O'Rourke's Ocean Race plan swings into action

6th June 2008

With the purchase of the winning boat from the last Volvo Ocean Race handed over to Ger O'Rourke in Lanzarote this week, the focus now swings to just what team O'Rourke will install for his Round-The-World campaign.

There has been plenty of speculation, but with O'Rourke remaining tight-lipped, little is known other than he plans to skipper himself for most–but not all–of the ten legs.

Telefonica may have flown home club class, but Ger O'Rourke will deliver his boat from the Canaries to Ireland the traditional way

All that can be confirmed at this stage is at least one high-profile absentee.

Ireland's top professional ocean racer, Damian Foxall, is definitely not part of O'Rourke's 25-man squad, from which the 12-man crew will be selected, as all reports indicate he is signed to the Green team to be announced mid–July.

Another non-runner is Dun Laoghaire single-handed sailor Paul O'Riain, who was planning a double-handed entry to the Round Ireland race with O'Rourke before the Volvo project took off. O'Rourke and O'Riain were understood to be at an advanced stage of negotiations in hiring a Class 40 yacht for the race when O'Rourke changed direction, leading to speculation that O'Riain might number among the squad. O'Riain campaigned singlehanded in the Solitaire du Figaro race last year, giving him a solid grounding in high performance offshore racing.

What can be confirmed is the following: O'Rourke's crew, while a team of solid professionals, will be working for a fraction of what other crews will be paid. O'Rourke has indicated that his budget is little more than 10 per cent of what the big teams have at their disposal, so he will be calling on the squad to work both on the boat and on shore once they arrive in port, and with a wealth of boatbuilding experience within the squad, this should not be a problem.

Since the Limerick man stated his intention to enter the race, his inbox has been flooded with emails from aspiring participants. His 25-man squad, which surprisingly only contains four Irish nationals, has remained largely unchanged, and contains many guests and some regulars from the Chieftain crew with whom he campaigned so successfully all over the world.

Those guests and regulars boast a wealth of experience from Americas' Cup campaigns, VOR campaigns and TP52 circuits.

A good bet, so, would be O'Rourke's trusted navigator Jochem Visser, the self-proclaimed 'speed doctor', (website here) who guided Chieftain to wins in the Fastnet race and the Sydney-Hobart.

With a successful inspection made of the boat early this week (as confirmed in the Irish Times today - here - subs req) O'Rourke will sail Black Betty home with two of the Ericsson crew and five of his own men, up to four of whom will be included in the final team.

More will be known in two weeks' time, when O'Rourke officially unveils the campaign at a high-profile gathering in Dublin's Docklands on June 20.

Published in News From the Afloat.ie Archive

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