French teams undertake campaigns such as this, the professionalism of the Groupama and Banque Populaire teams in recent years has shown a big convergence between the two approaches. Cammas and his team will also certainly have benefitted from their exposure to the BMW Oracle Racing team in the build up to the 33rd America’s Cup.

“There is a very strong offshore culture here in Brittany and multi-discplined guys who know how to sail offshore boats fast, and coupling that with existing experience from the race and I think we are getting the best out of both worlds,” says Foxall of their team line-up. This mixing of cultures has also extended into the technical side of the campaign, for according to Foxall they have three sailmakers who were with other VOR teams in 2008-9. “In all areas - whether it is the sails, rig, boat, etc - most of the team has experience in working in both France and on the international circuit. That is hopefully one of our strong points.”

He continues: “The French-Anglo difference doesn’t interest me very much. The Groupama sailing team operates in a business-like fashion and has a strong history of success. We are just getting the best people in we can. It helps if the people we get in can communication in French and likewise the people here are mostly bilingual and we operate in a fairly bi-lingual manner and those that can’t at the moment are making up by doing a few evening classes. More fundamentally the way of operating, it is business as usual whether we are here in Lorient in Auckland or in Cowes. Any minor cultural differences have got little bearing on how we operate on the ground and on the water.”

Another example is the construction of their new boat, which is shortly to start. While the boat will be built by Multiplast in Vannes, where the Groupama maxi-tri was constructed, the build is to be managed by Killian Bushe, the Irish guru who of course built both the Ericsson and the ABN AMRO-winning VO70s. The new boat is due for launch in early 2011.

As one would expect the new boat isn’t an off-the-shelf Juan K VO70, but has had considerable input from the Groupama team so it is likely that there will be significant differences between her, the new Puma and Telefonica boats, which Kouyoumdjian is also designing.

Obviously compared to the last race, the VO70 box rule has been tightened considerably and according to Foxall one of the significant things for the crew this time is that they can no longer stack aft of the water tight bulkhead inside the boat. “I think we will all be looking at how that will affect the boat. They have reduced the amount of sails as well and that is going to make the guys think a little bit more - not just for one leg but for the whole race. You can certainly see one team on one leg getting it very right, being potentially faster just other team just because they had the right sail for the right conditions. It is going to be important to get the balance right between not burning up expensive sail buttons, being able to develop sails during the race, having replacements sails and having the right sails for the right legs. I think that will be interesting and the different approach different teams come up with.”

2010 is set to be a busy time in the Groupama camp. Cammas has already sailing around the world once this year in the Jules Verne and he is set on campaigning an Extreme 40, and, when time allows, the Challenge Julius Baer for the D35 catamarans on Lake Geneva. As if this wasn't enough he is also preparing for the Route Rhum this autumn and in Tabarly/Pen Duick VI style, has his 105ft trimaran entered in this autumn’s Route du Rhum.

While the rest of the sailing team were away on the Jules Verne, Foxall and the VO70 crew were out training. In the build-up to the next VOR there are a maximum number of training days permitted for each team and the lads in green have just finished a two month stint out of Lorient. “It is a mix of getting everyone up to speed on the boat and learning what we can about Ericsson 4 and what they did and trialling and testing things for the next boat,” says Foxall. “Now we are going into a slightly different period where we will be concentrating more on sails and on one or two low profile races. We are going into the Transmanche, across the channel race this month and then another race in June, and then we are planning and it is all built up to the Round Britain and Ireland in September.”

It is possible that the RORC’s Seven Stars Round Britain and Ireland Race may this year be graced by not only Groupama but their sistership, the ex-Ericsson 3, now in the hands of Italian Giovanni Soldini, and there is also the possibility of one of the old Telefonica boats doing it.

With several teams yet to stick their head above the parapet, we agree with Foxall’s endorsement of the the next VOR: “Probably of any race in recent history, it is a race that will be won on the water rather than pre-start, even if the pre-start preparations we are making now will have a strong bearing on the result - you just have to look at the potential line-up to realise that it is going to be a very very good race.

“I am pretty motivated. We have got a fantastic chance being involved this early on and from my point of view having a fairly significant influence on our future. I think the important thing from my point of view is that Franck [Cammas] and the sailing team proposed to Groupama the Volvo Ocean Race as a viable event and that shows the evolution of the VOR - especially in this edition where they believe it has got marketing and sporting value and the racing will be won on the water and not just with a chequebook.”

So they have the winning boat from last time around, the winning designer and boat builder from the last two races. They are not trying to make their campaign an all-French affair. In short Groupama appear to be ticking all the right boxes. But then so are all the other teams...