Mon, 11 Sep 2006 18:00:00 UTC
To his friends he is known as Crusty. We know him as the most successful sailor in the history of the race
It took three wins in four races before Mark Christensen decided another trip around the world was unnecessary. Here, he reflects on a Volvo Ocean Race career which made him the most successful sailor in the event’s history, his new life away from ocean racing and, believe it or not, the faults of the ABN AMRO campaign.
I’ve been thinking about this new life away from the race a lot since it finished. I was saying to my girls ‘enjoy this, because it is your last day of free food.’ Life has changed from being looked after - accommodation, flights, food, when something isn’t right you phone someone and ask ‘where’s my whatever?’ - now I’m going back to earning a salary and looking after myself. I’ve done that from time to time, but I’ve always had a campaign approaching somewhere, like a Volvo or an America’s Cup. Now we are going by ourselves.
I don’t know if I’ll miss it so much. Things change as you get older, and now I have a young family and want to spend more time with them. That’s not to say I won’t ever be back. If the opportunity presents itself again I’d love to do it again, it’s just not likely to be in a sailing capacity. If push came to shove, or there was the odd leg available, then it is too early to say ‘no I won’t sail it again’, because you never know. The thing I would like to do more than anything else is to come in and set up a team and put all the pieces in place. ABN AMRO has been a little frustrating in that respect, as some of the things that we have learned from the other races - like how to deal with the travelling and movements for shore crew - have not been picked up on. It’s mostly budgetary in that there wasn’t enough money to do it right, but also a little bit of organisation as well - people learning as they go and getting better - but a lot could have been solved at the start. That’s this race though; you are always learning from experience, whatever your role is.
It was probably experience which went a long way towards winning this last race for us. With ABN AMRO we had a lot of guys who had done this race before. They all had ideas they thought worked. A lot of those got promoted or dropped early on. By the time we started we pretty much knew which ideas worked for us. We may not have been 100 percent right, but we were pretty close a lot of the time.
When I compare that with my first race, back in 1993 with Winston, it was different. We would start the race stacking food, but probably nothing else, and by the end we would be stacking food, crew and whatever else we could. We probably started that race sailing at 20 percent and finished at about 75 percent. But that was really just the second race of the ‘professional era’.
So much has changed since that first race. With Winston we had only one container going round the world, Mick and Cathy Harvey were doing all our shore work and, which is really different from today when everyone has one, we had our own sail loft. We used to hang a bit of canvas over it, but had to take it down when it got too windy! Just eight years on, when we won with illbruck, everyone had a loft, big shore crews and two or three containers. A lot changed just in the four events I’ve taken part in; you just never stop learning. The thing that stands out for me is just how much I’ve learned about offshore sailing. You start and you have no idea. You spend your life until that point sailing around harbours or the coast; you never really know what it is like offshore. You sail two or three days in a Fastnet or a Sydney to Hobart and still don’t really have a clue. Offshore is all about living on that food, the people and the crazy weather for a long period of time.
When you start you’re filled with excitement and knowing nothing, which is probably why I enjoyed my first race the most. It was an adventure. The others became more about competing. In that regard, winning with EF Language was the best memory. No one thought we could win, except probably Paul Cayard. We lost two crew members before the start of the race and Mark Rudiger, our navigator, only joined up two weeks before the start. Then to win was really special. But even that race, only eight years ago, was way behind in development when you think of the race which we have just seen. It’s evolving.
Now there’s a new course, a new future for the race, and I’m in favour of the change. You need money to survive and for that you need a sponsor who feels they can get enough out of it. A lot of people have talked about the heritage of the race and the Southern Ocean, and that’s obviously a key part of it, but I think these guys create a lot of that themselves. You don’t need to be in the Southern Ocean to experience a storm, just look what happened when the boats crossed the Atlantic and the leg up to New York. I think the boats create their own excitement through their speeds and, let’s face it, offshore is offshore wherever you are in the world. To go somewhere where you attract more sponsors, be that the Middle East or Asia, then that’s what you have to do. What’s the alternative? No race. Is that the right route for the event to take? I certainly don’t think so.
This race has given me so many great memories, the fact it is continuing can only be good.
AT A GLANCE
Born in New Zealand in 1969, Mark Christensen is married with two children. A winner of the two previous versions of this event, the Volvo Ocean Race 2005-06 was Mark’s fourth Whitbread/Volvo Ocean Race. An adrenaline-junkie who has competed in, and won, a host of major events, he can also be found running marathons, kayaking and jogging in the mountains when not watching sport on the television.
From past experience he knows the importance of team spirit and was happy to join a crew aboard ABN AMRO ONE of such formidable fellow sailors. From the start, he thought that TEAM ABN AMRO’s chances of winning were very good. “Getting one boat in the water early is a big advantage. Putting the two boats together and confirming what we learnt was a huge advantage.”
HONOURS