Gotland Runt- Atea best out of the blocks

by Bob Fisher on 2 Jul 2001 Atea best out of the blocks

Sandhamn, Sweden-After a day of glorious sunshine while the seven Volvo Ocean 60s made last minute preparations for the 335 mile Accenture Gotland Runt, the race was started in light rain, the result of a slow moving frontal trough. The V.0.60s started with 15 other big boats in the IMS GR Open class but were all too obviously disregarding the rest of their opponents.

Johan Scherling's Atea, the former Innovation Kvaerner, made easily the best showing, starting to windward of Ludde Ingvall's Sydney-Hobart race winner, Nicorette in the southerly 10 knot breeze. Atea lifted away from the bigger boat as they were hard on the wind to lay their course to the Almagrundet lighthouse, five miles away.

Local eyes were firmly on Gunnar Krantz' new Farr designed SEB. Her bright green hull with the similarly coloured sails was to leeward of the main group and immediately behind Roy Heiner's Semcon R&D/Assa Abloy, the former Chessie Racing, sporting sails at least from the new campaign. The Assa Abloy team, led by skipper Roy Heiner, has decided not to disturb their two-boat testing in Gothenberg and has brought their training boat from 1997-8 for the race. What she didn't have and SEB did was a Code 0 headsail already hoisted but rolled away. Krantz obviously had second thoughts about using it in the disturbed air from the bigger boats.

His second boat, the former Silk Cut, skippered by two-time winner of this race, Thomas Blixt, was altogether more conservative. In her silver and green livery, SEB 3 was four boat lengths dead astern of Atea as the boats bustled their way towards the right hand end of the starting line and the inner limit mark. They were, however, ahead of Knut Frostad in the striking pink and black Djuice Dragons, the other new boat among the seven V.O.60s.

SEB did unroll her Code 0, which looked exactly like a masthead number one genoa, and was followed in turn by Djuice Dragons and the Assa Abloy team.

At Almagrundet, the positions had become less irregular and the two new boats were leading the rest. SEB was first, followed by Djuice Dragons. Atea had maintained the impetus and was third while SEB 3 was in fourth place. The Assa Abloy team's boat was next with Morten Lorenzen's Nokia allowing Hakan Prising to bring up the rear with Avant, the former Intrum Justitia.

The next reporting position is off Faro, 71 miles south of Almagrundet.

Sidebar: Roy Heiner, the skipper of the Volvo Ocean 60, Assa Abloy, convincingly silenced the critics who believed that he should have brought one of the two identical boats which Assa Abloy has recently launched, in order to race in the Accenture Gotland Runt. 'Time spent on the water,' said the Dutch Olympic medal winner, 'is of the utmost importance.'

Heiner and the Assa Abloy team are two-boat testing off Gothenberg five days a week and wish to optimise the time available to them, but also to compete in the Gotland Runt. 'We need something to stir the adrenaline in the crew,' he commented, 'but before all else our aim is to win the Volvo [Ocean Race].'

'We sailed until four o'clock on Friday afternoon with both boats,' he continued, 'and then they went in for routine maintenance and sail repairs.' It was the end of one routine week for Heiner and his team, and they left the shore crew to a weekend of intensive work while they made their way to Sandhamn and the training boat which had been delivered by a small team earlier.

'We will be back at our training camp, ready to go sailing on Wednesday morning at the latest,' said Heiner, 'and we will only have lost two days of our two-boat programme. If we had brought one of the new boats we would have lost a total of 11 or 12 days. It would have been good to sail one of the new boats but there would have been too much downtime.'

The equation is simple and no one knows better than Heiner, who joined a less than sparkling team in the last Whitbread Round the World race after the first leg had been raced, the value of training time on the water, especially for evaluating sails.

'We have twelve guys here for the racing, and it's good for them to race,' he added in a final comment, 'and I am glad that they are in the old boat; it makes them hungry to win.'